Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps I will cover all the points that have been raised. Committee Stage is coming up and I will be able to do it in a little more detail then. I will touch on some of the broad points made by Deputies and give a response to them. We can work through each of these points in more detail on Committee Stage. I thank colleagues for the support offered to the Bill. That support is qualified because Deputies want to understand details of the legislation and quiz me about the implementation of policy. Nonetheless, all of the Deputies who have spoken can see the benefits this approach can offer.

I welcome and acknowledge this. Although I know Deputies are very busy, if any of them would like to visit these centres and see the work that goes on, I believe they would find it very helpful. If Deputy Calleary or any of the Deputies were to agree to do that, I might visit Portlaoise with Deputy Fleming and to see what is under way there.

Some common themes emerged from the different points raised by speakers. The first was the concern in regard to what is the reach and growth potential of this organisation. The concern was that if we are looking to integrate functions of up to 40 organisations by 2017, it will be difficult avoid having one massive organisation that is not accountable to the Oireachtas or a Department. Thatr is why the lines of reporting are very clear in the Bill. It will report to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and it will then be open to the Oireachtas committee that shadows my Department and the Committee of Public Accounts to raise questions in regard to its operation.

The second theme that emerged was in regard to procurement. I have no plans, nor is my Department developing plans, to merge this organisation with the Office for Government Procurement. We see them as having different functions and doing different pieces of work. The sole role of this significant organisation will be to administer the different support services that are important to civil and public servants. A phrase that was used with me in my visits to different offices was that the organisation wants to get to a point where, from the moment somebody joins the public service to the moment they stop being a retiree, all the services are available to them from a single organisation. Whether it is in regard to being paid, the management of HR files, applying for leave, retiring or being paid in retirement, the idea is that, from the cradle to grave, all those services will be provided by a single organisation. Of course, we are trying to do all this in a better and more effective way. Deputy Fleming touched on the point that, within local authorities, much of these services have been brought within one local authority and it has worked well there. The opportunity for efficiencies across so many other agencies is very significant and that is the role of this organisation.

The third common point put to me was in regard to whether there was an agenda to outsource this work. I have no such agenda and, again, my Department is not developing such an agenda. I struggle to see the merit or benefit it would deliver. If we are going to all this effort to put together an organisation which has all the expertise located within it and which can do the work more efficiently on its own than can be done by 40 organisations, I find it difficult to see how any private sector entity would be able to match that. That is my view and that of the Government. Of course, this is a matter that will be raised with me as the Bill moves through the House.

The issue of data safety and integrity was specifically raised by Deputy Cullinane who said he did not want us to get to a point where data is going out to tender. That is the last thing we are looking to achieve. Deputy Calleary spoke about trying to avoid services being provided on a yellow pack basis, as he put it. What we want is to be in a situation where a significant amount of information in regard to everybody who has worked, or is working, for the State is kept centrally and all the services to underpin that are run by one organisation. I believe we will be better able to address concerns in regard to data integrity if it is managed by one group. With regard to efficiency and quality of service, I again refer to the point made by Deputy Calleary. We should be able to manage the process better if it is run by a single organisation.

The final common point that emerged was in regard to accountability. Again, the Bill makes very clear that the organisation will be accountable to the Oireachtas through the Oireachtas committee and, from a Government point of view, it will continue to report directly to me, as Minister, and my Department.

I have touched on the common themes that were raised by Deputies and I want to move to some of the more detailed points. Deputy Calleary raised an issue in regard to procurement and job creation. I hope I have clarified that it is not the aim to merge the organisation into the Office of Government Procurement and that they will be separate organisations doing separate work.

Deputy Fleming raised the issue of headcount. In my opening speech, I tried to make clear, and I will clarify again, that the objective is to ensure staff who would have been doing this work are redeployed to provide work that is central to the Department within which they are located, as opposed to providing operational support to people who are inside a Department. The Deputy referred to the local authorities. At this point, the office has no plans to go into the work local authorities are doing in regard to human resources. I can offer further clarity on that as the Bill goes through Committee Stage. The Deputy also raised the issue of contracting out, which I dealt with earlier.

Deputy Cullinane raised the issue of data integrity and I hope I have dealt with it. He also went through the broad policy background to shared services and I agree with much of what he said. He further asked, given we are starting with a shared services approach to back office operations, what are the frontiers of my ambition. For example, he referred to the NSSO being involved in the delivery of emergency services. I can assure the Deputy we have no plans to go into that terrain and that what we are talking about is support services in regard to human resources. Deputy Cullinane also referred to the processing of permits and, again, this is not an area we aim to see the NSSO go into. I suggest to the Deputy that if we had an agenda to go into those kinds of policy areas, we would not be putting the organisation on a statutory footing because, if we were then looking to radically expand the kind of services the NSSO delivered, we would need to change primary legislation in order to do it. It is because we are very clear on the kind of services this organisation is going to provide that we want to put it on a statutory footing.

Deputy Nolan referred to the benefits she has seen within education. I agree with that point and hope we can see that approach shared elsewhere. She also made a point about the benefits that could be gained through the greater sharing of information and data. She is right that this will not be a benefit the organisation will deliver in the early part of its existence because the work involved in administering these services is very large. However, from my visits to the different centres, two things became very apparent to me. The first is that the people involved in leading these centres have gained a huge amount of experience about how we can better set policy.

The roll-out of the new paternity leave is a good example in this regard. When the paternity leave offer was made available to public servants, because we had received more feedback and information regarding how we can make leave arrangements work better, we were able to implement that policy more swiftly. Similarly, when we get into areas such as the implementation of parts of the Haddington Road and Lansdowne Road agreements, more expertise is being developed on how we implement policies. This is the very reason I want to ensure this organisation continues to have a firm relationship with my Department in order that we do not lose sight of that kind of learning and information.

I visited Clonskeagh on Monday. One of the team leaders involved in overseeing a particular area talked to me about the need to better operationalise policy. What the team leader was referring to was that when we make changes regarding public policy and implement reform measures, we must be more aware of how we can make them happen. That is what this service centre will be able to offer. Furthermore, we will begin to generate large amounts of information regarding what goes on in transactions within our public service. Extraordinary work is going on now in big data, a sphere in which Ireland is doing very well within Government through our open Government partnership whereby we publish whole data sets on different policy areas. This type of approach can be used to look at all the information we will build up on the operation of transactions within the public service and Civil Service. This might well yield policy insights and learnings that we do not have at the moment. As I said, I do not think this will happen in the early years of the operation of this organisation, but perhaps in a few years' time it will yield some rich insights into the ways in which many hundreds and thousands of people within the State live, receive payments and undertake transactions.

Again, I thank the House for the qualified support that has been offered to the Bill. I have tried to cover all the different issues that have been raised, but I will do so in more detail as the Bill moves to Committee Stage.

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