Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Senators for their contribution. We need to have regular contributions on the issue as much of it is not “sexy” to use that hackneyed word because it is a process change, but it is fundamental. I take both elements of my job seriously. As Minister for public expenditure I have to reduce the full expenditure profile of the State to an affordable level. Senator Reilly said we do not have enough services. That is almost to pretend that we do not have the economic crisis we are working our way through. Every month of last year we borrowed €1 billion on top of the tax income to keep the services going. We promised those who are giving us the €1 billion that we would work towards a balanced budget and we are doing that.

Many positive things have been said and I wish to deal with the contributions in the order in which they were made. Senator Byrne fairly and rightly talked about the Civil Service tradition of service in the State going back to its foundation. He said it was loyal to whoever happened to be elected by the people. That is something we should not take for granted. I put it on record in the other House and I might have put it on record in this House previously that during the final social interaction with the troika, which took place in a relaxed frame when it was about to leave, the head of the troika said to me that of all the civil servants he had dealt with – he had dealt with many – the Irish civil servants were the most professional. He said they were much better than the Germans and several others. It is to our credit that the Civil Service is matter of fact and it provides an extraordinary service. Of course all civil servants are not perfect. In every aspect of life there are star performers and those who are not.

My Department is a small one in numerical terms. Last year we were involved in the Presidency of the European Union. We negotiated more trilateral meetings on the cohesion strategy than was ever done in any programme. We were involved in the sale of State assets. We negotiated the Haddington Road agreement. We were intrinsically involved in both the promissory note renegotiation and the exit strategy. Any one of those would be an extraordinary body of work. It is to the great credit of the staff in the Department that nobody who was working on those various teams had a beginning hour, an ending hour or saw a weekend as a non-working weekend. Everybody was there for as long as was required. I add my words of appreciation to Senator Byrne’s in that regard. He is correct also in what he said about the complex nature of current decision making by the Government. The easiest form of decision making is to say “Yes” to whatever is proposed by the Civil Service. To be contrarian is difficult because then one has to justify oneself because the decision is that of the Minister. We must have more debate about that. I do not know whether it is appropriate to invite in the chairman of the Top Level Appointments Committee, TLAC. We now have an outside chair and a majority of members of TLAC are outside members not civil servants. In the first annual report which it presented to the Houses of the Oireachtas, it indicated that one of its concerns about getting quality applications for top level appointments in the public service was a "gotcha" culture. The notion is not whether one is performing well on balance but whether one did something for which one could be caught. It is more than actual remuneration that acts as an impediment for quality people to apply for jobs.

Senator Sheahan referred to the town hall meetings and some of the proposals that were put forward.

Of the 30,000 plus staff comprising the downsizing in the public service, the local government sphere was downsized by 25%. I am not sure that too many directors of service would be able to find 20 people in order to say that they were surplus to needs. We have done remarkable downsizing in the local government sector. When one sees how they have stepped up to a task - as they have done in the areas affected by floods where hours of work do not matter and people just get on with doing a job for their communities - it has been a remarkable achievement to secure that level of downsizing and maintain a quality service. The town hall meetings that are taking place around the country will bring all public servants together and I hope very good ideas flow from the initiative.

Procurement was mentioned by a number of Senators so I shall deal with it on a number of fronts. First, I shall deal with a particular question that was asked. It comes up a lot and is now almost a default response - if we have efficient procurement we will squeeze out the SMEs. The situation is quite the reverse and there is no reason that SMEs cannot fully participate. The most recent data that I have shows that 63% of public service contracts were awarded to the SME sector in this country - that is 63% of the National Procurement Service contracts - and 25% of the contracts went to larger Irish companies. Let us add both so that means 85% of all centralised contracts go to Irish entities and 12% of contracts go to non-Irish companies which compares favourably with a variety of countries.

From the beginning we have been committed to collaboration with the employer and small businesses. We have discussed this matter with the representatives of the SME and have held a number of meetings. We have also had a meet the buyer engagement process where we bring small business in to meet Government procurers in order that they can be skilled, upskilled and work collaboratively to make large scale procurement offers where they do not, within their own encompassment, have a capacity to bid. I am determined to drive up the involvement of SMEs but we need to get value for money. The days of having five or six different organisations procuring the same product from the same company at different rates cannot be continued. In the past couple of weeks I attended a public meeting in the country but I shall not say where and the following issues arose. I was told: Sure, we always did a local deal. Our school bought whatever we had and we got a few bob from the local Christmas fund." That is not the way public goods should be procured, it must be done in a professional manner involving professional procurement techniques.

