Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Minister on his energy and the reforms he has pursued. He is the Minister who is most regularly in contact with Senators regarding announcements and news on policy developments. I welcome that contact and wish him success in his efforts. I agree with Senator Cummins about his native city. We need his kind of local patriotism and it is sad when certain cities do not prosper.
The Minister stated:

The purpose of integrating Forfás into the Department is to strengthen the Department’s capacity to develop and implement enterprise policy. The proposal is not driven by the objective of finding cost savings, although some savings may arise in due course if synergies between the two organisations are identified.

He also complimented people on the negotiations that have now been resolved. I support the principle of bringing policy making into the Department and I will be supporting the Bill but I hope we will be able to quantify the savings. The explanatory memorandum states there are no costs to the Exchequer arising from these proposals. While I commend the Minister on the 70,000 extra jobs being created per annum, there are still between 200,000 and 250,000 fewer people at work compared to when this crisis started. The crisis arose as a result of the conduct of the banks, the Central Bank, the higher bureaucracy, the accountancy profession and the builder and developer sector. However, the aforementioned have largely escaped the reforming zeal of the Government and the new Senators and Deputies who were elected three years ago. We have to deal with the sectors which caused the devastation.
This Bill makes an important contribution to bringing policy making into the Department. I hope it is not smothered by the culture of obfuscation and secrecy that surrounded the Department of Finance on the night of the bailout, which was epitomised by the non-answers of the Financial Regulator. Our culture of public administration has caused a major part of the difficulties faced by the unsheltered sectors of the economy but it is not being reformed. One of the regrets held by those of us who entered the Oireachtas three years ago is that the permanent Government has not been reformed. This Bill represents an effort at reform but it may not be nearly radical enough. I refer to the culture of not answering questions, of not engaging in analysis and of incrementalism.

The culture of incrementalism means nothing ever gets shut down, even though the economy is in serious difficulty and is still borrowing too much money. Unless we reform the public sector we will all get the kind of answers we got last Friday, that the adjustment takes place at the expense of people with medical cards, at the expense of carers. We have a bloated bureaucracy which is not serving the country. When it comes up to our Houses of Parliament its performances are appalling. I refer to what we heard yesterday, what is in the Guerin report and in the Smithwick report, what was in the Morris report before that. The job of the Civil Service is to serve and it cannot isolate itself from what is happening to people in the estates and on the streets. Public sector reform has been going at far too slow a pace. I do not know if in the remaining period of time of this Oireachtas we will be able to make up for the pace that has been lost. I never hear Ministers saying, "What did an bord snip nua say about my Department and what will I do to sort out those issues?" We keep doing the same things and we add a bit more. That kind of incrementalism cannot work in a society that needs radical reform.

However, the Minister is an exception because of his energy and commitment but if he had heard the performance in this House on the water issue I am not surprised that it came unstuck last Friday. Every single amendment proposed in this House which would have been most helpful to the Government and was put forward in that spirit, was rejected. These amendments were about the price, the generous free allowance, about having the consumer body represented on the National Consumer Agency, giving local authorities some say as they have been running the business up to now, having its investment proposals supervised by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance. The Government would not accept anything.

The Wright report investigated the Department of Finance and found that 93% of its staff were not qualified at master's level or above in economics. Mr. Wright came from Canada where the corresponding figure is 60% qualified staff. We need an openness and an ability to engage and an ability to admit mistakes but which we are not getting from the senior civil servants in this country. They have a lot to answer for. I hope their conduct will change when they come here, otherwise, there will be a repeat of what happened last Friday and in the last general election. If the elected government will not hold the permanent government to account the elected government will be dismissed by the electorate at the first available opportunity because there is no other way that they can make their views known about the bankers, about the way the Central Bank conducted itself, about the way the Department of Finance conducted itself, losing all the notes; we had to rely on the bankers themselves to supply the notes. That is not a competent way for organisations charged with the expenditure of vast sums of public money to conduct themselves.

The Minister tried, with our support, to develop the unsheltered sectors of the economy which do not have those kinds of powers. That they have to get up and get out every day to compete on world markets while carrying the kind of burden of the way this country has been run by the permanent government, is not acceptable and we have to make that point as strongly as possible because we cannot be treated as Parliament has been treated in recent times.

The transfer of water to the central government from the local authorities has been badly handled. I hear complaints about the driving licences, about SUSI and of course, about the medical cards. I do not know what is the problem. I have participated as best I can and I am always willing to assist in the public administration attempts to reform our permanent government. There are many talented young people in public service. It is a question of how to turn enthusiastic, young, well-educated people who joined the Garda Síochána into the kind of people who represent An Garda Síochána when they come to this House. We have a lot to answer for in public administration. How did so much youthful enthusiasm become so cynical and so obfuscatory?

There is a problem in most countries that bureaucracy expands its own budget, it never wants to evaluate its outputs, it does not care if there are any outputs. Sir Humphrey was meant to be in a comedy programme but it has become a tragedy in this country; people have referred to the kind of Sir Humphreys that have come up here.

Besides the problem of incrementalism there is the problem of the interface between lobbyists which is a major problem which I hope the Minister, Deputy Howlin, will address. I refer to regulatory capture of Departments by interest groups. The reform of our public administration which is at the core of this Bill - I support the Minister - and it has a very long way to go and I regret that it has not made sufficient progress and that there are not enough reforming colleagues like the Minister, Deputy Bruton, doing that job because the country is paying for it and those with medical cards are paying for it. We need a far better performance.

I refer to the aviation sector as an example. There is not much difference now between the number of staff employed in Ryanair and the old Aer Lingus except the old Aer Lingus used to carry about 3 million passengers while Ryanair carries 85 million. I demand that the public sector produces the same kind of productivity improvements and that we get those measured and put before the House. At the moment we seem to be just changing bodies around and not achieving any savings. The Minister has acknowledged this in his contribution, that it will be the same staff under different labels. We need productivity increases and we need to know what they are because that is what we are required to vote on.

The problem the Minister addresses was one we found in the Culliton report, that agencies were too powerful, the Department was too weak and it was necessary to retrieve policy-making. The Minister is a policy-maker, as was his brother, the former Taoiseach. It is important that elected people take control of policy and oppose some of the things that have happened in recent times. I refer to the way the regulator gave evidence and the way the Department of Finance lost the records of the night and the way the Garda Síochána has been behaving and the way it takes 15 days or more for a letter to get through the bureaucracy to reach the Minister to whom it was addressed. A lot of reforms are needed but this Bill is a small step and I will support it.