Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should appear on "The Frontline" programme more often. I ask him to send me the proposals he has received. Alternatively, we could meet him and go through the proposals one by one and line by line to ascertain how useful they are. That would be a worthwhile engagement.

We are already doing as the Deputy asks, for example, in the area of shared services for human resource functions. Each of the 15 Departments currently has its own human resources personnel. By bringing together in one shared service platform all departmental human resources functions, from banking to payroll, we will achieve savings in personnel of 26% and cash savings of 17%. Much of this engagement is taking place internally as opposed to being outsourced to an agency.

We spoke about procurement in response to Deputy Pringle's earlier question. The administration costs of a centralised procurement framework are €28,000, whereas each local authority would have to spend €6,500 on administration if procurement was done locally. This is another saving we can achieve by having our staff use their time better, acquire more expertise and identify what they want to achieve. I would like to receive details of the ideas the Deputy has received.

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