Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am afraid I am not responsible for the spatial strategy. That is a matter for the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government. I am responsible for the public service reform plan, to which I assume the question refers.

The reform plan was published in 2011 and set out an ambitious agenda for reform across all areas of the public service. Good progress has been made in implementing the plan across a range of cross-cutting areas, including, for example, shared services, public procurement, to which Deputy Seán Fleming referred, public expenditure reforms and political reform. A progress report on implementation of the plan was published in September 2012 and a second progress report will be published early in 2014.

Alongside the overall reform plan, all Departments and major Offices have developed their own integrated reform delivery plans which set out the key actions required to ensure the successful delivery of the cross-cutting reforms in the plan, as well as sector-specific reform initiatives and actions from the Haddington Road agreement.

Two years on from the publication of the current plan, it is timely to consider how we can build on the next wave of reform. My Department is developing a renewed and ambitious reform plan for the next two years which will be published early in 2014. The reform programme adopts a whole-of-government approach to reforming public services across all sectors, including health, education, justice and local government, as well as the Civil Service. The reforms at sectoral level are led by the relevant Ministers and their Departments. Owing to the nature of public services, they are delivered from many locations around the country. The Government’s reform programme is about ensuring these services, whether centrally or locally delivered, are efficient and effective. In that context, it is the role of all sectors to continually review how services are organised to ensure they deliver optimum benefit to the people.

On a related point, we need to manage our property portfolio which is the responsibility of the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, in a co-ordinated manner. To that end, the Government published a property asset management delivery plan last July which is being implemented by my colleague, the Minister of State.

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