Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House; he is a regular visitor. Like him, I value public service enormously. There is nothing more important in a country than people working in the common good and setting aside the fact that they may achieve a certain level of earnings and no more. It is not like the private sector; it is a very particular job and important that the Minister has devoted so much time and commitment to reforming the public service. It is interesting that in the public arena we see reform only in terms of euros. We hear the figure of €3 billion and think "that's great." People tend to turn away, forget or not examine the great detail behind all of the processes that must be gone through in order to bring about significant change. It is not always about saving money, although that is welcome, obviously.

I welcome the Minister's commitment to plainer communication because the language of the document makes it quite hard to read. It is hard to see what is happening because, ironically, of the amount of information contained therein. In a way, reaching out to the public at large and talking about change are difficult because people are never very sure what it means. If we talk about processes and detail, they very quickly turn away, which is part of the dilemma we face. People shout at the Government and say nothing has happened when actually quite a lot has happened, but how do we bridge the gap between what people believed they wanted to change and what is actually happening within the Minister's Department and beyond? Plainer language - the sooner the better - would be a good start and a help in getting that message across. There is no point in doing it if people do not understand it. Perhaps we might develop an application for gov.ie. The website is very welcome and lays out clearly all of the things one can find. Obviously, we are still waiting for some Departments which have less information available than others, but it all takes time which, as Senator Feargal Quinn argued, is the frustrating part.

I have a number of queries on the plan. The Minister made reference to the saving to invest idea, which would allow for the hiring of new gardaí, new special needs assistants and so forth. Is there an indication of how savings will be arrived at or does it depend on a variety of budgetary factors across all Departments? Can the Minister say whether it will be 10% or 20%, for example? There is great cynicism around the tendency for Governments to promise a certain pot of money for, say, roads and then the money is pulled away at the last minute. People become cynical about so-called savings and the tightening of belts; they want to see the additional five or 50 gardaí. If there is a way of quantifying this, it would be good to know.

The Minister spoke about the public services card and the issuing of 500,000 cards. In the report reference is made to the potential to store biometric identification data on the card, which, I take it, means a step towards it becoming an identity card. I am assuming that, ultimately, we will all have one. It will start with those who are in receipt of welfare payments but will proceed beyond this. Am I correct in that assumption? On the issue of individual health identifiers, is that a separate system and, if so, does it need to be separate? Could it not be part of the public services card? What protections are in place for the card in the context of more and more information being stored on it?

We see all the arguments on how information in the electronic age can be extracted and how protections are harder to come by. One of the great issues in the debate about having an identity card is that of protection. If we are proceeding in that direction, we would need to be satisfied that, at all levels, protection is as much a priority as the delivery of the card and all that goes with it. The Minister referred to sharing data and I raise the same question about securing it.

In his speech, the Minister, as well as the report itself, referred to the innovative utilisation of the additional public sector hours. What does the Minister see as innovative use? Is he waiting for senior managers to come up with their own innovative uses? There was a reason for these additional hours. It was not simply a matter of the public sector saying "give us more hours". Tasks must have been identified that required extra hours.

The Minister rightly described the Haddington Road agreement as the largest productivity deal in the history of the State. How much of future activity will be sub-contracted? Will this be part of the way alternative models of service are delivered, an expression which comes from the report? The speed vans are one example of sub-contracting. We have seen the number of private firms providing such services mushroom in the UK and other countries. Does the report outline how these alternative models will emerge?

Legislation for the regulation of lobbying, an issue dear to the Minister’s heart, is not in the timeline but it is mentioned in the report.