Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

All public bodies are obliged to treat public funds with care and to ensure the best value for money is obtained wherever public money is spent or invested. It is the responsibility of the relevant Department to ensure procedures are in place for compliance with all required procedures within the Department or office or the bodies under its aegis. It is a matter for each Accounting Officer with the associated agencies to ensure compliance with the Public Spending Code, public financial procedures and relevant circulars and to ensure value for money and appropriate consideration of alternative options. They also need to take account of the requirement 8.25 of the 2016 code of practice for the governance of State bodies, which requires an annual report on adherence to the relevant procedures and the Public Spending Code.

On the leasing of services generally through service level agreements and State provision of services, the issue of external service delivery was covered in Building Momentum, the public service agreement. In that agreement, the parties reaffirmed their commitment to the appropriate use of direct labour, where consistent with efficient and effective public service delivery. The provisions of recent public service agreements relating to external service delivery will continue to apply.

I cannot speak to the specific examples the Deputy referenced except to say the trend of public service recruitment in the past five years has been significant across many front-line areas of public services and we are committed to continuing to drive increased provision of public services in how we frame the budgets in the future.

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