Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. Actions speak louder than words. He will have been in government three years, or 36 months, next month. It is not a very long time in the overall context when one takes into account reading into a brief, holidays, etc. What has been achieved must be celebrated and acknowledged. It is of international significance. We began in a programme with our reputation in tatters and costs running at enormous levels. Less than three years later we have our independent sovereignty, with no insurance policy, and have negotiated Haddington Road, which is significant in the international scale for what it has achieved. I would appreciate it if we could have silence. It is significant and has been recognised as that. It is living up to the commitments in the programme for Government and the commitments to society, because this country was and is broke.

We have a job of work that must be developed. Achieving efficiencies is part of that programme. Many advances have gone under the radar. Procurement has already been mentioned in this debate. This Minister, along with the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, has developed websites and the procurement process to a very advanced degree. There is probably potential for further efficiencies in procurement. I was on the local authority for a number of years before I came in here and we saw countless examples of absolute waste in terms of not using the purchasing power. We had a situation where local authorities were operating as individual entities instead of pooling resources. We have regularly heard of back-office efficiencies that can be achieved. It is grand to talk about them but it is another thing to actually implement it and achieve efficiencies. That means bringing many stakeholders on board. That process is well under way.

We have all heard about medical cards and had people into our offices talking about them. That process was centralised. There were teething problems but it is working. The medical card scenario was fragmented with community welfare officers all over the country. Similarly, we have saved millions of euro as a result of centralising third-level grant applications. Of course there were problems. We have all had people in our offices who have experienced problems. However, one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. I have visited the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, offices. It is far better and the response time is significantly improved. The centralised system has been proven to work. If one was doing a desk-top study of what would and would not work, one would come up with the SUSI formula to save money and take advantage of that buzz-word "back-office".

It is a programme of work. It is work in progress. I am looking forward to another two years of achieving efficiencies as part of the programme of putting this country back on the right track to ensure the 400,000 unemployed people will decrease to 300,000 and lower. We must ensure that the people out there working their backs off in the private and public sectors to put this country together who have made the sacrifices will, as a result of the direction being taken by the Government and the two Ministers in the Department of Finance, see better and brighter days ahead. This country had a lot of waste and we will never be able to afford waste again. I commend the Minister on his ongoing programme of work.