Harney calls for leaner, more efficient service

A LEANER, more efficient public service employing fewer people was central to any plan to control public expenditure, the leader…

A LEANER, more efficient public service employing fewer people was central to any plan to control public expenditure, the leader of the Progressive Democrats told the committee.

Public service pay accounted for 33 per cent of all current Government expenditure, said Ms Mary Harney. Over the past four years the public service pay bill had risen by 36 per cent, compared with cumulative inflation of 10 per cent over the same period.

The task of reducing the bill should be tackled through reducing numbers through natural wastage; giving managers more autonomy in managing their budgets; setting cash limits for department staff costs and a deal with public sector unions as part of a new national pay deal.

Higher spending did not automatically mean better service, she went on. "Health spending has risen by 65 per cent in five years, but nobody would suggest that service delivery is now two thirds better than it was. Take prisons. Spending on prisons has grown by 50 per cent in five years but the number of prisoners has only grown by seven 7 per cent over the same period.

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"The culture in which spending estimates are automatically increased every year must be eliminated. Departmental managements must be encouraged to achieve savings within their assigned budgets and rewarded appropriately for doing so - either by way of career advancement or performance related bonus.

Ms Harney called for a major programme of decentralisation of power - the practice of transferring central government offices' out of Dublin and into provincial centres was merely relocation, not decentralisation.

"Does it make sense that the bus service between Dingle and Dunquin in west Kerry is run by a centralised State company based 200 miles away in Dublin?", she asked. The same company ran city bus services in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford as well as local school bus services in every parish in the country.

She said the State should not be involved in any activity that community effort or private enterprise could carry out more efficiently.

"If FAS runs a nationwide network of offices to deal with the job needs of the unemployed, why does the Department of Social Welfare need to operate a separate nationwide bureaucracy merely to pay unemployed people their dole?

"If the Revenue Commissioners run a nationwide bureaucracy to collect cash from the citizen do we need a separate nationwide bureaucracy in the Department of Social Welfare to pay out cash to the citizen?

"If we have democratically elected local authorities in every city and county in this country, why do we need a parallel government of several hundred quangos, which have no popular mandate, dealing with everything from local development, to training, to tourism promotion?", Ms Harney asked.