Derek McDowell (Labour)

If they did know what was contained in them I am not sure it would help very much. The strategic priorities of the Department of Finance, for example, are price stability, debt reduction, management and effectiveness of public expenditure and tax reform. How does that help? The Minister says poe-faced, reading from a script that has been written for him, that these statements of strategy are a guideline, they inform what the Department does on a day to day basis, help it in setting priorities and in allocating resources and staff to various areas. They do nothing of the sort. They are words on paper, with which nobody could possibly agree, which do not change in any significant measure from Government to Government. Either these statements are made meaningful, which means a Minister must take control and put some political priority of meaning into them or we can forget about them. I appreciate they are meant to be proposed by the Secretary General. We should not maintain the pretence that they are a meaningful statement of mission or of the strategic priorities of a particular Department because, regrettably, they are far from that.

I wish to refer briefly to the issue of cost controls because we are all exercised about the issue of value for money within the Civil Service. It is fair to say that in recent years the Department of Finance has introduced a series of regulations and guidelines which it pushes out to other Departments. It is true also that Secretaries General have produced a lengthy and detailed report on their responsibilities as Accounting Officers and so on. Yet, I have no sense that anything real is happening. Maybe the guidelines are being adhered to and maybe they are not. It is clear in those instances where they are not and there are plenty of them — Senator Phelan referred to some — that there is no sanction and that nothing happens. It is clear that in the event that cost controls are not properly implemented, there is no sanction and no comeback and nothing happens on foot of this.

We do not seem to learn the lessons. I know there are guidelines in place but we must take them seriously. In essence, the whole SMI process is a fascinating one but it is ivory tower material. I have no real sense, and this view is shared by many civil servants, that it is making a real difference in terms of improving the quality of service provided to customers or improving the way people work within what is still an extremely hierarchical Civil Service.