Ivor Callely (Fianna Fail)

I ask the Minister of State to arrange a departmental briefing for the Senator so he could have the correct picture. As I stated, the actual reduction amounts to1.9%. As prices are expected to be lower than last year, social welfare recipients should not be worse off.

We need to do more on cost reduction and on public expenditure review to balance tax increases. As a Government, we are in danger of doing exactly what the economy did, namely, raising our prices and not paying enough attention to our cost base, that is, public expenditure.

The early retirement scheme and benchmarking on public pay announced by the Minister are essential first steps. The process of public sector reform and public expenditure review needs to adopt a structural and strategic approach using approaches such as zero-based budgeting. Zero-based budgeting is a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period. This compares with the present system, which generally takes the previous budget and adjusts it up or down. By contrast, zero-based budgeting starts from a base of zero and every function is analysed for its needs and costs. Budgets are then built around what is needed for the upcoming period, regardless of whether the budget is higher or lower than the previous one.

We also need flexibility in all areas of our public sector regarding job and employee mobility. Decentralisation has not worked and now should be formally scrapped and replaced with a pooled approach to labour in the civil and public sector. Officials would be appointed to a pool instead of a specific Department and would work on issues as they arose, such as for example, asylum and immigration, social welfare claims and agriculture claims processing and so on.