Quangos and rationalisation issues were mentioned. Let me be clear about the matter. The information is laid out on my Department's website. I produced the first service reform plan in November 2011. It contained two commitments and the first one was to implement phase 1 - the rationalisation of 48 entities which involved 100 bodies. All 48 will be delivered by the end of this year, except in two cases where we made the decision not to proceed and the first one was the national cancer registry. I took the decision not to reintegrate it into the Department of Health because I got very clear information that it was the wrong thing to do and that it should be an independent stand-alone cancer registry. In the second case - on advice from the transport sector and the European Union - we did not go ahead with the merger of the Commission for Aviation Regulation and the Irish Aviation Authority. Other than that all of the other promised actions will have been absolutely completed and a lot of them involved serious legislation, negotiation and redeployment. All will be completed by the end of this year.

The second promise that we made was to critically review 46 other measures. The review was carried out and published, I think, the year before last. We said that we would go ahead with the rationalisation of 25 agencies under the programme. Again, that involved a further 100 State bodies and all of the 25 actions will be implemented by the end of this year. The rationalisation programme, the killing of quangos or whatever phrase one wants to use will be completed this year.

Senator Quinn made a very thoughtful contribution. I am sorry that he is not here but he explained to me that he had to leave. Let me put it bluntly. We need to make ourselves aware of the issues. The Senator claimed that we did nothing about sick pay or leave arrangements. We debated changing the law on sick pay in the Chamber last year and we are now implementing the halving of sick leave arrangements across the entire public service after a year and a half of hard slog through the Labour Relations Commission and bilateral negotiations. When we do things please acknowledge them. We have also rationalised holiday arrangements. Let us remember the debates that we had when we discovered some of the more outlandish arrangements. We have consolidated leave arrangements across the public service as we build an integrated public service.

The Senator talked about providing a website displaying all of the data, and Senator Barrett also touched on the matter. I have given a commitment - and it is my big ambition regarding our delivery of our commitment to the new open Government programme - is to have open data. It is my ambition to have FOI requests, PQs and all of that made redundant by having all data accessible and I want to work towards that aim. Except, obviously, where there are security implications and so on but that would be the default position.

The Senator asked how many people would be dismissed. Bluntly, that is an odd criterion to use to gauge success. First, we are creating a new system of accountability that says what one is responsible for so that one knows what one is responsible for. It is very hard to evaluate somebody's performance if one does not tell them what they are to do, hold them to account and have a proper evaluation system. In cases where a person needs upskilling and retraining then it should be provided and that is before one reaches the stage of asking how many people one intends to fire. We need to have such a system.

Senator O'Keeffe talked about communicating change. It is important that we have a system of communicating what we are doing and that is why we are having a very dynamic communication within the public service conducted through the town hall meetings and communications at Department and agency levels. We are open to seeing how we can engage in the broader public debate. Certainly, that is needed on the accountability document. I hope that the expert group that I put in place under Kevin Rafter will provide new means to capture public involvement in that aim. She suggested that we provide an App. We have an e-government website, etc. and have sought ways to deliver it in as varied a manner as possible. We will also have a new e-government strategy this year.

The Senator asked a number of specific questions such as how much was the reform dividend. There is not a specific answer to that because I must ensure that we live within the confines of expenditure. However, it gives me the wherewithal to divert some of it to front-line services which is important.

The Senator mentioned a number of things about the public service card. Obviously the card will require security to ensure that personal data is protected. We will debate the matter because I must bring in new legislation on data protection. There are some ridiculous barriers which prevent people from acting freely in order to get information or gain access to services. Using a card needs to be broken down so that one does not have to submit the same set of information every time one goes online to the 400 plus public bodies that now operate a direct services provision.

The Senator also asked about the use of the 15 hours. The extra hours will do as follows - reduce paid overtime; reduce agency costs so that we are not buying in external work; allow management to maintain services against the backdrop of decreasing numbers; facilitate reductions in staff numbers where that is possible; allow management to undertake further reform initiatives; improve services where we see a need; extend opening hours for public offices, call centres and so on; address peak demands by redeployment into those areas; and increase the output of Departments in terms of additional projects that we can undertake. That has already been negotiated and will, hopefully, be delivered but I am saying that we are dependent on engagement at middle management level to ensure that happens.

I am not accountable for every service. I am not going to tell the House what is happening in the health service or what is the position on universal health insurance and so on. I will let members ask the Minister for Health about these issues, although we want to drive all of them in an efficient manner.

The Senator mentioned the consolidation of ethics legislation which is within my remit. We have said we will look at the current suite of legislation governing ethics in the public sphere to have it updated and modernised so as to incorporate best practice in one integrated Act. We are working on this within my Department. We have had the FOI legislation in the other House; the register of lobbyists Bill is coming; the ombudsman Bill has been completed; the Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013 has been passed and the open data programme is on the way. A lot is happening on that front.

