Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Deputies for a wide ranging debate on a narrow Bill which none the less goes to the heart of the reform agenda in the public service. I thank, in particular, Deputy Calleary for returning to the House. Many Deputies leave the Chamber once they have made their contribution, which is understandable because we are all busy. In many ways, Deputy Calleary started the process which led to the establishment of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. He was a pathfinder who tried to make substantial changes, even though he did not have levers to pull. I acknowledge his recognition of the complexity of the public service. It is an extraordinarily complicated machine which operates 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days of the year servicing every conceivable need of the public.

I often attend fora where I listen to private sector commentators talk as if I were running a business. At the World Economic Forum a very prominent international businesswoman told me that during the downturn her organisation got rid of thousands of workers and it is now in a position to re-employ them. It is not possible to shut down the public service. We need our hospitals, schools, the Garda and the panoply of services upon which the quality of people's lives depend. In times of recession the pressure on the public service is even greater. The challenges of recent years - not just the two and a half years of this Government but also the dying days of the previous Government - have been a collapsing income stream where the tax income fell by 30% and a growing demand where the demographic is, thankfully, very good with 80,000 more pupils and 65,500 more pensioners, 500,000 more medical cards, all putting pressure on a system that has had fewer resources and people.

The simple task that fell to me was to steer the ship on as clear a path as I can. I acknowledge and welcome the extraordinary support from the vast majority of public servants who are stakeholders in this enterprise because they are stakeholders in the success of our country. They do not want to endure a diminution in their living standards, to work more or to be under that sort of pressure. However, by and large they have accepted that there is a path to recovery that must be trodden and the alternative, despite some of the grandiose grandstanding speeches of some, is an unsustainable path.

Some Deputies mentioned the OECD report which gave an important snapshot of where we were. In terms of mobility, we need an integrated public service, which we have been building. We are building all the disparate parts, which had different terms of conditions, different hours of work, different holiday arrangements and different sick leave arrangements, into an integrated system. We started having a senior Civil Service allowing mobility across the public service in order that people are not confined to silos. In the past, people often entered a Department or agency and stayed there for life. We need to expose people to different work patterns and have different influences from the private sector and public sector complementing each other. More than 10,000 people have moved already. For example, surplus staff from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine have moved to the Garda central vetting unit and there are hundreds of other examples.

I will respond to some of the specific questions. There is an appeals process as set out in the Haddington Road agreement. Although training is outside the scope of the Bill, it is very much part of my agenda. There is no point in asking people to do a task if they are not prepared for it. If Deputy Calleary has not had a chance to visit PeoplePoint in Clonskeagh, the first shared service, I invite him to do so and I would be happy to accompany him. We brought all the human resource management from across the public service into one system and we are training the staff as we go. Some of the staff there have told me that it was the first time they went into a job fully conversant with the job. They knew what they were about. It is a good example and we will have more shared services as we roll out the programme.

Deputy McDonald welcomed the Bill and indicated her support for it. She spoke about last year's incentivised redundancy scheme. There was no incentivised redundancy scheme in the Civil Service. There was a date by which the reduced pay rates impacted on people's pensions and people made a rational decision to go before their pension was impacted by the reduced pay rate. We had no control over that; it was not an incentivised redundancy package. We had no control over who left; people made rational decisions on the basis of their own economic circumstances. I have said that repeatedly but it does not seem to sink in.

The Deputy talked about services and specialised staff. Obviously there are specialised staff and we need more of them in the public service. We need generalists too. However, we are now recruiting again, particularly in the economic sphere. As Deputies will know, we established the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service in my Department last year and we are now farming out across the public service trained economists with an analytical ability. Deputy McDonald also mentioned staff in organisations that will change, for example the national lottery. Obviously, all of that is subject to the law and will involve detailed negotiations with their representatives.

Deputy Catherine Murphy claimed that this was a limited Bill. She said many positive things with which I agree. I listened to her comments very carefully because by and large she speaks considerable sense. I say that in her absence and I hope it filters back to her. However, I do not believe she understands the reform agenda, which is fairly monumental. We published it in 2011 with timelines for its implementation. We have a reform and delivery office to which we have now recruited many more elements, including a new chief information officer for the public service to have a new linked-up delivery system using technology as best we can. We have recruited people with expertise from outside the service on short-term, five year contracts to do specific jobs of work in shared services, change management and all of these things. It might be useful to make a presentation at a committee detailing all that is happening so that everybody is up to speed on it.

The Deputy spoke about a traditional view of the public service that we need a particular number of staff to deliver a service. There is obviously an irreducible number, but the notion of having a yardstick that better services will be delivered with 500 staff than with 400 staff is inappropriate. She outlined a local government comparison on that basis. Clearly, certain population changes impacted very quickly on some parts of the country. In my county of Wexford, in the six years between censuses the population increased by 12% and a further 12% in the following six years, which is an extraordinary bulge. The traditional infrastructures of county hall and everything else did not mushroom to meet that. However, I strongly agree with her on the use of technology, which is why we are considering an integrated public service system with everybody linked to the same systems and having more services delivered online. More than 300 services are currently delivered online.

