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

The task of the Minister and the Department is to set the general policy in this regard across the public sector. However, specific areas such as local government, the Defence Forces and the Garda Síochána have historically had different grading structures. This is a crucial issue. The Minister has put on record that the review that will take place this year. Of the 30,000 people who have exited the public service over the past three and a half years, there has been a predominance of managers. We, therefore, have an opportunity to do things differently because of the exit strategy with a smaller public sector embracing shared services and carrying out functions differently. I recently did work on shared HR services and I found that up to one third of the people involved in HR service delivery in each Department were in management grades, which is absolutely crazy in a circumstance where much of HR delivery is transactional and can be done across different grades.

This is an essential part of our public sector transformation plan. We have published on our website a one-year update on each of the measures set out in the plan and I ask Members to read it because a great deal of work is going on in the context of public sector reform. We are making sure we are hitting our targets and people are being held accountable for the agenda within each sector. We will see the outcome of that by the end of this year in terms of how the grading structure will contribute to a much more efficient public sector.

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