The Senator also mentioned property management. That is an area in which we need to make advances and that has been taken by the scruff of the neck by the Minister of State at my Department, Deputy Brian Hayes, who has done remarkable work in examining the property portfolio. Unfortunately, we have discovered that long-term leases have been taken out on many offices that are no longer decentralised. That was not the wisest course, but we are working towards getting ourselves out of the process.

I thank Senator Martin Conway for his acknowledgment of how far we have come in a mere three years. We have made remarkable progress. I do not think there is another country that has made as many significant reforms in public administration in an atmosphere of industrial calm, which is to the credit of workers in the sector.

The Senator also talked about procurement. I think I have answered most of the questions in that regard. Having looked carefully at how the private sector conducts procurement, it is much more keen. We have to ensure we get value for money for the euros that are hard-earned and paid into the tax purse. Senator Sean D. Barrett also raised the issue of procurement and mentioned a Russian-style retail operation. It is professional procurement in line not only with international best practice but also best practice in the private sector. I would happily arrange for anybody who is interested to meet Mr. Paul Quinn, chief procurement officer, at the Office of Government Procurement and his professional team who do a splendid job.

On the measuring of outputs, the mantra is almost that, rather than the old-fashioned way of measuring inputs, the more inputs we have the better. It does not matter what the outputs are; by definition, the more inputs and money we spend the better, as opposed to what we are getting for it. We need to get away from this.

Of course we need to have robust capital assessment. As the Senator is aware, we are integrating the National Development Finance Agency with the Railway Procurement Agency and the National Roads Authority to have a critical mass not only of engineering but also financial competence to evaluate infrastructural investment. The legislation is being prepared and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport will introduce the first phase during this session.

The Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform has an ongoing oversight role not only when the Finance Bill is going through but also to check that we are getting what was promised. That should not be an event, rather it should be a process.

Senator Kathryn Reilly mentioned promising change. Any objective person will read the two reports and see that change has not only been promised but has also happened. This has been acknowledged internationally by the OECD and the Open Government Partnership. That is the reason we are introducing the next wave of open government in Dublin Castle in May and I am sure the party of which the Senator is a member will be represented. Hundreds of thousands of people are no longer leaving the country. There are now more people at work in this country than there were three years ago. We created 65,000 net new jobs last year and have reduced the rate of unemployment from a peak of 15.1% to 12.3%, although it is still too high. When we went into government, the absolution prediction of everybody was that the rate of unemployment would exceed 500,000. We have turned this around and will work might and main this year to reduce the number significantly. We have set the target of achieving full employment by 2020. That is our objective.

The Senator mentioned the sale of State assets and said the proceeds should be spent in a different way. While we have not yet received any money from the sale of State assets, I have pre-spent some of it. It will be recalled that I spent €200 million in the budget, of which some €50 million was for county roads - not too many people thought county roads did not need another €50 million; €50 million was spent on new schools - that was not an extravagant or wasteful use of it; €50 million was spent on the retrofit of local authority houses to provide local authority tenants with decent insulation and jobs across the country.

The Senator said we had savaged youth schemes. Last month we launched the new Child and Family Agency. We have anchored responsibility for children and youth affairs in a Cabinet Minister for the first time. We have done all these things at a time of economic crisis and, not to be overtly party political about it, at the outset of our period in government the leader of the party of which the Senator is a member said our strategy should be to tell the troika to go home and take its money with it. The problem is not that we would be cutting services but we would have no services because the country would have collapsed. Nobody would have invested a shilling here and after a few months we would not have had the wherewithal to pay any public servant. It is very hard to take criticism when that was the strategy which demonstrably and objectively would have been ruinous for the State. We have worked our way through it and made remarkable progress, but we still have some way to go and, please God, we will get there.

The Senator referred to public service appointments. This morning the Cabinet made an appointment, about which the Senator will be pleased, that of the new Coimisinéir Teanga. It was done by way of an open appointment process. I understand there were 21 applicants and a fair and open process was used to determine who was the best candidate. I did the same in appointing the Ombudsman. Previously the position of Ombudsman was not open to public advertising. A robust and talented pool of people applied for the job and I think the best of them was appointed to the position. That is the change we have brought in making these appointments.

I thank Senators for their inputs. I am conscious that there is a huge number of issues to cover. I will be happy to come back periodically to report progress and, equally important, I am happy to receive inputs from Members on things that could be done that we are not doing. I thank the Seanad for giving us the time to have this debate.