Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 4: To ask the Taoiseach Taoiseach if he will report on the implementation of the recommendations of the OECD Report on the Irish Public Service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30255/10]

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Question 5: To ask the Taoiseach Taoiseach the current status of the plan entitled Transforming Public Service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32347/10]

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Question 6: To ask the Taoiseach Taoiseach to report on the implementation of the plan, Transforming Public Services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35873/10]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 to 6, inclusive, together.

The OECD review of the Irish public service, Towards an Integrated Public Service, published in April 2008, benchmarked the public service in Ireland against other comparable countries and made recommendations as to the further direction of public service reform. The programme is designed to create flexibility in the deployment of people and other resources, to improve performance by organisations and individuals and to address the immediate priority of securing maximum value for public spending. The public service agreement, agreed at Croke Park, provides the industrial relations environment for the successful implementation of the transforming public services agenda.

To date, progress has been made across a broad range of areas of the TPS programme. In the human resource area, for example, there have been four main instruments that have contributed to the implementation of expenditure savings, notably the incentivised scheme of early retirement in the public service, the special Civil Service career break scheme, the shorter working year scheme and the moratorium on the filling of public service vacancies by recruitment or promotion. There has already been a reduction of 12,000 in public service numbers since the end of 2008 with no reduction in services. In addition, recently a voluntary early retirement and a voluntary redundancy scheme have been approved for certain categories of staff in the public health service. The purpose of the schemes is to achieve a permanent reduction in the numbers employed in the public health sector from 2011 onwards and to facilitate health service reform.

An e-Government strategy has been put in place. It is being implemented to achieve an improvement in the use of electronic means for delivering public services, and the savings that go with that. It should be noted that according to the latest EU Commission e-Government benchmarks, Ireland's ranking for online sophistication has improved from 17th position before the report came forward to joint 7th position. A rolling e-Government programme that includes 20 individual projects has been initiated and is operational.

A national procurement service was also established on foot of the transforming public services agenda. It is about improving the public service's buying power by organising procurement of common goods and services across the public service. It is achieving better value on procurement spend and savings in the region of €35 million have been identified and implemented already. With regard to shared services, work is ongoing on specific proposals and there are significant potential savings associated with such initiatives. Work is being advanced on shared services in several sectors, in areas that include human resources, pensions administration, payroll and financial management.

There has been an extension of the operation of the organisational review programme so that all Departments and major offices will be reviewed by the end of 2012. Work is also progressing on the development of new performance and governance frameworks for State agencies and the greater use of service level agreements. This is happening against a background of agency amalgamation and abolition and fewer staff numbers. There has also been the reconstitution of the top level appointments committee.

The terms of the Croke Park agreement provide a means by which we can radically transform the public service through greater flexibility, redeployment, changed work practices and overall reductions in numbers. We will require good leadership from management as well as staff if the commitment to avoid further pay reductions and compulsory redundancies is to be honoured. The Government has no wish to back away from the commitment into which it entered at Croke Park, but it can do this only on the basis of full and comprehensive delivery by all of the parties. The Government considers that any party that chooses to remain outside the provisions of the agreement cannot expect to benefit from the commitments it gave as part of the agreement. That is our clear position.

That is an update of the progress to date on this matter.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Page 38 of the report from the OECD states that for real change to take place in the public service there must be a culture of change embedded in the service. Does the Taoiseach believe a culture of real change exists there? What is his vision for the public service five years from now?

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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It will require a great deal of leadership on an ongoing basis at all levels of the service to implement the vision set out in the transforming public services strategy. A great many people are ready for that challenge. The Croke Park agreement is important in that it provides the necessary industrial relations framework in which all this change can be implemented in an ordered and sensible manner and in a way that meets the agreements that have been set out. In the coming year, on foot of the Croke Park agreement, one will see resources being allocated. Obviously, there are fewer resources available to the State than was the case in the past. That itself would be a driver for change. The framework of the Croke Park agreement enables people to work within allocated budgets to provide the maximum efficiencies, redeployments and changes that will be necessary. This will vary from location to location as well as sector to sector. Even within sectors, there may be different resolutions to various issues depending on the situation on the ground and where the flexibility and redeployment can be applied.

Under the Croke Park agreement, it is envisaged the resolution of these issues would be dealt with primarily at local level. Any reference to the implementing body, therefore, would be more the exception than the rule. It is important the agreement works in that way.

