Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the introduction of this legislation. At first blush, one might ask why we need a quango to supervise quangos. Senator Ó Céidigh is mindful of this potential criticism. However, I point out, in favour of what he said to the House, that we have a habit in this country of establishing bodies and allowing them to proceed. Some 15 or 20 years ago there was a root-and-branch re-evaluation of such bodies. There was Colm McCarthy's bord snip, which examined bodies from the ground up and asked whether we needed them any more and what useful functions they carried out. A series of agencies have cropped up from time to time, many of which, as Senator Ó Céidigh said, have in recent times been realigned, reconfigured, merged, de-merged and so on. In health, we have bodies such as Tusla, the HSE and a series of other agencies that have come into existence. At the same time, other bodies have gone out of existence, such as the health boards, etc. Senator Reilly, when he was a Minister, made it very clear that he wanted to get rid of the HSE completely. He did not quite achieve that. It is still there in ghost form. All kinds of other agencies may or may not be the subject of future amalgamation or the like. The crucial matter to which Senator Ó Céidigh is drawing the House's attention - I do not know whether he will get the support of a majority of Members on this occasion - is that of questioning, on a periodic and methodical basis, what State and semi-State agencies are doing, questioning and re-evaluating their roles and questioning whether they could do their work better. Even if the process he has described were carried out by someone in this State other than a new agency, the value of what he says is very clear. On one basis, the Minister's Department is such an agency if one considers in it that way. However, does it evaluate every other agency every seven years and ask the hard questions of each agency in such a methodical way? Does every agency of the State know that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will come after it and ask it why it still exists, what useful functions it carries out, whether other people could better carry out its functions or what transformations or reforms are necessary for it to carry out its functions more effectively?

Another way of considering the matter would be that these functions should be vested in the Oireachtas and that Oireachtas committees should challenge the very existence of the State bodies that come before them. I am a member of a committee which has had representations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Senator Ó Céidigh and I were discussing this earlier. Nobody is suggesting at this stage that we can do without the Environmental Protection Agency, but I wonder will the committee ever examine the effectiveness of that organisation and ask it to justify how it best makes use of its resources and so on. I do not think we have that mindset. Senator Ó Céidigh's Bill is designed, in the first instance, to focus our minds on the necessity of rethinking, on a consistent basis, the necessity for and the adequacy of the agencies we have established.

Agencies can be considered from another point of view. Let us examine the position of county councils. Do they share functions such as, for example, payroll and finance functions? Is it necessary for two county councils side by side to have people carrying out effectively the same function in two different organisational structures? Why should two county councils not share payroll functions? Why should they not share, for instance, recruitment and human resources, HR, activities? There are many ways in which we just go along with the old routine. I am sure the Minister's Department allocates much time trying to persuade agencies to ask themselves whether they could share these services and whether they do so adequately. On the Housing Finance Agency, I recall looking at a big building near the Luas station at Milltown in Dublin and wondering what went on in that building and why it was there. Perhaps it is still there. I do not know whether the agency sold those premises. It occurred to me that this was an agency established at a different time and pursuing different policies. Perhaps we still need a Housing Finance Agency. Maybe it still carries on useful functions. However, the sense in which every State agency had to go through a periodical evaluation of its utility, efficiency and overall function seems to me to be lacking. I would very much like to hear the Minister's response to these matters. Perhaps, reading the newspapers, I am unaware of wonderful things that are happening. Maybe the Minister's Department constantly evaluates every aspect of public expenditure to carry out these functions. However, I have a funny feeling that there are many backwaters in Irish public administration onto which the torch is not often shone and where people are left to their own devices.

I welcome Senator Ó Céidigh's bringing this matter to the floor of the House. I expect people will express contrary points of view. I would say the Senator also expects that. That said, the principle is important. Either the Parliament itself, the Department of State in charge of public sector reform or an agency such as that proposed by Senator Ó Céidigh on this occasion do this work and that it be somebody's job to ensure that we get value for money for all the agencies we have established. I am not against the public service or hostile to it. Neither, in any of his remarks, has Senator Ó Céidigh evinced any hostility to the public service or public service agencies as such. However, it is the case that we see in the private sector companies going out of existence. Shareholders ask what a particular subsidiary is doing and whether they need it any more. There should be a similar spirit regarding public sector agencies, not with a view to throwing people out of their jobs, but rather in the context of ensuring that we get value for money, that we achieve our strategic aims in respect of a decent and vibrant public sector and that this process goes on constantly. I am pleased in this context to second Senator Ó Céidigh's Bill.