Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

In regard to accessibility, both in terms of hours and physical accessibility, the Office of Public Works has been working on that issue for the past 15 years. The OPW is responsible for physical access to 2,000 properties and it has campaigned actively on making them more accessible. This took up a lot of its efforts and resources over many years. That programme is fairly complete except for some very difficult offices.

A large number of public offices are opening longer, particularly during lunchtimes. I pressed hard on this over the years and, whatever about evenings or mornings, I do not think there is an argument in respect of lunchtime. It is easy to organise access to offices at lunchtime by leaving a staff member on duty.

The increasing use of information technology has meant that information and, in some cases, transactions can be provided over the internet outside of office hours. The Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Social and Family Affairs and farm payments are now available on a 24-seven basis and are being used extensively. The increase in the level of use of on-line systems in all of these offices is quite dramatic, although this needs to be extended further.

There are new initiatives in many Departments across the system which are trying to use the best practice developed in Revenue, the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and to open up these services. Two years ago, I announced a package of new initiatives for the implementation group, which is leading the modernisation agenda and is mainly being driven at Secretary General level. The overall objective of this is to ensure that the right people are in the right place at the right time to service the needs of citizens.

There has been dramatic improvement. Approximately 200 staff have been put forward this year for the public service awards, which acknowledge new initiatives, and these come mainly from among staff internally examining the modernisation process and where they can improve services. To be fair to our public and civil servants, they are dealing with that aspect. It is also important that, where some Departments bring forward these initiatives, they are then taken as best practice and implemented in other Departments. Many of these initiatives are the work of one or two people who then win support within a section of a Department. A substantial amount of work and activity is taking place, and not just in the technology area.

The idea of physically opening up in the evening is not one that receives support. Most of the other offices across these areas are not open on Saturdays and the public service unions are, by and large, not in favour of it. However, to their credit, they have supported the initiatives in the technology area, which can probably satisfy most of the requirements.

See this speech in context