asked the Minister for the Public Service the main functions of his Department; and if it has achieved the objective it was constituted for some years ago.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Department's Functions.
29.
The main functions of the Department of the Public Service are to develop, implement and monitor Government policies in relation to personnel, organisation and pay matters in the Civil Service and, as appropriate, in the wider public service. The Department, therefore, have as their basic objective the achievement of continuing improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of the public service.
Significant progress has been made in this direction, particularly in the past year or so. A comprehensive plan for further major development of the public service will be set out in the forthcoming White Paper on this subject.
The Department's activities have, in many matters, been confined to the Civil Service. An important step in removing this constraint has been the Government decision announced in Building on Reality, to assign responsibility to the Minister for the Public Service for the co-ordination, across the whole public service, of policies in relation to manpower, personnel management, organisation and pay and to give him clear authority to ensure that arrangements decided on are implemented.
The Minister is to get these additional powers and the functions at present undertaken by the Department of Finance. Does the Minister agree that the difficulty for the Department of the Public Service is that, when they were divorced from the Department of Finance some years ago many of the decisions to be made remained with the Department of Finance and, therefore, Public Service cannot implement any of their aspirations and have not made significant progress in any area in recent years?
A number of the functions now being assigned to the Department have not been assigned specifically previously to any single Department. The question of co-ordination of policy is one of the most important aspects of the assignment of the new functions. The implementation of those will be made clear in the White Paper. I would not accept that in the past two years there has not been significant progress in the achievements of the Department.
I would not expect the Minister to accept that. Would he admit that the original plan of the Department was to divide each of the other Departments into organisation, finance and personnel units and that this has not worked and has been more or less abandoned?
The Deputy is referring basically to the Devlin proposals. We have to realise that they were put forward in the context of 1969. Fourteen or 15 years have elapsed since and many events, including our membership of the Community, have meant that the work of certain Departments has become radically different. We need to establish the proper type of organisation and management of Departments commensurate with the needs of today and of the future. In that context, the Devlin proposals and other developments all need to be taken into account.
May I take it that another section of the White Paper deals with the reform of the Devlin proposals and an updating of the real functions of the Department of the Public Service in the mid-eighties?
I do not think I would be disclosing secrets if I answered that question in the affirmative.