Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With the permission of the House, I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 5 together.

The Government is committed to reducing the size of the public service and to creating a leaner more efficient public service. At mid-2012, public service numbers were 292,000. This is 28,000 below the peak number of 320,000 reached in 2008 and is comparable to the 2005 staffing levels. Service levels have been largely maintained, and in fact increased in some areas, notwithstanding these considerable staff reductions due to increased productivity and workplace flexibility.

The Government has agreed to accelerate the programme of staff reductions in order to maximise pay-bill savings. Where staff surpluses are identified a targeted voluntary redundancy scheme would be made available for selected areas throughout the public service.

Identification of staff surpluses is under way. Following the agreement by Government of my proposals, my ministerial colleagues are actively examining particular work areas, bodies, locations and-or grades at which voluntary redundancy can be targeted because of changes to workplace configuration or service delivery models. Of course, there will be full regard for the skills needs and priorities of Departments now and in the future during this process. I stress that there will be no automatic right to redundancy and all applications will be subject to an ongoing business need. This will ensure that critical front line services will be maintained.

Final decisions on numbers reductions to be achieved in each sector will take account of the surpluses identified by Ministers and reported to me in respect of their portfolios and of expected rates of retirements in those sectors over the next few years. Of course, a full cost benefit analysis will be required as part of this assessment. When this assessment has been completed further details of this scheme will be made available by my Department.

This is the first time that there is flexibility. As I explained on many occasions in the House, we did not control the previous exit package because it was staff simply taking a choice for themselves to go before the reduced pay impacted on their pensions. This one will be to identify where there are genuine surpluses of staff where we can offer voluntary redundancies.

See this speech in context