Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Buttimer for his remarks. Given my experience in the past year or so I will focus predominantly on sections 8 and 9. My colleagues, Deputies Michael McGrath and Sean Fleming, have raised concerns about the fiscal side of the Bill which should be addressed. The Department will face challenges. I wish to focus on policies relating to the modernisation and development of the public service and ancillary issues. There is no shortage of reports and reviews into the workings of the public service. My party was very good at commissioning them but not as good at implementing them. I welcome the fact that a separate Department has been created for the implementation of public service reform. It is the only way we will get the job done. The reform and transformation of the public service is such a challenge that it is up there with where the peace process was in the 1990s in terms of the need for a full, co-ordinated Government approach. I genuinely wish the Minister, Deputy Howlin, well. He brings much political experience to the role in terms of his service to this House and previously at Cabinet. I am available and would like to participate from this side of the House in so far as that is possible.

Many Deputies have referred to the current economic crisis. One of my concerns is that given the Minister will have a role in dealing with the crisis in the economic council and on the public expenditure side, the focus of the Department will once again move away from the public service transformation brief and that it would be an add-on, as it were. I accept the Minister probably has a personal commitment to the public service element of his brief but given the demands of the job currently that is one area about which I am concerned. I hope we can do that.

There have been many reports and reviews into what has happened to the economy in recent years. A political price has been paid by my party for decisions taken. That is clear from the make-up of the new Dáil. Other players are being investigated in a rather slow way at the moment on their role in the collapse of the banks but the higher echelons of the Civil Service who gave advice and who were paid well to regulate and do various jobs have never had to pay a price. They were retired or they left on pretty good pensions and they have sailed off into the sunset while many more bear the impact of that advice - good, bad or indifferent.

The Bill is primarily to establish the Department on a statutory footing and to put the arrangements in place. The Minister needs to come back with a second Bill that transforms the role and nature of the relationship particularly between higher civil servants at assistant secretary and Secretary General level and Ministers so we go back to a stage where the Minister takes control and is accountable. We need the capacity to allow for those at that level to be sacked for lack of performance. The seven-year contract provides a comfort blanket for non-performers. I have never come across a situation where somebody was sacked for non-performance at that level of government. Governments change, but officials remain in position and that is a system that must be challenged.

I have long held the view, and I put forward this view as a Minister of State, that appointments to assistant secretary and Secretary General level should be advertised both nationally and internationally. The old boys' club, which effectively governs the upper echelons of the Civil Service, must be taken apart for once and for all. We have that opportunity now with the retirement of the Secretary General of the Government. Many people would relish the challenge of being the top civil servant of this country, particularly given the challenges we face, and many of them could bring international experience that we may need or perspectives that we may not have considered. This might be preferable to us doing the usual and selecting from a relatively small pool and at some stage in the next few weeks, like the court of cardinals, the white smoke will emanate from Government Buildings and it will be habemus secretary to the Government. I hope that as an indication of its serious intent with regard to this issue, an open selection can be made.

The Government missed an opportunity to do that with the recruitment of the Secretary General for the new Department of public expenditure and reform. That said, I do not think any recruitment process would have come up with somebody as good as Robert Watt. I know him from my time in the Department of Finance and know he will bring a fresh approach to the running of the Department, based on both his departmental experience and his private secretary experience, which has sharpened and freshened his perspective. I wish him well. However, it would have been a good signal, given this is the Department we are charging with transforming our public service and which we are setting up as a public expenditure watchdog, to advertise the position initially. I hope the Government takes the opportunity to advertise the position of Secretary General to the Government so as to send a signal that we are looking for the best talent. Sending that signal internationally, would advertise the fact that we are still open for business and that we are serious about transforming the way we conduct government, permanent government in particular, in response to the current situation.

There was some discussion on the Order of Business this morning of television programmes and tastes. I would think that everybody in this House has probably watched "Yes Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" at some time. It is quite funny to watch it as a serving Minister, because then one sees oneself in the role, as I did when watching it during my time as a Minister of State. Unfortunately, Sir Humphrey is alive and well with his excuses and "we could do this" or "we could do the other". The various scenarios in the series were incredibly well performed. We now have a chance, in terms of our current position and the need to change everything about governance in this country, both elected and permanent governance, to reshape and remould governance. I hope the new Department is a start towards that. However, we need other legislation to change the roles and to change the relationship and the interaction between Ministers and senior public servants in that regard.

The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, gave a critical speech to the McGill summer school last year which put forward a number of proposals in that regard. It would be worthwhile for officials and the Minister, Deputy Howlin, to look at that speech and consider its ideas and proposals. If Deputy Howlin intends to review the Ministers and Secretaries Act, I will also put forward some proposals.

Deputy Buttimer made some kind remarks about me. The reason he was aware of the work I was able to do is because the last Seanad held some excellent debates on the issue of the Croke Park agreement and public service transformation. I would like to pay tribute to former Senator Joe O'Toole, who retired from the House after long years of service, for his interest in that area. Even when he moved from the dark side, from ICTU, he remained a channel that could be used, particularly in the run-in to the Croke Park agreement, through his expertise, knowledge and the nuances he brought to the debate. It was he who initiated the series of debates in the Seanad, three of which were held. Those debates would be an advertisement for retaining the Seanad because they were constructive. Party political allegiances and the Punch and Judy practices were left aside and people put forward their ideas and spoke from their different perspectives. Deputies can imagine the perspective of the then Senator Ross as opposed to those from every other side of the House. That was the Seanad at its best, but we never have debate in this House on those lines.

