Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The review is not a substantive audit of sectors, such as health, education and local government. It is, rather, focusing on the connectivity between various sectors, as I told Deputy Rabbitte, including central and wider sectoral areas. It is examining the effectiveness of arrangements through which Government objectives are translated into outputs and outcomes by means of collaboration by different parts of the system. My Government's polices and strategies in various sectors, such as health, education and local government, will continue in parallel with the review. Every day work continues involving our 350,000 public servants but naturally there are lessons to be learned from the review. Where sensible improvements and refinements to our ongoing work on reforming these sectors are recommended, they will be fed into the overall mix. It is not a pay review and the OECD would have no part in such a review. As I have already said, the review is an holistic, system-wide assessment.

There is also a peer review element in the exercise whereby senior officials and practitioners from countries actively involved — both as part of the fact-finding and drafting teams, and as members of committees — will review the draft report. It is valuable because it will help towards sharing best practice from other countries. It will also provide an element of rigour in the process of framing recommendations in practical terms. Against this background, it was considered that the OCED is best placed to undertake a review of this nature. Similar reviews by the OECD in the economic and regulatory areas were well established and rightly regarded as instruments here. The OECD's public governance and territorial development committee has also established similar peer review processes in other areas, including human resource management, information and communication technology, and ethics in the public service. Any private sector consultancy would struggle to match the OECD in such terms because of its vast experience of peer review benefits, in-house expertise, knowledge and networking to communities of interest among EU member states and further afield.

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