Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Cathaoirleach and all the Members of the House for the opportunity to attend today to discuss the important work programme of my Department. I will cover several key priorities and my colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, who will be shortly, will touch on the elements of the Department's work related to her remit in her closing remarks.

My Department operates from the centre of government to drive the delivery of better public services, living standards and infrastructure for the people of Ireland. The remit of the Department encompasses three broader areas: governance and oversight of public expenditure, building capacity across the civil and public service and delivering effectively across key departmental policies. These strategic goals are central to the Department's new statement of strategy out to 2028. It is part of what I set out to the Government last week in the context of actions that will be delivered in the time ahead.

Turning to public expenditure governance, a key priority for me and my Department is to promote and support the efficient, effective and sustainable use of resources in line with the annual budgetary parameters to support economic and social progress. This is particularly pertinent now as we focus our efforts on budget 2026. In the lead-up to 7 October, I have been meeting with a range of important stakeholders, from the national economic dialogue to the pre-budget meetings with my ministerial colleagues. It is clear to me the Government has an opportunity to make the right decisions to build further resilience in the Irish economy. This is particularly important given the uncertain geopolitical context. The medium-term expenditure framework I recently published puts in place a strong architecture to frame our budgetary plans for the coming years. This important framework takes a wider multi-annual view that complements and guides the annual budget cycle, enabling us to anticipate and prioritise effectively for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The framework also provides insights to guide future budgetary decisions. Among these is the importance of capital expenditure in economically strategic areas to support housing delivery and to facilitate future economic growth. The framework also acknowledges that the achievement of policy outcomes requires public expenditure in tandem with other policy levers, including taxation, regulation and reform. Placing reform at the heart of all we do is something I have prioritised as Minister, and this is reflected in my Department's new statement of strategy. Over the summer, I wrote to all my ministerial colleagues and my Department issued a circular on the key value-for-money obligations that Departments are required to adhere to as they progress their own priorities. I think we can all agree that we need to invest in delivering the public services and infrastructure that people rightly demand, but we cannot do this at the expense of accountability and value for money.

This is why I have directed my officials to undertake a review of the public financial procedures to strengthen rules around how public money is used and to place accountability at the heart of decision-making. This approach is consistent with the work my Department does in progressing and promoting good governance, openness and transparency for the governance of State bodies, the regulation of lobbying, the protection of whistleblowers and through freedom of information. To ensure public expenditure achieves effective outcomes, my Department also monitors expenditure from climate, well-being and equality perspectives, produces expenditure and policy reviews with spending reviews, and produces organisational capability documents to ensure our Departments and offices have the capability to deliver on their objectives. Taken together, these elements form the basis of a public expenditure management system that is robust and has taxpayers' interests at heart.

Through our Department's goal in building capacity, we are developing a public service that can meet the long-term needs of a changing society. We do this through pay, pensions and HR policies, including legal responsibility for the appointment, pay, superannuation and conditions of all civil and public service staff and boards of public bodies, multi-year public service pay agreements, and a range of policies supporting a more agile and inclusive workforce, such as an apprenticeship programme for the public service.

To support effective delivery, my Department is driving an ambitious programme of public service reform through the better public service transformation strategy. It is also leading on digitalisation of public services to create a more integrated, user-friendly and efficient service and promoting and advancing the use of new and emerging technologies, including the importance of artificial intelligence. The focus on digitalisation is reflected in the Department's new mandate and in the enhanced policy remits under the public service transformation division and our Office of the Government Chief Information Officer. One example of where the Department is leading on digitalisation can be seen in the recent publication of our guidelines for the responsible use of AI in the public service. My Department's focus on delivery can also be seen in the extensive work programme under way to progress momentum in infrastructure. We have delivered a national development plan review and allocated an historic level of resources targeted at areas of known infrastructure deficit. Departments have now been tasked with developing sectoral investment plans to directly link funding to the projects that can be delivered across their sectors in the next five years.

In tandem with the new infrastructure division, my Department is working with deployed sectoral experts and an accelerating infrastructure task force to identify the barriers delaying project delivery and the solutions to overcome them. The State must get back to delivering infrastructure at speed and at scale and the removal of barriers will be critical. The approach to delivering policy solutions is good evidence of the Department's ability to respond with agility and flexibility, just as we have for Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis. We delivered then and I firmly believe we can do so now. We have the resources and the opportunity to make real progress and we must follow through.