Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

-----the Government continued to spend. I remember the Taoiseach saying that the Government was adopting an inspired strategy, because it could expand spending as the recession hit. He increased spending in the following budget at three or four times the prospective growth in the economy that never materialised. He and his Government built up many of the problems that we now confront.

Many people are now quoting Rahm Emmanuel, who said that a time of crisis provides an opportunity to do great things. This is true, but unfortunately the Taoiseach and his Ministers simply cannot deliver. Their authority is shot through because they went to the country on the pretence that they were competent in managing the economy. They were not competent in managing competitiveness or regulation, and this has destroyed so many jobs and the lives of so many families and people in debt. Failed regulation destroyed our country.

Public finances were mismanaged and the Government ignored warnings. People who issued warnings were told to commit suicide. That is what the Government has bequeathed and its members are prisoners of a failed past. That is why we need a general election. Let us put their belief that they can transform this economy to the test with the people. Let us have a Government, whatever its shade or shape, that at least has the authority to confront the problems we face. These problems are deep and really difficult to address, but they will not be addressed by trying to nurse along the failed loans of the past and starving new businesses of credit. That is the Government's current banking policy. Its public finance policy is about slashing investment. It has taken out €8 billion from its investment programme. How can we build an infrastructure with decent electricity networks and decent broadband systems on the back of slashing investment? It has slammed down the shutters on young people getting into the public service, but it has consistently refused to reform the big political bureaucracy that it has created.

The Government's public service reform has produced what could well be described as a three humped camel: the Department of Finance, the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment all hope to resolve public service reform. I hope that the Minister of State, Deputy Dara Calleary, acting as the mahout for this camel, can deliver some change, but I have little confidence in this because the Taoiseach stated two years ago that public service reform was his priority. We are now half way through this Administration, but public service reform has languished. Not only did the Government destroy it with its past decisions on benchmarking, decentralisation and the creation of a HSE without stripping out the management structures, but it is now destroying it again. The Taoiseach brought people in last Christmas and was going to sign a contract that contained no reform, but a few changes that were to be delivered. He tried to pretend that this would cut the cost of running the public service on the back of a ten day holiday that would be postponed. He was willing to sign up to this, but it was only his Minister for Finance who pointed out that this would not deliver the savings we need. He has not led us to a public service reform agenda, and the new negotiations are timid attempts at reform.

I welcome 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. working days and other kinds of flexibility, and I welcome a movement of staff, but if we are to reform the public service, we must do much more radical things than that. We must devolve power and make people accountable. We must see people sacked for failing, but we never see these things. The Government has not created that sort of devolved accountability. When things go wrong, nobody is ever called to account. That is a failure of the Taoiseach's own leadership to change and drive reform. I would like to see an office of public service reform doing significant things. For example, there is huge potential to cut out routine processes that are scattered across umpteen different Departments and agencies, and consolidate them in shared service centres where one could get genuine economies of scale. I would like to see such an agenda on the table now for discussion at these renewed talks. Let us discuss genuinely how we are going to change the face of the public service, so that good people will not be trapped in a system that fails them because performance is not encouraged, rewarded or prized. More than any before it, this Government has shown that performance is not worth prizing, given the Taoiseach's attitude to benchmarking and decentralisation. The Taoiseach finds it extremely difficult to provide leadership because of his past, but at least he should be putting such matters on the agenda. We should have a radical reform programme that can deliver the savings he is talking about.

We thought we would see that last year when McCarthy was put to work to produce €5 billion in cuts. In addition, huge restructuring was proposed. I would have gone further with some of it, but some people had quibbles with it. It was published in the paper of record that each Department had to come up with those cuts or their equivalent, but nothing happened. There was no public service reform and no restructuring. The clock was ticking towards the 11th hour and the Government cut public service pay. It was a command and control approach, rather than one of reform.

The same is true of the Government's pretences towards an employment strategy. Only last year, it published the Smart Economy document but where was the achievement in that? Where were the deadlines and milestones whereby one could look back over 15 months later to see what had been delivered and what changes had been made? No one drove that. Instead, after about nine or ten months, another committee was established to review it and come up with another strategy. The new strategy will probably suffer the same fate, languishing while we wait for something to happen. If the Government says the knowledge economy is the direction to take, then people must be made responsible for it. Timelines must be published so that we can see if they are being met. Then the Government will be responsible for change in some of these areas, but it has always slunk away from making hard commitments. It persists with an approach to budgeting which is absolutely Dickensian. It is ridiculous to pretend that we can spend €55 million without asking any Minister to commit to any target before we commit the money. I would begin to recognise that change was occurring if I could see some of those elements being altered under the Taoiseach's watch.

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