Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen has said he is not ruling out a review of the future of some State agencies on foot of a report from the OECD on public sector reform.
Brian Cowen: pledges to take action to improve public services
Mr Cowen said there was a need to take a hard look at the approach to agencies, how and why they were set up and the proper reporting relationship between them and their parent Government departments.
Speaking at the launch of the report this afternoon, Mr Cowen said he was determined to take decisive action to improve public services.
“Every minister, department, and agency needs to deliver higher productivity in their areas to ensure reform of the public service and quality delivery to citizens”, Mr Cowen said.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that there were currently 800 separate agencies and he believed that there were too many by half.
“The OECD’s findings and recommendations regarding agencies are well-founded and hard-hitting. Departments are focusing on controlling inputs to agencies, rather than on what they should do, or how well they are performing," Mr Ahern said.
The OECD report says that the public service in Ireland remains segmented overall, leading to sub-optimal coherence in policy development, implementation and service delivery. It recommends that the Government should find a new reform agenda that focuses on value for money while maintaining the most important element of its political culture and values.
The report warns that the Government’s decentralisation plans to move civil service departments and State agencies out of Dublin are changing the public service landscape and if not implemented properly may further contribute to fragmentation.
“These changes have implications for the public service’s ability to attract and retain skills, to maintain networks and a coherent approach to policy formulation and to maintain a common public service culture”, it says.
The report says that there should be greater mobility of generalist staff across the different sectors of the public service.
It maintains that increasing mobility will also require the public service to remove traditional divisions between civil service, local authorities and State agencies and create a unified public service labour market. The report also says that the Government should continue in its move to open the public service labour market to non-public servants where needed.
The OECD also suggested pay reforms with departments and agencies being authorised to pay staff within bands rather than specific levels.
Fine Gael deputy leader Richard Bruton said it was "broadly recognised" that Mr Cowen has "no appetite for changing the way we deliver public services or manage the public finances."
“Cowen and Fianna Fáil spent an extra €50 billion in the last four years alone, but with very little to show for it. This wasteful spending and reckless project management simply continued a pattern of earlier years that saw a golden opportunity to change how we deliver services thrown away."
Mr Bruton said from 2009 Mr Cowen should require all Government departments and agencies to surrender 2 per cent of their administrative budgets per annum, with the resources being redirected to "emerging priorities in social welfare and frontline services".
He also called for the "ill-conceived elements" of the decentralisation programme to be abandoned and said the number of State agencies should be cut by at least 30. Public sector pay increases should be tied to the removal of barries to staff mobility between the civil service, local authorities and State agencies, Mr Bruton said.
Labour's deputy leader and spokeswoman on finance, Joan Burton said she hoped the "strong warnings" given by the OECD will "convince Minister Cowen that a major review of the Government’s decentralisation programme is now urgently needed.
"It has been clear for some time the plan could not be implemented on the scale or within the timetable announced by Minister McCreevy in December 2003," she said in a statement.
General secretary of the Impact trade union Peter McLoone welcomed the report, which says Ireland has a “well-regarded public service” with “a tradition of discretion, impartiality and flexibility.”
Mr McLoone said the OECD report debunked the myth that public service pay and employment were out of control.
“The report found that, among OECD countries, Ireland has the third smallest public expenditure as a percentage of GDP, and this figure is decreasing. It also says the public service pay bill has fallen as a percentage of GDP," said. Mr McLoone.
"Irish people deserve world class public services and, if that’s what we truly aspire to, we should be thinking about spending more, not less.”
Impact is the country's largest public service union with over 58,000 members in healthcare, local government, the civil service, education, semi-state organisations and the community sector.