We are all anxious to see this change accelerated. It will be driven by the budgetary allocations made for the coming year. We have already seen good examples where this has occurred. I remain confident the Croke Park agreement will deliver the changes it set out and to which the parties concerned are committed. It is challenging but I believe there is sufficient nous and leadership at local level to see it through. Both management and union representatives will have to provide this to achieve this outcome.

Everyone who works in the public service will be aware the taxpayer is not in a position to provide resources to the same extent as before. Accordingly, changes internally in how services are delivered and being flexible and creative about this is fundamental to maintaining the best possible service for the citizen, who must be at the centre of all our concerns, and in ensuring the organisational arrangements are to maximum and optimum effect.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I believe in a public service that has a clear strategy and one in which all public servants can feel they contribute to the good of their country and the welfare of their community when they go home from work.

The Taoiseach said no reduction in services has taken place with the lessening of numbers of public servants. How can this be if, for example, 600 psychiatric nurses have gone with none replaced? The Department of Finance now controls the authorisation for the filling of every position. If it decides a post for a clinical nurse manager, grade 2, or a manager of a suite of operating theatres is not to be replaced, how can there have not been a reduction in services? How can the author of that report for the Taoiseach claim no reduction in services has occurred when it is impossible to measure up when 600 psychiatric nurses, for example, leave the health service?

Many of the young nurses who left for England and other places in the past several years are now returning to Ireland. They are employed by nursing agencies at enormous costs to the taxpayer to fill the positions the HSE cannot fill. How does the Taoiseach's claim of no service reduction equate with reality, particularly when there is strong demand for mental health nurses?

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The premise of the Deputy's argument suggests no change can be beneficial to the delivery of services and that fewer people working in an area cannot, by definition, provide a better service. I do not subscribe to that. We have seen changes in a whole range of areas.

For example, everyone will agree the Revenue Commissioners' provision of online services and re-organisation has led to greater throughput, efficiencies and that the time involved in serving customers and citizens has been greatly reduced. The same applies to the Department of Social Protection where computerisation has greatly reduced the need for person-to-person interaction and made it easier for people to obtain services and be aware of their entitlements.

The greater use of technology in the public service and changing how these services are delivered can bring about a far better result with fewer public servants than may have been the case in the traditional arrangement of people queuing for a service delivered from a window-hatch or cubicle.

Over phe last quarter of a century we have been in the process of implementing a new and welcome change in how psychiatric services are provided, moving from an exclusively institutional model to a far more community-based one. That in itself has meant that the requirement in terms of numbers needed to treat those in an institutional setting has totally changed, and rightly so. Rather than having psychiatric hospitals deliver such issues in splendid isolation from other hospital services, we now see the modern approach, which is to build acute psychiatric services within general hospital settings. In that way the overall health of patients is catered for in a far more holistic and comprehensive way than would have been the case traditionally. The old system of care had its origins in the Victorian age, rather than in the modern age.

The two examples the Deputy set out are good reasons change is necessary and how change with fewer public servants does not mean that there is a diminution of service. In fact, there is an enhanced, augmented and more modern service available.

By definition, the moratorium can be regarded as a blunt instrument, although exceptions are provided for by the Minister for Finance. It was a good control measure in the absence of an overall industrial relations framework in which to implement a more comprehensive set of reforms. We now have those and while the moratorium must continue to exist because of the need to work against simply increasing numbers without reference to the possible cross-over of people from other areas where there is less activity, by retraining or otherwise, into new areas of demand, or where services need to be augmented by more personnel, that is the way to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

The overall industrial relations framework we now have enables service-wide change and reorganisation to take place in a way that is planned, understood and negotiated. It can be done with the mechanisms that have been put in place, including time-limited appeal mechanisms, so that matters get resolved rather than a process taking over and change being postponed for a period which is simply too long in current circumstances.

In fairness, all of that has been agreed to as the means by which we will address these issues. For the future, I see a public service which will employ fewer numbers in the overall context but which will be as responsive and flexible as possible. It will use all the modern IT systems to enable people to interact and interface with the service in an efficient and timely way. We will also have professionals working within the service at all levels who are in a better work environment, which maintains a public service ethos whereby people are treated well and are accorded the appropriate dignity as citizens. That is a strong ethic which still permeates the service, although there are many who would be frustrated because of the rigidity of structures. In the past, hierarchical structures were built up which had their place in a different era, but we now need far more collaborative teamwork approaches because many of the old demarcations are no longer relevant. They need to be addressed.

