John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Curran, and the opportunity to have a discussion on the organisational review programme. As it is not something that is within my area of expertise, I have spent recent days investigating the activities of the programme and reading the second report. I have considered the issues to which the Minister of State referred.

A couple of points struck me from the outset and the Minister of State clarified some of them. One of my concerns is that the organisational review programme of the various Departments and agencies in the public sector was being, in effect, administered by their comrades in other parts of the public service. However, the Minister of State has outlined the fact that much of the information gathered was processed by independent consultants and that it fed into a process administered by civil servants from other Departments. I am someone who has been critical of the overuse by the Government and local authorities of consultants, but in this case I welcome as a good idea the process and system used.

I am not as convinced as the Minister of State was about the debate we had in the House earlier on the Croke Park agreement and the necessary efforts on which the Government engaged with the social partners in recent months to reach the agreement which was all about securing agreement on public sector pay in return for significant reform of how public services were delivered. Neither am I convinced the Government has pursued the reform agenda with any vigour in the time since. I accept it has faced significant economic and banking issues in the intervening period, but we have been promised consistently in this House and other places for many years, long before the Croke Park agreement came into being, significant reform of how the public service operates. The reality is that we are approaching the junction where they will have to be these major reforms, whether the Government has the necessary appetite or willingness to pursue them. Perhaps that is a matter for debate on another occasion. There is not much I disagree with in the Minister of State's comments about the different agencies and Departments that have been reviewed in the second report. It is quite complimentary of the efforts in the Revenue Commissioners, an organisation that is in good condition according to the report.

The Minister of State said, however, that as a result of the ban on recruitment, a significant number of people have left Revenue in the last 18 to 24 months, which may present difficulties in the future. The functions and role of the Revenue Commissioners are specific and everyone would hate to see a situation similar to what happened in the last recession, where significant effort was made by large numbers of people who were earning a lot of money to hide those earnings from Revenue, offshore in many cases. The job of the Revenue Commissioners is such that a strong individual case can be made for that organisation to retain its staff numbers to counteract such activity, even in these times when there is an embargo on public service recruitment. The Revenue Commissioners must be well resourced to perform their function in these difficult economic times.

Equally, when it came to the Property Registration Office, the review was largely positive. That is not surprising in that it only came into existence after the enactment of legislation in 2006. There were mixed comments on the Central Statistics Office but largely it was fulfilling its function well.

The main meat of the report centred on the review of the Department of Health and Children. It was scathing in some of its comments on the operation of the Department. It is remarkable that six years after the foundation of the HSE, this report must spell out grey areas that exist between the role and function of the HSE and the Department of Health and Children. It focused on allocation of human resources, finding that some officials in the Department are grossly overworked while some are grossly underworked. It is not something just the Opposition has raised, there is anecdotal evidence about activities within the Department and the output level from it. This report, however, is blunt in stating there are significant difficulties in the Department in the allocation of resources and staff across different sections.

I cannot get my head around the fact that we are still criticising the lack of demarcation between the Department of Health and Children and the HSE. The Department deals with many agencies, but six years after the foundation of the HSE, there is still no clear delineation between the Department and the executive and that is not acceptable. If that happened in the private sector, it would not be entertained.

The report is welcome. It contains mostly good news, with the obvious exception of the difficulties in the Department of Health and Children and the HSE. It is important that we discuss the second biggest spending Department in Government when we are formulating a budget that will require huge cutbacks. That Department will face significant cuts which will lead to grave issues for all of those involved in politics. It is unfortunate that when we are trying to protect investment in front-line services in the HSE this report would heavily criticise the operation of the Department of Health and Children. I hope the remedies outlined in the report will be implemented and that we will ultimately see the complete transformation envisaged in the Croke Park agreement of how public services are operated.

At the start of the report, Mr. McCarthy outlined that there have been significant improvements in how agencies deal with the public. I welcome the fact that those Departments and agencies have transformed themselves over the last few years. There are significant issues, however, particularly in the Department of Health and Children, that have not been rectified. A job remains to be done there and I hope the Government has the bottle to do it over the next few months.