Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I have explained to the Deputy that I am not talking about process. I am talking about changes that now have to be negotiated with public service unions in the same way as many of those unions, or their like in other areas of the economy, are engaging in change programmes as we speak in order to survive in the marketplace in which they operate. I expect that within the next six months — or before it — we will have to see agreements drawn up which will provide for far more flexibility in the delivery of our health services, how we are organised and how we get more for the amount of money that we are providing. All of that process will be accelerated and accordioned in the next couple of months if we are to have outcomes which avoid unnecessary cuts in services because we were not prepared to make the changes in how we organise their delivery.

I believe that there is a strong willingness on all sides of that equation, both at management and union levels, to make the necessary changes and to bring in new flexibilities in how we organise services in a way which has not been possible to be negotiated for some time simply because everyone recognises that we are in a situation that requires that sort of response. Those are the sort of practical changes that one will see because people are willing and understand that if we are to avoid unnecessary dislocation of services at the front line, people will have to change how we deliver the system. We must achieve more efficiencies — that is the way it is. I believe everyone is up for that challenge. The social partnership provides us with the framework to achieve that.

Deputy Gilmore makes a criticism of when people go about trying to change the public service in some isolated or specific case. The purpose of this OECD review is to look at the entire service to outline how we can improve motivation and performance, how we get to deepen citizen engagement, how we get the potential for e-Government to work, how we provide the economies that will be available through shared services, how we develop people and develop leaders within the service who will be able to go and manage what is a multibillion euro operation, how we strengthen the governance of these organisations, including the agencies, and how we ensure that the public service works in an accountable, transparent and effective way that will increase public confidence in the country.

It sets out an implementation strategy. On the arguments that people were decrying the fact that we were not setting out a plan over a three year period covering all of these issues, ambitious timeframes are set out. I do not need to read each and every one of them, but each chapter sets out that they are not simply recommendations, but recommendations within certain timeframes. If one wants to change how the public service works, one must have a beginning, a middle and an end to it. One must start at a point that creates the means by which one gets the changes rather than everyone going about doing their own thing. The purpose of bringing that group of people together was to give us an implementation plan, based on what the OECD had to say, on what way we could improve the service and how we could go about it.

Quite apart from that redesign of the service, which is a reform issue that needs to be addressed, there are the specifics about which Deputy Gilmore spoke in terms of changes in the workplaces that must occur in the immediate period ahead on a range of public services in order to ensure the outputs we get are commensurate for the inputs we make.

We also know that a gap is emerging between the tax revenues we are raising as a country, which are at 2005 levels, and the 2009 level of services we have to provide. That is not sustainable in the medium to long term and we have to get down to the business of reducing that discrepancy over a credible timeframe so that we bring the public finances back into balance as quickly as possible. However, by working through the social partnership, this will be done in a way that avoids to the greatest extent possible an adverse effect on those who depend on these services. That is the shared responsibility not only of the Government, Ministers or Departments but of everyone who works in the service. The quality of leadership required to successfully achieve that aim will be of a high order. That is why we need the social partnership process to work. The purpose of the engagement that will begin in the coming weeks is to ensure we get down to the business of providing the best possible level of service from the State's depleted revenues and depleting resources.

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