We have an important opportunity, driven as it is by circumstances and resources.

It is also driven by the initiative of public service workers and management to work together to bring about the changes necessary so that we have a sustainable level of service into the future. This should take cognisance of the fact that there are limits to our resources and demographics at play that require us to plan ahead into the medium and long term and redeploy resources to where they are most needed. We must also ensure that we find ways around the problems that arise, through technology, shared services, better procurement practices and a whole range of initiatives in addition to human resource issues that can bring about a better outcome for everyone, including the taxpayer.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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In the past ten years, some seriously good people in the public service were head-hunted by private business and quite a number left. If change is to be embedded in the public service, as recommended by the OECD and the Croke Park agreement, should there be an opportunity for people from the private sector to work in the public sector and vice versa? This would give everyone a full flavour of the world of work outside and the world of administration and bureaucracy inside. Does the Taoiseach think this is appropriate? In my experience of the public service, when it is challenged, it will always come up with a result depending on the political or ministerial guidance. In the past decade, there has been a tendency to hive off every question to another consultant, report or committee. The public service was always intended to be the public service but was allowed drift into endless rows of bureaucracy. If good leadership from management is necessary, does that exist? Is the Taoiseach satisfied the quality of personnel exists to drive the quality of change the Taoiseach wants, that Croke Park envisages and that the OECD says should be embedded in the culture of the public service?

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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A number of questions arise from Deputy Kenny's points. He referred to the loss of the talent from the public services to the private sector. People took up opportunities to go into the private sector, having served in the public service. Others have returned and some have gone from the private sector to the public sector. That interchange in the world of work is a more common experience than was the case years ago. One of the reasons for benchmarking was to ensure that, where there were jobs of commensurate responsibility, the public service would not be denuded of any talent it had and that the public sector would be seen as an attractive career prospect for those in a position to obtain earnings of a similar nature in the private sector. The question of how to marry that with reform and change is one we seek to address in a comprehensive way through the transforming public services agenda. The Croke Park agreement provides the oil in the wheel to enable it to turn and bring about the change people want to see.

It is open to people from any sector to apply for public sector jobs. We have seen changes and reconstitution in the top level appointments commission to ensure more private sector people are employed so that the disciplines available in the private sector, the innovation and change culture that must be part and parcel of any enterprise in the private sector seeking to adapt to changing trading circumstances can, in an appropriate way, be replicated in the public service, which must show a level of innovation in terms of delivering quality service at a time of tightened financial circumstances. In terms of the level of planning, policy making and policy evaluation and accountability one wants to see in the public service, there are lessons to be learned between both sectors.

There are also lessons to be learned by the private sector from the public service ethos. Perhaps the dearth of that ethos in some respects has been the cause of some of our problems. Unfortunately there has been a stereotypical ongoing argument about public versus private, to which I have never subscribed. Life is not that simple. There is a basis for a solid and well merited critique of both sectors of the economy.

The overall position is that there must be change and it must happen more swiftly than we have been able to achieve before. I now believe we have a framework in which to do that. We have the means to achieve it and to do so in an ordered way. Many of the mechanisms that are now in place provide us with probably the best prospect we have had in a very long time.

Many people have prescribed how change should occur but the best way of achieving it is through a collaborative effort on the part of those who work in the service who have a stake in it and who have a professional ethic to see the service fulfil its objectives, namely, to be as efficient and effective a public service as one could find anywhere and that will deliver for people. That means delivering for people in far more atypical work patterns than would have been the case in the past. For example, where people need services after 5 p.m., rosters will have to reflect that. There is a whole range of customer-focused initiatives that would improve the responsiveness of the service and how people view it. This can be achieved by demonstrating flexibility and by putting in place new practices.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Among the measures that we in Sinn Féin proposed in our pre-budget submission was the capping of salaries in the public service and the semi-State sector and also a reduction of 25% in professional fees paid by the State. Between the two sets of measures there is the potential to save the State in excess of half a billion euro on its current outlay. We accept, as do the public service unions, that there must be reforms to work practices to ensure greater efficiency where possible and improved services, which is what we want to see in terms of the public service as a whole.

