Brendan Kenneally (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I congratulate Deputy Martin Mansergh on his elevation to the post of Minister of State at the Department of Finance and Deputy John Curran on his promotion to Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, with responsibility for drug strategy. I also congratulate Deputy Brian Lenihan, who has left the House; he has moved to the Department of Finance.

I welcome the debate on this very important report produced by the OECD. To begin my contribution I will quote from the first few lines of the executive summary which states:

Ireland's economic success story is one that many OECD countries would like to emulate. While the reasons underpinning Ireland's success are varied, the Irish public service has played a central role in ensuring that the right economic, regulatory, educational and social conditions are in place to facilitate growth and development. As with other OECD countries, Ireland has continually sought to modernise and reform its public service systems and practices to ensure that it can continue to meet the needs and expectations of Government and citizens. Over the past decade, thanks in no small part to its economic performance, the country has also seen significant changes in its demographic make-up.

The most important thing is that, while the report mentions our great success, it refers to change. These changes must be reflected in our public service. I will return to this point later in my contribution.

I was a little surprised to read in the report that the percentage of Government employees in the public sector is relatively low compared to other OECD countries. Ireland has significantly fewer public servants than countries such as Norway, Sweden, France, Finland and Belgium. It is shown in the report that in this area Ireland has the third lowest level of expenditure as a percentage of GDP. We should not focus on this too much because part of the reason for the existence of this statistic at the time the report was compiled was Ireland's tremendous economic growth of recent years. This figure is probably changing as we speak.

The report refers to the use of agencies and the considerable number of them in Ireland. My biggest problem with agencies, which is probably shared by many people in this House, is their lack of accountability. We have all tabled parliamentary questions and been referred to this, that or the other agency for a reply. I realise the Ceann Comhairle is trying to address this and I hope meaningful change can be effected in this regard. We must realise that simply doing away with some agencies does not mean there will be better output — some agencies already produce good output. We must be selective in our criticism. Many of the changes made in the public service and these agencies in the past decade have been internally focused. This is something we must address and I will refer to this later.

The report undertook five different case studies in health, education, local government, justice and the Civil Service, and I would like to refer to a couple of these. I agree with the previous speaker, Deputy O'Donnell, who referred to the whole area of school planning. There are huge difficulties in expanding urban areas, especially the greater Dublin area. The report questions the capacity of the Department of Education and Science to respond to needs in this area. There must be more co-operation with other agencies to ensure the situations that arose this year and last year do not recur.

I can give an example of what happened a number of years ago in my area when Waterford City Council sought to develop a whole new neighbourhood with approximately 10,000 new houses. This area is fairly well developed now. The council set aside a site for a school and informed the Department of Education and Science of this.

However, it was told it was none of its business. That type of interaction, or lack of interaction, is not helpful. I raised this with the Department recently and, in fairness, its attitude has changed and it has started to engage in this case. However, it needs to do a lot more of this. The local authority is also the planning authority and it knows where the developments are going and where there will be needs in the future. There must be more co-operation between these authorities.

One of the other case studies in the report was that of Garda civilianisation. I was not surprised to read in the report that the percentage of civilian workers in the Garda organisation is low. The OECD believes there is resistance to change within the Garda ranks. In my experience that is the case. A civilian who was working at a Garda station here in Dublin told me that the gardaí there do not want to give up their desk jobs and go out on the beat. These are people who have been trained to do that job. In many instances, the civilian staff do not have enough work to do because of the number of gardaí working inside. This issue is highlighted in the report and it is something that will have to change.

A citizen-focused approach is needed from the public service. Some people in the public service are very good at engaging with the end customer, while others are not. This must change. We must have some way of dealing with those who are not able to do so. I do not know what mechanism we could use. If it was in the private sector they could be dealt with, but some mechanism must be found to deal with them in the public sector also. The end customer is Government, business or a citizen. E-Government is not being fully exploited to assist the public service in dealing with the general public. There has been more than one instance of this.

As a member of the Committee of Public Accounts I have seen various Secretaries General report to the committee on a range of different issues. In many cases they attribute the reasons certain projects are not being carried out to the computer systems. The system is not up to speed, or its implementation has been delayed; it is not compatible with other systems that are being used within the Department or, more usually, it is not able to receive information from other agencies, be they outside agencies or other Departments, and the information must be input manually. This should not be happening. Technology appears to be a big problem within the public sector. There have been some spectacular successes, such as the Revenue on-line service, which system has been patented and sold to the authorities in France. The motor tax on-line service has also been a success. However, unfortunately there have not been enough of these.

We need to embed the use of information communication technology, ICT, throughout the public service. Too often e-Government initiatives and the use of ICT are seen as a technical issue rather than a way in which service delivery can be streamlined or improved. Rather than incorporating an ICT approach to problem solving or service delivery at an early stage, we try to retrofit new e-Government technologies on old ways of thinking and old systems and processes. Retrofitting does not work. Instead, we need to make better use of business process reviews and to rethink approaches to service delivery from the point of view of the citizen or end user.

There is one theme running throughout the OECD report. What hits me all the way through is the need for more teamwork, more interlinking between the Departments, which is simply not happening enough at present. It is happening now in that there are cross-cutting responsibilities at Minister of State level. This is something on which the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, embarked and which is being developed further by the present Taoiseach.

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