Results 18,121-18,140 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: On the first question about the new quangos we created, Deputy Sean Fleming referred to them as if their creation was bad per se. I jotted them down as he went through them. NewERA is a commitment in the programme for Government to look at sweating real value from the State agencies and it is doing a great job. The Irish Financial Advisory Council, IFAC, is a requirement under the EU...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: -----few wanted that title as it had to be common. Let us get off that hook of feeling that if we see it anywhere it is bad per se. I do not believe that. In terms of the procurement issue, it is important that we enable effective and efficient procurement. What we had to date was significantly inefficient procurement where the taxpayer was paying over the odds across the State for a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy raised two issues, one of which was the focus on outcomes. He instanced the ambulance service. We are moving away from inputs to measure outcomes. Of course, it will be a journey, not a destination; we are not going to change everything instantly. However, from the ambulance service I understand the old idea of an ambulance driver has completely changed. Each ambulance is now...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I do not believe I should be answering questions on Cabinet discussions.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I do not believe the Deputy can take anything from it. I am constitutionally prohibited from having this discussion.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: There is a whole series of questions there. I agree with Deputy McDonald in terms of cultural change. We are all good at preaching openness and I put myself into that category as well, but if we are going to have models we should start at home and go to political parties about honesty and openness about backgrounds and everything.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: One may or may not be involved, but if one is asked a straight question one should get a straight answer. Politicians have to give the lead in that regard and I strongly endorse what Deputy McDonald said about that. I do not accept that the instinct of government is to protect the State, but it is to protect and support the people as best we can. It is true that countervailing issues...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I never have an inclination or a trend to outsource, I simply have an open mind on how services are best and most efficiently provided to the citizen. Clearly, there will be issues where we will have peaked demand for a service that will not justify the recruitment of permanent public servants, so it makes sense to outsource.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: For example, with the establishment of the local property tax we needed to have a call centre so people could access information in a short period of time. We are not going to recruit several hundred people into the public service to do that when we have skilled people we can use.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I have given the Deputy an example of laundry services. It makes no sense to replicate a laundry service in each hospital when one has an efficient laundry service that will deliver clean linen daily because it has a large-scale operation to do so. There will be many such instances. For example, one often has outside caterers in public buildings because it is easier for an outside caterer...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: That is the theme the Deputy is developing.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy's theme is that private sector workers do not get decent terms and conditions of work. There are instances in which people do not get terms and conditions. I am as implacably opposed to that as is the Deputy. We in government have determined that after the Supreme Court decision on REAs-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: We will have it reconstituted and that law will be enacted this year. This will ensure that low-paid workers are protected. That is the reason we reintroduced the minimum wage, which had been reduced by our predecessors in government. Even in the most difficult times, when we took office, we did that. I have the greatest concern about zero-hour contracts. I do not like it. I have raised...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: Please let me finish.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: An exchange means that one gets to finish one's answer. The final point the Deputy made related to agency workers. Of course the 15 million additional hours we have negotiated through the Haddington Road agreement will allow a reduction in agency workers and overtime and premium rates because people can be deployed at their normal working time in a more rational way. There is no...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I know the Deputy speaks disparagingly about the Haddington Road agreement, as if at that time we were not facing an existential threat to the very existence of our economy that required us to make very difficult decisions. I know the Deputy is disparaging in a disrespectful way, in my judgment, of the group of 27 trade unions who made a democratic decision to accept the proposals in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: We have already reduced pensions from peak to trough to a low of €14.1 billion last year. We have set out that we need to save an additional €1 billion by 2016 during the entire term of the Haddington Road process that was started last year. I intend using some of the reform dividend to put something back into some front-line public services, such as the ones I have spoken about.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The significant chunk of savings have been made in pay and pensions. We envisage that it will be of the order of €4.5 billion. We have set out to make a saving on procurement in the next three years of €500 million.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: That is a saving of €500 million over three years. We have made a saving of €127 million this year. We have identified savings to be made in property management as well. It is proposed that PeoplePoint will save us €12.5 million and the shared service centre on payroll will save €55.6 million when fully operational. I do not want to give figures for the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (19 Feb 2014)

Brendan Howlin: Yes.