Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I accept that and recognise it is in the motion. However, where in the motion is the issue of agencies not willing to exploit the opportunities of shared services which e-enabled government can deliver? It is quite explicit that turf wars and the attitude of "I hold what I have" is at the heart of it. Even with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance in a Cabinet sub-committee and another sub-committee of Secretaries General, the Government did not crack any of those issues in the course of the past seven years. Why should we have confidence that it has now been cracked? We have not seen it in the Minister of State's speech. The strategy will have to be a lot more than just repeating and setting targets, high level groups and monitoring here and there. It must be budget-driven. There has to be a strategic group driving it. When the Taoiseach was speaking the other day about the reason some big ambitious projects did not deliver, he spoke quite honestly and said that people running busy Departments and answering parliamentary questions and going here, there and yon, at the beck and call of every crisis in their Department, were expected to at the same time deliver major strategic change. Will we see a different approach and a project team with real authority and real budgets and with the authority to tell recalcitrant units that they must change? That is what we need to see if we are to have confidence that a new strategy will make a difference.

The OECD report has highlighted the lack of joined-up thinking in Government. It has also pointed out — this is not by way of a political point — the lack of joined-up thinking in Fianna Fáil. One cannot put hacks on boards and not give them proper riding instructions and think one is going to deliver high quality service. One cannot treat public servants like pawns and move them around the country and totally disrupt the coherence of much of the planning that has been taking place in Departments. They will not say it in public but if the Minister of State were to talk frankly to public servants they would tell him that decentralisation set back what he is trying to achieve very significantly. The energy of committed and enthusiastic people was dissipated in wasteful exercises on many occasions, simply because the Government had not thought out in advance how to make decentralisation work. Right through the OECD report is the recommendation to think first and then develop a plan and have a road map and benchmarks. The obstacles and barriers should be identified and it should be worked out how to get through them. None of this was done in decentralisation. Time and again, this approach to governance appears and we wonder why, as Deputy Coveney said last night, the spatial strategy failed, why the health strategy failed and why decentralisation failed. There is a core issue and it is one of people taking political responsibility for delivering targets. When one takes political responsibility, one will ensure there is a road map and the obstacles have been foreseen and a way found to overcome them before one puts one's neck on the line.

I give one cheer for the knowledge society plan but we need to see the Government has identified the barriers and it has a strategy to remove them, that it is genuinely starting with consumers' needs and redesigning systems around those needs so that agencies are creating e-enabling as a means of delivering to customers and not just putting existing things on-line. We need to see that the Government will identify savings in advance. One of the alarming aspects is the inability to identify savings.

I wish the Minister of State well in his endeavours but if a knowledge society strategy like the last one is produced and it does not have a well-thought out implementation plan, tight budgets, benchmarks and responsibilities, and a willingness to drive agencies that will not co-operate, we will have wasted the opportunity.

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