Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

This subject is near and dear to the heart of every Deputy, including the Ceann Comhairle, who I do not doubt could wax lyrical in this respect for a long time. Deputy Ring provided inspiration when he mentioned the e-mail and voicemail systems, but pride of place goes to such a system in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, which I had occasion to contact last year. It read to the effect that the person was sorry, that he or she was out of the office on that day, 23 April 2007, and that he or she would be back in one week. The only problem was that I contacted the person on 27 July. One can come to the conclusion that the person had not touched his or her e-mail between 23 April and 27 July. I do not know what degree of activity was occurring, but it could not have been great.

There is a tendency to treat the delivery of public services as if it were a business whereby the public must tolerate the quality and level of service provided. However, that is not how it should be. The public is entitled to demand and receive a service. Previous speakers have made other points. For an unknown reason, we have lost our way. It may be due to a lack of vocation; the vocational commitment of 25 or 30 years ago may no longer exist. Something is wrong because the delivery of public service follows different lines. An expert rather than the public decides what is good for the latter, such as the location of hospitals. The expert has regard to the convenience of the system for himself or herself, not for the public. An expert consulted another expert who consulted a third expert who leaked information to the media, the situation turned into a revolving circus and subsequently became policy. This has occurred for a long time, but it has become embedded in the system to such an extent that it is almost impossible to remove.

For example, all local authorities undertook a review of their housing lists at the direction of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Approximately 60,000 applicants are on those lists. At the end of a five-year period after the 2002 general election, the Government decided to recount the applicants to determine whether any had gone away or given up. The local authorities sent applicants a series of letters and, in some cases, the deadline for responses had expired three, four or five weeks before the letters had even been issued. There was nothing unusual in this, but the local authorities subsequently wrote to the applicants to tell them that they had been struck off the lists because they had not responded. This is the type of daftness that brings the public service and politicians into disrepute. The public has nothing but total contempt for this type of nonsense. The Ceann Comhairle would be well able to deal with such a situation in his constituency. Can he imagine the degree of frustration felt by members of the public who ring him to tell him they have been knocked off the housing list because they had not received the letters the local authority claimed it had sent?

See this speech in context