Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----that the core pay would be protected, but a person will not get a shift allowance if he does not work the shift. There is a formula agreed with the unions and this has been worked out in detail. Will a redeployed person retain his allowances? Yes, if he is working to another pattern that would require the same anti-social hours. If that is not the case, there is an agreed formula for the allowance to be capitalised and a lump sum payment to be made. That is all in an agreement with the public sector unions and that is why there was no resistance in the past and we do not expect any in the future. It gives certainty to people when it comes to redeployment.

Senator Sheahan welcomed the proposals. No one will be disadvantaged. When a post at a fixed grade becomes vacant, unless the post itself is to be suppressed at that grade, we would not expect someone to work that grade for a lesser pay grade.

Senator Barrett raised a number of issues. The Government economic service has been an extraordinarily good innovation but we have hired a number of young economists, some of them trained by the Senator no doubt, and while they were originally located in my Department, they are to be redeployed across the public service. They played a sterling role in the Haddington Road negotiations. They were of huge value.

This relates to the second part of the Senator's question on average play increasing. The unit costs will increase into the future because the bulk of the Civil Service up to this point were clerical officers because of the nature of bureaucratic administration. It is part of my job to get rid of that as far as I can. There are more than 300 Government services available online. When I started out 30 years ago, if I wanted to buy an airline ticket, I would go to the travel agent to buy one. We would not dream of doing that now, and an increasing number of services are going online.

The Senator mentioned external recruitment and TLAC. One of the first things we did as a Government, and which I did in my Department, and I do not mind admitting to the House there was some resistance from the permanent government, was to appoint a lay majority of non-civil servants to TLAC and a lay chair. All senior appointments are now filled by a committee with a majority of non-civil servants and non-civil servant chair, and each interview panel is constituted on that basis.

In my Department, I have made three significant appointments in the recent past. The new director of the office of reform has been working marvellously, and we presented the reform agenda in November 2011 - I am not sure if the Senator has had a chance to read it - with 200 timelined significant reforms, and we are on target as we roll those out. They are ground-breaking reforms. Last week it was my privilege to open the first significant shared service centre, PeoplePoint, where 48 human resource management centres are migrating to one. Instead of every Civil Service agency and Department having its own human resource management, there is now one centralised unit for the entire service. The next project we are working is to centralise in three centres the payroll for the entire Civil Service, which is currently in 16 centres. We are looking at financial service management and a range of other services we can centralise in a shared services centre. That model is also being rolled out to local government.

As there is less bureaucratic work, we will see more specialists working in the Civil Service, with more policy-driven economic advisers who are very competent people.

While the unit pay costs will probably increase, the volume of personnel will decrease over time as more of the mundane work is done electronically and by means of new technologies.

I strongly endorse Senator Barrett's comments on the suite of activities under way in my Department. The reform agenda being undertaken by the office of reform must be mirrored by the political reform agenda. In that context, significant reform lies ahead in the Civil Service. Senators will forgive me for pointing out that reform of the structure of the Oireachtas is part of this process. Within the Oireachtas, the whistleblower legislation, restructuring of the Freedom of Information Act and a Bill providing for a register of lobbyists, all of which the Senator alluded to, will come on stream this year. We have already completed, through the Seanad, legislation expanding the role of the Ombudsman and so forth.

Senator Barrett always refers to the commercial semi-State bodies when I bring legislation before the House. These companies have a unique mandate and are not part of the Civil Service or Haddington Road agreement.

I do not agree with the Senator's comment that Ireland would be in the same position as Greece if it were not for emigration. Our colleagues in RTE will be shocked by the decision of the Greek Government to close down the state broadcasting station last night. I will have to restrain the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, in these matters. If one examines in detail the calamity that has befallen Greece or the position that pertains in Spain, Portugal and Cyprus regarding benefits, supports and social transfers, one will find that despite the unprecedented meltdown in our economic fortunes, we have been extraordinarily resilient and resourceful in maintaining resource transfers, social welfare benefits and so forth at a much more robust level that obtains in the countries in question. This should be acknowledged.

Senator Landy made an important remark on the quality of the public service and we should acknowledge that point. In my first two years in office, I regularly read in some quarters a diatribe against and vilification of the public service as if all public servants were overpaid and underworked. I see at first hand the quality of people in the public service, not only those on the front line such as doctors, nurses and gardaí, to whom Senator Byrne referred, but civil servants who, throughout recent months, have taken on the most complex of agendas in the European Union and worked all the hours God sent in the interests of this State and the European Union. It has been remarkable. I am highly impressed by the work done by my team in all the areas of activity in which I have asked them to engage. Senator Landy is correct in this respect. I answered the Senator's other question on union consultation.

We will have an opportunity on Committee Stage to tease out any other issues Senators may wish to raise. In essence, what is at stake here is the need to provide for a formal capacity to transfer public servants. Where staff are moved, they will hold on to their pension rights, pay rights and so forth. There is significant frustration in the public service, including among workers, that staff are under-deployed in some areas and completely overworked in others. We need to have the capacity to balance this.