We are about to establish a finance and public service committee. It is a bit ironic that the Department of Finance is being split into two shiny new Departments and that we are setting up a Dáil committee under the old system. I am aware that the Government, as part of its optics, wants fewer committees. However, if it is serious about splitting the Department, surely it should follow through in the committee structure. I hope the new committee will set up a public service reform sub-committee so that those of us with an interest in this area can meet to follow through on commitments in the programme for Government, on this Bill and on the enactment of the public service transformation agenda generally. That would bring about an element of Oireachtas scrutiny to the endeavour and would ensure we keep people on their toes in this regard. Otherwise, the Minister will come in and respond to questions every month and I suspect the majority of those questions will relate to the public expenditure brief. I notice that procurement issues come under the Minister's remit in this Bill. This suggests the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, will no longer be involved in that area. If Deputy Hayes is to be attached to the Department as a Minister of State, I wish him well. My main concern is that public service side of the Department will fall to be the AOB item it has been for so many years. The establishment of a sub-committee of the finance and public service committee will ensure there is Oireachtas input into ensuring that does not happen.

We are nearly a year down the road since the signing of the Croke Park agreement and the establishment of the implementation body. Obviously, I have an interest in that. Generally it is working and I am confident that when it comes to the review and the IMF review in September, it will be shown to have delivered savings and we will be beginning to see a reform of practices. It is unfortunate that the debate around the reforms and the changes required by the agreement has come down to the silly things, such as leave days and checking hours and so on. These things should have been reformed a long time ago. These are gone now for many people. However, there are far deeper reforms happening on a daily basis across government, particularly local government, under the aegis of the agreement.

I wish to compliment the implementation body, under P.J. Fitzpatrick, for its quiet work behind the scenes in pushing the agenda and in ensuring the sectoral agreements are very much part of it. Those at the core of criticism of the Croke Park agreement should understand that the agreement is not a social partnership agreement. It is not a buy-off for the unions as the old social partnership process had become. It is an agreement between employers, namely the Government, and those who work for the Government about reform and issues around pay and security. Those who criticise it do so on the basis of seeing it as the old social partnership, which had run its course. One area where the implementation body needs to up its standard and mark is in selling the message that the Croke Park agreement is delivering on a daily basis across the service. The review in September will show that.

The implementation and monitoring of the agreement could be taken on by the sub-committee I have proposed. That would ensure political oversight, which is the missing element of the agreement currently. There is no political oversight. Deputy Buttimer is right. We in government were leaders on this and created so many unanswerable quangos. We need to start to take the power away from those and back into these Houses in which this committee could have a role.

Reform generally has always been at a macro level. The Government and union leaders signed off on the agreement at Croke Park and said "Off you go". Only then do those who are required to implement it and change their work processes get to hear of it second, third, fourth or fifth hand. However, the best ideas for reform and saving money come from those at the coalface. Although we ran out of time, I tried to get a system going across Departments and agencies of capturing those ideas from the people at the coalface - the nurses, physiotherapists, teachers, SNAs, bin collectors and others out every day doing their jobs - because they are thinking about their jobs and ways to do them differently. We have been very poor at capturing that wealth of knowledge and information.

I direct the Government to what has been done in the State of Minnesota where Governor Pawlenty made public service transformation one of the missions of his governorship. He did so by hitting the road and getting the police service, fire service and all the usual suspects to buy into it first without imposing some sort of macro agreement on top of them. Change happened much more quickly because the buy-in came locally. It was not just a case of going for the sake of going. Along with his team of consultants, he went back a second and third time, during implementation and after. The ownership of the process was not completely removed from the way processes were being delivered, which is what we need to do here.

One of the biggest issues facing the Government is to try to get this right. It needs to use the infrastructure of this new Department to get the transformation agenda right and ensure that the public are getting services delivered. It needs to ensure the morale of those working in the public service at whatever level increases and they feel happy to go in and do their jobs every day. It needs to ensure that we have a system that is delivering and using the most modern resources available, which are constantly changing. One of the greatest examples we have in this House is the Library and Research Service which prepares and delivers papers on Bills to us electronically. God knows what equipment we will have in five or ten years' time to access information, but our citizens expect that their interaction with Government will be done through IT. There is so much potential for transformation to come in that regard.

We are going through an incredibly difficult period in our history. The independent review panel report into the Department of Finance makes for some stirring reading and the Government has already indicated there will be further inquiries into what happened. I would direct anybody to look at that report. Its preparation involved civil servants, political actors in the Department and various other people. It was done by politicians and senior civil servants from outside the country. Their perspective is quite interesting. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, has joined us and I genuinely wish him well in this role. I hope that the public service transformation side of the brief is given the priority it needs and does not get drowned out by the public expenditure side.

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