Deputy Boyd Barrett bristled. He is one of the most conservative people in this House and is completely resistant to change. He thinks he is progressive and advocates radicalism, but is extraordinarily resistant to any change. His idea of the public sector is more of everything - more spending and more staff - but without measuring outcomes. I have brought about budgetary changes whereby we not only measure inputs but also measure outputs and what we are getting for what we are putting in. The Deputy's notion is that we have a particular number of people which is grand. He suggests that by definition it is good to have more people as opposed to asking what services we are getting for that.

The Deputy talked about employment and investment. Some people do not want things to improve so he refuses to acknowledge the improvement in employment and the improvement in investment, particularly in the past year. The normal thing for Deputy Boyd Barrett is to prepare a speech without listening to any of the facts.

Deputy Finian McGrath spoke about the value of public service, which I strongly endorse. The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our public service. It is hugely important to the quality of our lives to know we have clean streets, safe streets, proper education systems and the security of knowing that when we are ill, we can have access to decent health care. In particular he talked about the disadvantaged in education.

It is an interesting fact that we spend €1.3 billion now on disability in education annually, almost as much as we spend on the university sector, which, I understand, is €1.5 billion. It is certainly not an area that we have sought to minimise in any way. The integration of education is one of the success stories of which we are proud.

In his commentary, Deputy McGrath referred to people wishing to put the boot in to the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI. I am most appreciative of the decision of the overwhelming majority of public servants to accept the Haddington Road agreement because they had never before been asked to make such a profound decision or such profound changes in their work practices and to do more for less. It is the most transformative productivity deal ever negotiated in the public service. In normal deals one is voting for some additionality as opposed to voting for less. The fact that every union, bar the ASTI, has voted for it is a remarkable compliment to the understanding of the public servants of the need for their contribution to the path to recovery. I call on the ASTI to reflect again on this because we cannot unravel the deal that is done, accepted and that has been in place since last July. I hope we do not have to go through a disruption of education, which is so important because our children only get one go at it. Normally people get one go at education and I call on people to reflect on that. I do so not in a hectoring or bullying way but genuinely. We cannot undo the Haddington Road agreement; it is in place. We need the money desperately and we need the changes in work practices. I call on everyone to accept it and then let us move on to the next phase of our recovery.

Deputy Kyne referred to the structure of the Civil Service. I mentioned the senior Civil Service. He made an important point about performance management. This is an area that we are working on and we will be bringing proposals in this regard into the public domain shortly.

I thank Deputy Feighan for his kind comments about me and about the Government and for his welcome for the Bill. He made a strong personal appeal to the House in respect of bullying in politics. I know what he endured. I know that people have been broken by some of the commentary and vitriol poured upon public servants and politicians in the teeth of the crisis we are going through. It is very difficult, particularly for families. I am unsure what we can do about that but if it was any other sphere of life, bullying in the workplace would be absolutely resisted. However, bullying in the political sphere seems to be something that is almost lauded. Certainly, it is very damaging to people and I note what he said in particular.

Deputy Clare Daly recognised the contribution of civil servants and that is important. However, she referred to the notion that bin men are now privatised and that there are no savings in the public service because if we get rid of bin men then we privatise the service. There is a glaring irony in the fact that it was her party campaigning against bin charges which ensured that the local authority could not run the public service. The authority determined that it could not run a public service following her anti-bin charges campaign and therefore it was privatised. People seem to be able to pay for a private service but somehow if it was to be provided by the public sphere, it was not to be paid for.

Deputy Halligan talked about the Haddington Road agreement. The Haddington Road terms apply to this legislation and it will be voluntary. He made an interesting point and it was picked up by other Deputies subsequently. This related to the staff required in the Department of Social Protection. People may be surprised to know how many staff work in the Department. Some 6,500 staff now work in the Department of Social Protection, an extraordinarily high number given that some Departments have only a few hundred staff. That is an indication of the volume of work and the fact that the Department is spending €20.2 billion this year. It is critical to the maintenance of basic standards of living throughout the economy.

Deputy Dara Murphy referred to the exclusion of the commercial semi-state bodies. The semi-state companies are commercial by nature. One does not look for mobility between companies in the same way as one would with organisations in the public sphere. Deputy Murphy mentioned Irish Water in particular. There will be a public service agreement negotiated between the local authority staff who will be contracted to Irish Water when it becomes a legal entity from 1 January next.

Deputy Barry referred to upskilling the public service and made a strong plea for SME development, which I endorse.

Deputy Heather Humphreys referred to sick leave. I have indicated that I will be introducing an amendment on Report Stage to incorporate the agreement on sick leave arrangements that have been negotiated with the unions and endorsed by the Labour Court.

Deputy Áine Collins referred to the recruitment ban. We are suppressing recruitment but there have been significant exceptions. The numbers supplied by one Deputy surprised many. We are recruiting 900 teachers this year and we are recruiting nurses and in areas where there are real requirements.

Deputy O'Donovan referred to growth of public services in the boom time. It is true that there was almost a time when it was seen that the Government could inflate numbers in the public service as an employment measure without proper analysis, but we have left all of that behind. Deputy O'Donovan and Deputy Buttimer subsequently raised the matter of quangos. I am very jaundiced when talking about quangos. I have gone through the list of quangos forensically. The biggest so-called quangos are the most important agencies in the State, including IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Roads Authority, the Road Safety Authority and various other important agencies. These are the big employers. There is a long list and I went through them all. I can show the House that we are abolishing 43 of them, but what is the great saving from these? It is not enormous, in truth. I indicated that €20 million would be saved.

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