Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The Taoiseach's initiative today deserves at best one cheer. After 11 years in Government, with responsibility for public services for four years, he has set up a task force to examine public service reform. Not a single initiative has been announced today. That does not indicate a Taoiseach who has thought about the direction of change we must undertake.

I remind the Taoiseach that many of the proposals we now see from the OECD run directly contrary to what he has done as Minister for Finance. Benchmarking provided an opportunity to link public service pay and performance but it was ignored. Again, under the Taoiseach's stewardship of the Department of Finance, top level pay for senior public servants and Ministers came up for review. That was another opportunity to link public sector pay with performance but that opportunity was not seized either. Under the Taoiseach's watch the serious scrutiny that was to emerge from the value for money system established through legislation in 1997 was melted down. That was to involve a three-year rolling programme through which everything would be scrutinised and lessons were to be applied in the way budgets were set. Senior civil servants had to admit that even where that was done, it had no impact on the budget.

Likewise, when the Taoiseach had the opportunity to introduce serious reform of the way the budget was debated in the House he did not do so, he did the exact opposite. He decided to introduce public spending proposals and tax proposals to the House at the one time and without scrutiny, and to have a debate at the end of the process. That is not the way a modern Government committed to public service reform should spend its money. The budget system must hunt down waste and reward performance and when money gets tight it must not hurt the weak and the vulnerable. Even in the past four months, under pressure on public spending, the Government has made the weak and the vulnerable hurt. The Taoiseach is not hunting down waste in public spending. At every hand's turn we see cutbacks in respite care, beds are being closed and small schemes are being economised on as money runs out for people who need support. The process is only starting because there has been no serious effort to find economies in public spending.

Much of what has occurred has been on the Taoiseach's watch. For example, decentralisation was pushed ahead on his watch. We know from the annual conferences of public servants and from the OECD report that that has been a wasteful use of scarce public servant management time, which has not allowed managers to do the job the Taoiseach says is the priority, to deliver at the front line to the customers and the users of public services. Instead, managers' time has been absorbed in what amounts to famine work in many cases, of lining up and trying to decide which agencies will move when we know in our heart of hearts that State agencies are not going to move. That is the reality. After four years the Government has delivered 20% of the decentralisation promised. If that is an omen for how much the Taoiseach will do in terms of public service reform, it is not a good one.

It is worth reminding the Taoiseach to bear in mind some recommendations. We need to develop managerial and leadership capacity. We need a five-year vision for the public service. We need an imaginative service-wide performance system. We need to review the structures to reposition e-Government as a core strategic area delivering services to consumers of public services. We need robust measures of consumer satisfaction and greater input by citizens. Does the Taoiseach recognise those recommendations? They are drawn from a report issued to him before he became Minister for Finance in 2002. That was the tone and direction of the recommendations he had on his desk when he took up office in the Department of Finance as Minister with responsibility for forming budgets and delivering public services. What happened to the recommendations? Six years later the same issues are being presented as the new challenges. A task force has been set up to examine those challenges that the Taoiseach knew about six years ago because they were included in a report he had on his desk when he took office.

That is not good enough. I would have some belief in the Taoiseach's commitment in the area if he intended to introduce initiatives as and from this year's Estimates — for example, that agencies would have to compete for their money and that there would be scrutiny in the Oireachtas before we vote on money; that alternative uses of money would be considered; that we would look for efficiencies in administration in this year's Estimates process to save frontline services; and that quangos and the appointments to State boards would be scrutinised by the Oireachtas so that properly qualified persons would be appointed to those positions.

I would welcome such proposals on a change of direction, but we do not see any such proposals, which is why I am disheartened and fear that what is behind the proposed public sector reform is not a well thought-out strategy based on four years' experience of running the public service. Neither is it apparent that the Taoiseach intends to move in a new direction but that the fragmentation of agencies, which is evident, will combine with the rigidity of the HR management that he drove from the Department of Finance. The report stated the Department of Finance was driving rigidity into a highly fragmented system so they have neither devolution nor delegation with the flexibility to act. It is the worst of all worlds. If I thought a momentum for change was coming I would give the Taoiseach three cheers. I do not have great faith in the proposal to set up a task force with worthies on it. The Taoiseach has 11 years ministerial experience, four of which were in the public service sector. We should see initiatives that would make a difference to the Estimates being formed as we speak. As we come to next year's budget we should see a different type of Estimate, namely, Ministers committing in advance to targets they will achieve with the money we give them, that we will have scrutinised that in advance and will be confident the Ministers can deliver and will be accountable for them. We have got used to not expecting that.

I wish to outline a few examples of big initiatives that were announced by the Taoiseach and his colleagues in the past. We were to deliver complete transformation of the way we dealt with climate change. At least the Minister for Transport had the good grace to announce it was a total failure and that we did not deliver anything. We only delivered 20% of the decentralisation that was promised. At best, only 20% of the 2001 health reform strategy was delivered in terms of primary care centres and the issues the Taoiseach said are so important. I could go on. The spatial strategy is another example of strategies being announced with great commitment by the new time, but there has not been a system for making people accountable and delivering change at political level. That corrodes the system as it filters down. There cannot be performance down the line if people in authority do not take responsibility. I welcome the Taoiseach's rhetorical commitment in this area but I want to see more before I am convinced it will mean something.

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