Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

The Government decision to abolish the NESF and the NCPP is a small but typical example of the way the public service has been mismanaged and mishandled under Fianna Fáil. In this case an announcement was made some time ago that a public sector body, the National Economic and Social Development Office an umbrella group for the NCPP and the NESF, was to be set up. Years were spent putting that decision into effect and now it is to be completely reorganised in order to save money. We have a new body with plenty of staff but no clarity on its mission.

Despite this, the Government initially saw no need to discuss this matter in the Dáil. The National Economic and Social Council is a body that has existed for decades and which has played a vital role in the economic development of the State. It has produced several reports of great significance and has provided strategic thinking to underpin the social partnership process. This role has been crucial as it means there has been a framework of common strategic understanding on which detailed negotiations can be based.

During the 1990s, the Labour Party was largely responsible for the establishment of the NESF, which broadened the debate between the social partners and which included Members of the Oireachtas. Over that period, the forum has done important work, having a strong focus on social issues and in particular producing a number of important reports on the implementation of policy, not all of which were favourably disposed to the Government.

Later, in response to a growing awareness of the importance of developing partnership at workplace level, the NCPP was established. For a number of administrative reasons it was felt necessary to establish an umbrella body for these organisations, which was NESDO. The Bill to establish NESDO meandered through the Oireachtas for years and was never a priority matter. It was on the Order Paper for an interminable period.

Two of the bodies under the NESDO are to be abolished following a recommendation of the McCarthy report. After years of legislating for an umbrella body, it will only have one entity to shelter. At the same time the entity has no defined mission. The NESC has a mission defined in the NESDO legislation, as did the forum and the centre. We are told that some of the functions of the centre and the forum are to be continued by the NESC, although we are not told which functions they are.

How will any of this work? Will the NESC, for example, take on the role of researching the implementation of policy? Can it do so effectively when there are five Secretaries General on the NESC council? Does this not automatically neuter the possibility of robust criticism of policy implementation?

What of the NCPP? It may be beneficial to have the expertise of the NCPP staff available to the NESC. One of the areas in which social partnership has seen most difficulty in recent years has been workplace rights and industrial relations. Bringing that pool of expertise into the NESC may be useful but we do not have clarity on how the NESC mandate, which is set out in legislation, and the NESC working model is to be adapted to take account of these changes.

We are getting a new model based on a short-term cost-saving measure rather than starting with the question of what we need and building an organisation to meet that requirement. This is a small example but it reflects a broader problem in Government in the whole approach to public service reform. The emphasis has been on the short term rather than a planned and calibrated approach to rein in the excessive costs created by Government in the first place.

The big question underlying all of this is the future of social partnership. The same short-term approach has effectively put social partnership into suspended animation. As a country, we need a determination to move forward together, and we need a system of social dialogue to help us achieve this. It will be a different system to the social partnership model that went before and instead of getting ideas from the Government and positive proposals on how to reform and remake social dialogue, we are getting a half-baked measure that will save some money but which leaves many important questions unanswered.

This is an opportunity to describe to the House what has happened with quangos over the past ten to 15 years. Some 205 quangos have been established and every one took authority from this House and the Members of the House who were elected by the people. In effect, we took authority from the people which we were given as Members of this House. It is outrageous that this happened. It occurred in a Pontius Pilate manner to wash Ministers' hands of responsibility for decisions which had to be made, particularly difficult decisions.

We are now in a position with all of these quangos fully funded with public money but we cannot even raise a question in this House about them. Ministers apparently have no responsibility for them. There is a general broad brush in that the Minister has a responsibility for policy and can in that sense control the quangos but it is not true in practice.

Each one of these quangos has a chairman, a chief executive officer, a board and hires spin doctors to tell us the great actions they are taking, producing fancy and expensive magazines to tell us what they are at. I would like to see an Act of Parliament to bring every one of these under the control of this House until we get around to abolishing about half of them.

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