Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Having listened with great interest to Deputy Seán Kyne, I advise him to conduct a little more analysis. While he is correct to note a large increase in public sector numbers under previous Governments, one must drill into this figure to identify the sectors in which the largest increases occurred and from where they were driven. Many of the increases were in the health care professions. One will find, for example, that the number of physiotherapists, speech therapists and so forth increased dramatically from 1997 onwards. These are vital front-line staff and it will be extremely difficult to claw back the increases in their numbers because most people believe a modern economy needs their services.

A second area in which numbers increased significantly was the Garda Síochána. I never agreed with the drive for more and more gardaí; I believe instead that we should increase the number of community gardaí. I am totally opposed to removing gardaí from the community because one garda living in a community is worth three gardaí travelling into an area, working an eight hour roster and returning home. While the garda who lives in the community technically works 40 hours each week, he or she is in the community at all times.

Similarly, the number of special needs assistants increased by 10,000 while we were in government. This increase accounts for approximately 25% of the increase in the number of jobs in the education sector. The number of teachers, including resource and language teachers, also increased substantially. A significant increase in the population in the period after 1997 also created a need for more services. If this problem was as easy to solve as Deputy Seán Kyne suggests, one could decide tomorrow to get rid of 45,000 excess public servants. I guarantee him, however, that if one was to take this approach, many of the services for which his party argued would be decimated.

Governments can function with or despite the Oireachtas. The Government is fortunate to have a large majority which allows it to ignore most Deputies on this side of the House. It also has a sympathetic media, which may not be a bad thing at times. The reality during the Fianna Fáil Party's time in government was that it did not matter how sensible or overdue were the changes we made, the Fine Gael Party and, in particular, the Labour Party opposed them line by line. In cases in which one could have done with fewer staff and done the job more effectively, the Opposition still opposed changes. At times, the Labour Party, in particular, was more obsessed with job numbers than services.

I commend the vast majority of public servants who do their jobs well. I have no doubt the percentage of public servants who are interested in their job is as high as the percentage of employees interested in their job in any other sector. However, change is necessary and the Opposition in this Dáil is a good one which will not resist change for the sake of it. I continue to believe, however, that the job could be done better. Anyone who worked with me in the Departments will know I placed great emphasis on efficient public administration. Any Deputy who served in the House while I was a Minister will know that I went to considerable effort to ensure Members received timely and full replies to queries. As I used to say to civil servants, it is no good providing a reply in three or five months because that is not what public representatives or members of the public want. They want a reply to a question on the day they submit it. I made good progress in the areas I could control. The small Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, in which I had an opportunity to serve for a long time, enjoyed very high public commendation. It also disproved the theory that decentralisation was inefficient. As the years progressed and we decentralised, it became quicker, more open and better at meeting the demands and requirements of members of the public.

Trade unions in the public service are often unrepresentative of the great mass of the workers. The impression I often had was that if one had 1,000 staff working in a Department, the union would be lucky if 150 of its members attended the annual general meeting. Moreover, those who attended the AGM tended to be those who took a strongly ideological position on what the public service was about. This was not always a positive ideology. The trade unions often impeded progress which would have made the job of workers easier. When I raised this issue as Minister for Social Protection, I was informed the system had to be changed, which was a good idea. The Department started to involve workers at the lowest level, in other words, front-line staff, in the design of the system. Part of the reason for doing so was to work around the public service unions, which is a sad commentary on them. I am very pro-union in the case of unions working in the genuine interests of workers and trying to create stability.

We have built inefficiencies into the system; for example, manual systems continue to be used where computerisation is possible. That still happens in the case of maintenance records and so on in the Department of Social Protection, which is outdated. When such inefficiency is built into a system, inevitably, it results in poor service, huge delays, a great deal of anger among the staff who have to service the front desk and general dissatisfaction, which is not good for the workplace. On the other hand, when quick answers are given and efficient systems are used, the queues disappear and the time lost in addressing parliamentary questions about issues that should have been dealt with long ago is recovered. There is a good feeling when people approach the Department which, therefore, is a much more pleasant place in which to work.

I appreciate that Deputy Seán Kyne gave so much credit to the previous Government for bringing in the greatest game changer in public service attitudes to work practices. However, we must get away from the unplanned reductions we have witnessed in the public sector recently. Rather than conducting an overall general analysis, each job and section must be analysed as one would analyse a factory to establish the way each job is done and whether, for example, forms are unnecessarily complicated by asking essay type questions when questions that required boxes to be ticked would provide better answers and be more objective. It would also establish whether the methods in place created unnecessary bureaucracy. I could give concrete examples of how the way work is done could be changed to make it much simpler for the applicant and much quicker for the Department to deal with applications.

I question whether we need all the tiers and grades in the public service such as clerical assistants, staff officers, executive officers, higher executive officers, assistant principal officers, principal officers, assistant secretaries, Secretaries General and a few other grades that I have not thrown in. An executive officer today could be Secretary General in ten years, but by then the spirit of entrepreneurship and drive will have left him or her. It is valid to ask whether every officer should have to climb four or five tiers.

In the past 15 years, because of management consultants, many layers were added to the public sector to improve services, but poorer services resulted. I refer to two initiatives, the first of which is Better Local Government. It diluted the impact of local government on core services. Any corporation in the private sector would state one should maintain such services. The second is the Strategic Management Initiative which was all about ticking boxes pro forma but which did not deliver on the ground because there was no focus on making jobs deliver a better service to the public.

The level of uncertified sick leave in the public service must be brought into line with that in the private sector because, as previous speakers said, it has led to staff believing this leave is holidays under another name. This is unfair to workers who do not take such leave and has to be changed.

The value of much of the training and third level courses paid for by the State has to be questioned. A great deal of training was undertaken and I often wondered whether the plethora of public servants with MBAs, PhDs and MAs paid for by the State performed better than those who did not have them. Were the people who took these courses not making a contribution to the State anyway? Others who were close to leaving the public service did these courses, meaning the Exchequer would never recoup the money involved. This issue needs to be examined carefully.

When we brought in the pension levy, it did not affect pensions, but when we cut public service pay, we should have cut public service pensions at the same time. The pay and pension ratio should never have been changed. Now we have the crazy anomaly that will last for many years where two public servants with the same length of service will receive different pensions at the end of their careers because of a cut-off date. It is important to admit mistakes made. Over time, the Government should put this right.

See this speech in context