Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 4, inclusive, together.

The OECD review of the Irish public service, Towards an Integrated Public Service, was published in April 2008. This report, which benchmarked the public service in Ireland against other comparable countries and made recommendations as to the further direction of public service reform, was an authoritative assessment of the Irish public service. It confirmed the many strengths of the system and identified challenges that needed to be addressed.

Transforming Public Services, TPS, sets out an ambitious programme of renewal for the entire public service. It represents the blueprint for a new type of unified public service, focused on common goals, with greater co-operation and reduced boundaries between sectors, organisations and professions. It also focuses on a much greater integration of services around user needs and far greater efficiency in internal data sharing and administration through shared service models. Implementation of the change programme is being overseen by the Cabinet committee on transforming public services, which I chair. The work of the Cabinet committee is being supported by a steering group of Secretaries General and the Transforming Public Services programme office, which is based in my Department, working closely with the Department of Finance.

Progress has been made in a number of areas to date. The special group on public service numbers and expenditure programmes was established as part of the Transforming Public Services framework and its report was published last July. The recommendations of the special group are being considered by the Government in the context of the 2010 Estimates and budgetary process and decisions on the proposals will be taken in that context.

A range of instruments has been developed in the human resource area to contribute to the implementation of expenditure savings for 2009, notably the incentivised scheme of early retirement in the public service, the special Civil Service career break scheme and the shorter working year scheme, together with the moratorium on the filling of public sector vacancies by recruitment or promotion.

Responsibility for e-Government policy and central operations has been consolidated in the Department of Finance. That Department is currently working with all public bodies to develop a rolling programme of e-Government projects across the public service. The latest EU e-Government benchmarks show that Ireland's ranking for on-line sophistication has now improved from 17th to joint 7th position. Significant savings can be realised from the improved professionalisation of procurement and, to this end, the new national public procurement operations unit has been established within the Office of Public Works. This unit is working to leverage the public service's buying power by organising procurement of common goods and services across the public service.

Work is ongoing in developing specific proposals in the area of shared services on the basis that there are significant potential savings associated with such initiatives. Groups of senior officials have been established to advance shared services in the human resources, pensions, payroll and financial shared services area. The work on shared services is being advanced within the HSE, the Civil Service, local government and in the education sector.

The organisational review programme, ORP, has been extended so that all Departments and major offices will be reviewed within the next three years. The ORP team, based in the Department of the Taoiseach, carries out and publishes assessments of the capacity of individual Departments and major offices to meet their challenges over the coming years. Four organisations have been reviewed so far this year — the Department of Health and Children, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the Central Statistics Office and the Property Registration Authority. The reviews are due to be published around the end of the year and will be accompanied by follow-up action plans on the key findings prepared by each of the four organisations.

In line with Transforming Public Services, a new round of value-for-money reviews was approved by the Government in late 2008. Reviews under the new arrangements for the value for money and policy review initiative are under way in 12 Departments. These reviews focus on evaluations of significant areas of expenditure and major policy issues with a focus on health, education, social welfare and justice sectors.

Work is under way on the development of new performance and governance frameworks for State agencies and the greater use of service level agreements in this context. A new code of practice for the governance of State bodies was published in May. In addition, work is well advanced on the merger, abolition, etc., of a number of State agencies in line with the announcement of 30 agency rationalisation proposals in the 2009 budget. A further 43 rationalisation measures were proposed in the special group report and those proposals are under consideration.

In line with the priority actions set out in Transforming Public Services, the intensive discussions resuming with unions are addressing the development of new highly flexible arrangements for the redeployment of staff to areas of highest priority in the public service. These discussions are ongoing.

Work has also commenced on some of the numerous commitments relating to improving customer focus. A group of senior officials is currently examining the feasibility of introducing a single point of telephone contact service and is developing a fully costed business plan to support this work. A request for information was recently issued to a number of companies in respect of this project. A group has also been established to determine the feasibility and value of mechanisms to simplify the provision of means information by citizens to public bodies. The programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach is also undertaking surveys of Civil Service customers and the results of these surveys, of citizens and businesses, will be published by the end of the year.

In addition, a number of other priority actions from TPS, such as extending individual performance management systems across the public service and strengthening existing systems are the subject of discussions with the public service unions. In the renewed programme for Government, the Government has set out a number of specific actions relating to performance measurement and reward in the public service, recruitment and promotion arrangements and a range of strengthened governance procedures for State agencies.

Deputies will be aware that the radical transformation of the public service is the subject of discussions with the public service unions at present in the context of making the necessary savings to the overall public service pay bill. These important discussions will resume this afternoon.

I am disappointed that industrial action took place yesterday, particularly as efforts to find agreement are continuing. At a meeting with senior union leaders last Friday, I urged the unions to ensure that appropriate and responsible emergency cover arrangements were put in place and I understand that this was the case yesterday. I want to acknowledge the decision by public service unions involved in the flood relief effort to suspend their action. We now have to move on and focus on the intensive series of meetings which commence this afternoon to see if we can still reach agreement.

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