Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government continues to make good progress in achieving its deficit targets and priorities.  Since its peak in 2009, gross voted expenditure has been reduced by €10.1 billion, or 16%, from €63.1 billion in 2009 to just under €53 billion in 2014.  Staff numbers have been reduced by more than 30,000 since the 2008 peak, even as demands on services increased.

In the context of bringing public expenditure back onto a sustainable path, meaningful reform of the public sector was essential to ensure we could maintain and improve services.  In November 2011, we set out our programme of reforms in our first public service reform plan.  In January this year, I published a report setting out the progress made under the first plan and published the Government's second public service reform plan, setting out our ambition for the next three years.

As well as enabling services to be maintained in the context of reduced resources and improving services, a number of reforms will continue to deliver cost savings.  I will cite a number of examples. The Croke Park agreement delivered €1.8 billion in pay and non-pay savings.  The Haddington Road agreement sets out a number of measures to deliver further savings of €1 billion by 2016.  We have undertaken a major review of public procurement and are implementing a radical overhaul of our approach, with the new office of public procurement targeting €500 million in savings in the next three years, of which €127 million will be achieved this year.

We are also introducing shared services for a range of back office functions to increase efficiency and integration across public sector organisations.  For example, PeoplePoint, the Civil Service human resources and pensions shared service centre, will deliver savings estimated at €12.5 million annually. The use of innovative models of service delivery, greater use of technology and more efficient management of the State's property portfolio will also yield savings. Some of the savings made will be reinvested in front-line services in what I describe as a reform dividend. Public service reform will continue to be an important element of the Government's strategy for economic recovery.

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