Does the Taoiseach not agree that the continuation of the embargo on public service recruitment is proving counter-productive? That is something I have argued on many occasions. For example, there is ongoing evidence of the considerable cost of training nurses to a very high degree in this country, both in terms of general health and psychiatric health-----

Séamus Kirk (Louth, Ceann Comhairle)
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We are coming to the end of Taoiseach's Questions, so there are some time constraints.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Is the Taoiseach aware of the significant outlay in this area at a time when we are witnessing a massive exodus of nursing professionals who are not able to access employment within the health service? What is happening to overcome difficulties within the Health Service Executive at a time when it is employing agency nurses across the board, including in the psychiatric services? The PNA has identified that the outlay is approximately 40% greater than would be the case with direct employment.

The Taoiseach is familiar with the consultant's report by Mott MacDonald on HSE west which states that the recruitment ban has created another perverse incentive to use existing highly qualified and highly paid staff to cover additional staff. Does the Taoiseach not see that this issue needs to be urgently addressed, something that the INMO itself has highlighted to him? It has also indicated that its members - nurses and midwives - are not prepared to fill the gaps created. Will the Taoiseach not reconsider the situation in regard to the recruitment ban?

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The moratorium on recruitment and promotion had to be introduced as a matter of necessity. It was introduced at the end of March 2009. It allows for certain general exemptions in the education and health sectors to fill certain key posts, as well in the local authorities in respect of fire, health and safety, INTERREG and other posts. The information in respect of posts covered by these general exemptions can be sought from the relevant Ministers.

On the question raised by the Deputy, the whole purpose of the Croke Park agreement is to see in what way we can get redeployment and find a way forward that will provide us with as many permanent staff as possible. There are some occasions when temporary agency people are required. One would like to think that they would never be required, but there are situations in which they are required. The availability of labour is not equal in all cases. An agency nurse might be required in one area whereas an exception to the moratorium might be more of a solution in another area.

I am not aware of the PNA-specific matter to which the Deputy referred. The service available to psychiatric patients is different to the one that was available in an institutional setting. It is not necessary that all people who interact with psychiatric patients in the modern care setting be psychiatric nurses. Many of the day-to-day needs of psychiatric patients are provided by care workers and others who are quite capable of doing that job. While there is a nursing care element to this, it is not the exclusive case now that may have been the case in the past in terms of the way in which services were organised and who cared for people.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I want to allow a brief supplementary question.

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Things have changed. I do not suggest that all problems are solved, but the Croke Park agreement gives us the industrial relations framework in which to resolve many problems which have been structural and perennial in the service.

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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I will ask two brief questions. Which is the lead Department responsible for public service reform? Is it the Department of the Taoiseach or the Department of Finance? What savings is the Croke Park agreement estimated to achieve in 2011?

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Regarding the first point, the Department of Finance and the public service deal with public service issues on an operational basis. The Department of the Taoiseach has always co-ordinated the effort in the social partnership context of trying to promote this agenda right across the service. I work as the chairman of the Cabinet sub-committee in that respect.

Regarding the savings to be obtained by the Croke Park agreement, clearly there will be savings. These have yet to be identified, since they all have to be negotiated and costed in due course. As the Deputy knows, there is provision under the agreement to identify those savings on an annual basis and see to what purpose any part of them can be put to see if any assistance can be given to those who are on the lower pay structures during the course of the agreement. The real saving of the Croke Park agreement relates to the fact that there will be fewer moneys allocated for the provision of services. The agreement provides us the means by which we minimise service impact. We could find a situation in which we could improve services with less money, depending on how we organise those services. This will vary from place to place.

The savings the agreement provides are not simply in the context of the reduced payroll or the reduced costs of services that can be identified upon review on an annual basis. The real value of the Croke Park agreement will be the fact that it effects a new way of delivering services in a way that promotes industrial relations without conflict and, for the most part, provides us with a more sustainable level of service in future. Those savings should be identified in terms of looking at the value of this agreement for the future. If we are cutting major areas of expenditure by X%, if there is no policy change or no change in the industrial relations scenario, then the diminution in services to the public would be guaranteed. The Croke Park agreement provides the means of having sustainable services with less money, while at the same time providing a good service to the public by reason of the redeployment of civil servants that will follow from it.