Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The OECD report puts forward the view that our tax take will fall substantially, perhaps to as low as 38% in volume terms and that there must therefore be reform within the Civil Service to obtain better value for money. The necessary changes relate not only to the agencies to which the Minister referred. There is another difficulty in that Departments do not know the numbers of staff in some of the agencies under their remit. For example, the OECD report observed that the Department of Education and Science is not aware of the number of prefabricated buildings in use in schools throughout the State.

Does the Minister intend to take a hands-on approach to ensure that civil servants in the relevant Departments know how many people work in the devolved agencies, how many prefabricated school buildings are in use, how many patients are waiting on trolleys and so on? Does the Minister agree it is a shame to have so many highly paid senior civil servants, some earning more than €250,000 per year, who cannot provide this type of information? How does the Minister propose to manage Civil Service reform?

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