Public Sector Reform
Monday, 10 February 2014

During a Seanad debate on public sector reform, I said: I called for this debate a couple of weeks and thank the Leader for finding time for it. I read the second progress report on the public service reform plan and was fascinated by how much was in it. One of the issues that immediately comes to my mind, given my experience of the private sector, is the length of time it takes to get something done in the public sector...

There was an example today as Senator John Crown outlined his difficulty in getting through the legislation to ban smoking in cars where children are present. That process has been ongoing for two years and it has still not come to an end. Similar legislation was introduced in the British House of Commons a month ago and will become law this week.

My first experience of moving from the private sector to the public sector was in 1979 when I became chairman of An Post. I doubt the Minister was around at that stage. I remember breaking some rules without knowing it and discovered the embarrassment that could be caused for the Minister if something went wrong. A couple of years later I remember deciding that we should have stamps to mark St. Patrick's Day. I suggested to people in An Post that there be a special stamp. They said it was a great idea and that they would get to work on it right away. That was in January and there were to be samples by late March. I said St. Patrick's Day was 17 March and they said, "Surely you did not mean this year." That is a reminder of how long it takes to get things done. We produced the stamps, although we probably broke some rules in so doing.

The Minister has heard my suggestion before of a public website on which the taxpayer would be able to see where every cent of the money goes. I raise the issue all the time and it needs to be raised. The Government has set up the Ireland Stat website and the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, has argued that this has to be the type of information we seek. It does not, as it covers export statistics or agricultural products. I would like to see something along the lines of the US model, a single website on which we would be able to see exactly what money was required to run public institutions.Will it detail salaries, contracts and the exact cost of roads and hospitals, with total transparency? If that happens, it is good. We need to know what funds are going to charities.

It is coming up to six years since the collapse in 2008, but little has been done to tackle quangos. The Minister has argued that information is available, although he might be saying it will become available. If ir was available now, we would not have Deputies in the Dáil going through the charade of asking parliamentary questions, with the answers received via e-mail. When, if ever, will the Government create a transparent source of information for taxpayers? I thank the Minister, as he has said it is on the way. It took an interviewer's question to reveal the full amount of money Irish Water was paid to get up and running - over €80 million.

Perhaps on another day the chief executive, John Tierney, would not have revealed that to the interviewer. Is that a way to do business? We should not set up a new quango with new people. I was interested to hear Senator Sheahan talk about quangos. We could simply pass legislation that requires every Department and public institution to upload documents and figures on their spending and get the public to judge. Such online programmes are cheap and they are easy to use. They are simple to change into easy to read graphs for the public. The media does that job to an extent but we must move towards the public being an effective watchdog by virtue of being given access to all that information. We could come up with such simple legislation in the Seanad which would be an amazing contribution to society. I would love to hear the Minister’s views on this later.

I would like to see more public debate on freedom at all levels of society. People are too passive when it comes to the Government making laws. Politicians make laws which very often put more restrictions on people’s lives but the Government never seems to withdraw them. I hate to see a move towards the nanny state but the Garda is used by the Government to check tax on cars rather than concentrate on areas of concern such as burglaries or violence. The Garda Síochána has strayed from its original mandate of doing preventative policing because now we are getting gardaí to be tax collectors, as such. That is one example where the public needs to have more information. I will not get into a debate on the reports on the office of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission but it is a matter that will get a lot of attention.

It is amazing to consider that the State still has 170 budget lines, and 11 independent agencies, responsible for the disbursement of the State's science programme. That is an incredible figure for a country of just 4.5 million people. One could ask whether we need such an amount of budget lines and agencies for that purpose. Perhaps one or two agencies would be enough. That is not good enough. We need much more action in the area. The Government may have effectively created a two-tier system whereby older civil servants keep their privileges and new entrants have nowhere near the same benefits. Coming from the business world I am aware that it is always very difficult if one has two people doing the same job and one is being paid a lot more or a lot less than the other. One example is that new doctors will be paid approximately 30% less than those already in the positions.

As reported by the media, the salaries of consultants range from €147,000 to about €200,000, which as the Minister indicated, is more than a Minister is paid. The focus of attention should be on savings to the combined pay and pensions bill, not just the pay bill. Why are we not focusing on real reform of absenteeism such as sick days, payments of increments and the lack of any real dismissals in the public sector for under-performance? There are very few dismissals for under-performance that I can see.

I am concerned that we would have real reform. Why do we still have a situation where there are more or less no dismissals for under-performance?

I am fortunate to have a granddaughter who grew up in France. She is studying in China at the moment. She has been there for some time but she goes back and forth. Her ambition is to become an ambassador or work in the French diplomatic service. One of our difficulties is that we send ambassadors to the Far East when they are in their 40s or 50s and they do not speak the language very well. I would love to think there are ways that we could train people up from an earlier age.

I wish to refer to some interesting ideas on public sector reform worldwide to see whether the Minister would be open to them. In France, the Government rightly identified that public service reform must be focused on what matters to people. They found that in general most people perceive Government services to be effective, based on just a small number of personal and professional interactions or what I call life events. How easy was it, for instance, to obtain a marriage licence or to register the birth of a child or for a business to open a new branch or office? As unfortunate as it is, claiming social welfare has become a life event, and the Government made it a key goal to increase public confidence by simplifying such interactions.

I am delighted that the Minister has grabbed hold of this issue and is getting somewhere, but I get frustrated, as I am sure the Minister does, at the length of time it takes to get things done. I encourage him to retain his commitment and enthusiasm and continue in the direction in which he is going in order to achieve what he has set out to achieve. I am delighted that we are having this debate.

 

For a full record of the debate, please click here.
 
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