Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----helpful to have a copy, typically. I welcome the Minister of State. I think this is his first time in the Seanad in his new role and I congratulate him on his appointment to his new position.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. Fianna Fáil will support the Bill and the position that the office be put on a statutory basis. It makes sense. We have 31 local authorities and many other bodies all doing payroll. It would be much better if we could get this to work properly and get an organisation with the necessary expertise and the skill set, whether it be in ICT, pensions or payroll, if it is to deal with travel and subsistence claims, as the Minister of State mentioned. I am not sure whether we in the Seanad are involved with the system but it does make sense that we set it up.Of course, there are concerns, some of which the Minister of State alluded to in his speech. We do not want a situation where the NSSO ends up like the HSE, that is, something that is not under ministerial control or that is passed off. The Minister of State said in his speech this would not be the case and that it would be accountable to Oireachtas committees and to Ministers and so on, and it is important it would be.

It is also the setting up of another quango, for want of a better phrase. Fine Gael in 2011 announced the abolition of 145 of them and, if we look back at that list, we see most of them are still there, and quite a number more have been created. To be fair, as a party in government, perhaps Fine Gael has revised its view on that policy of culling all these quangos and making a fuss about how much more efficient it would be if they were all gone.

This makes sense. I do not want to go through all of the examples in the Minister of State's speech but there are examples in terms of HR and pensions administration when having 30,200 employees across 37 Departments and public sector bodies, as well as 48 public service bodies being dealt with under provisions for cash receipting, fixed assets, general ledger accounting and so on. These are all valid reasons to set up the NSSO on a statutory basis. As the Minister of State said, it is going to have almost 1,000 staff, which is almost twice the number in the Department. It is going to give us cost savings and efficiencies, better management information and, hopefully, will free up senior management resources in many bodies around the country from doing relatively day-to-day administrative tasks in order to focus on proper policy development.

I want to reiterate our concerns. This is another public service body being set up, and while there is a fairly valid reason for it, I do not want a situation where, like other bodies, it becomes unaccountable and loses control of itself. Equally, it is very important that it answers not just to Ministers but to Oireachtas committees, that it would publish an annual report which is circulated to Members of both Dáil and Seanad and that we see a situation where we can save money for better use by the State generally.