Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I join with colleagues in wishing Deputies Pat Carey, Tony Killeen and John Curran well in their new portfolios and I congratulate my colleagues, Deputies Seán Connick, Mary Alexandra White and Ciarán Cuffe on their new appointments. I look forward to working with them. I thank the Taoiseach for assigning me extra responsibilities and I look forward to working with him and the Minister for Finance on the transformation of the public service, which is one of the key challenges facing the Government in the coming months and years. We can have a public service that will make a highly significant contribution to sustainable economic recovery and renewal.

We need a public service that is better integrated to meet the needs of citizens, that is fit for purpose and affordable. We must renew our focus on what is achieved and how we can improve outcomes across the public service, while simultaneously focusing on reducing the cost of doing business, not just for Government but for citizens interacting. Doing more for less is not just an economic imperative, it presents us with the opportunity to reconfigure how public services are delivered and to re-engineer processes across the Government system, in agreement with those who work in it.

Our policy priorities in economic and social policy areas are clearly set out in the revised programme for Government and in other key policy frameworks published in the last 12 months. No one doubts what needs to be achieved and the critical task now is to drive the implementation of those policies.

The ongoing pressure on resources means that progress is essential and urgent. The citizen must be at the centre of everything the public service does. We want to remove barriers between different branches of the public service and different organisations to make sure there is clarity of purpose, a stronger leadership and better co-operation. We need a more joined-up Government to respond to the joined-up needs of our people as they live their lives and look after their families. The emphasis must be on the citizen.

We want to see an ongoing expansion in the services available on-line to the individual and particularly to businesses. We have to apply new technology, some of which has been developed within the public service, to boost productivity and improve customer service. We also need to share information more widely across the system and in the process reduce the burden placed on citizens and businesses. To achieve our objectives here it will be necessary to make strategic investments in innovative technologies and to acquire specialist skills which may not be currently available.

There must be a major reshaping of how we manage our public service. We have to re-engineer the way we do business so that the various components of our services are delivered in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. One important opportunity to do this is through developing shared services which achieve economies of scale and the opportunity to innovate and streamline procedures, which will be a particular focus of mine in the coming weeks. There are many examples of how this approach to managing standardised procedures could generate very substantial savings, without compromising standards. In particular, I look forward to working closely with the Minister of State, Deputy Martin Mansergh on public procurement reform, especially with small and medium sized enterprises.

The key element in the public service are the people. The greatest asset of our public service are those who work in it every day delivering diverse and varied services to each citizen. They have a commitment which I want to harness and a knowledge and professionalism which I want to use to reshape our public services, in agreement with them, to ensure they are efficient, effective and focused on our people.

Progress has been made on the reform agenda in recent times. We must now dramatically accelerate that reform. Current discussions between the public service management and unions are being facilitated by Mr. Kevin Duffy and Mr. Kieran Mulvey. All parties must engage in this process in good faith. This is the appropriate forum for all of us to direct our energies and opinions at the current time.

It is clear to me that there is a shared view on the sort of changes across the public service that would produce greater efficiency and better services for the public and more satisfactory working conditions for public servants. We now need to reach a realistic and fair agreement so that we can move on with the priorities of transformation.

The public interest and the long-term interest of public servants coincide with those of the Government and our citizens in creating a public service of which we can be proud and, equally, a public service which we can afford. There is much hard work and challenges ahead but I look forward to working with public servants right across the system and with stakeholders in the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Finance.

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