Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Question 88: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the engagement he has had to date with other Departments on public sector reform; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26848/11]

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Question 89: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the submissions or presentations he has received on public sector reform; when he expects to report to Cabinet on this matter; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26849/11]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 88 and 89 together.

The Programme for Government envisages a renewed focus on Public Service Reform. Notwithstanding developments to date, the cost of delivering public services must be reduced further, with fewer staff and tighter budgets, and the Public Service must become better integrated and more customer-focused, as well as being leaner and more efficient.

The role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is to drive, enable and support change across the Public Service and a wide range of reform initiatives are currently underway across the Public Service. A detailed action-based Implementation Plan on Public Service Reform is also currently being developed by my Department. This Plan focuses on the commitments to public service reform in the Programme for Government and priority areas from the Transforming Public Services Programme.

It is intended that this Plan will outline the priority actions and timelines for reform in a broad range of areas including leadership, performance, redeployment, eGovernment, shared services, procurement, legislative change, etc., as well as setting out how implementation should be driven and monitored. I intend to report back to Government shortly on a range of these issues.

As part of this process, my officials have been meeting with Departments and Offices to discuss progress made to date both centrally and within individual organisations as well as how best to deliver reform on a coordinated and integrated basis going forward. Meetings were held with all Government Departments and major Offices during the month of August and early September.

As part of the call for submissions from the public under the Comprehensive Review of Expenditure (CRE), a number of submissions that relate to Public Service Reform issues have been received. Additionally a number of submissions were received from various reform and change management organisations, some of whom have made tailored presentations to relevant officials. All relevant contributions are being carefully considered in the context of ongoing work to develop an Implementation Plan on Public Service Reform.