Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 4 Jul 1985

Vol. 360 No. 3

Estimates, 1985. - Vote 19: Office of the Minister for the Public Service (Revised Estimate).

Minister for the Public Service (Mr. Boland)

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £7,400,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1985, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Public Service and for payment of a grant-in-aid.

I propose to discuss with this Vote, Vote 20 — Civil Service Commission — Vote 21 — Office of the Ombudsman — Vote 22 — Superannuation and Retired Allowances — and Vote 49 — Increases in Remuneration and Pensions.

An Ceann Comhairle

I take it is agreed to discuss Vote 21 with the other Votes.

Mr. Haughey

Agreed.

Mr. Boland

Before dealing with the financial details, Deputies, I am sure, will want to hear of the developments that have taken place in the intervening 12 months as regards the Government's programme for improvements in and development of the public service. The House can be in no doubt as to the Government's, or my commitment and determination to provide for an efficient, effective and modern public service.

I have prepared a draft white paper, and a general scheme of a Bill, outlining a comprehensive programme for the development of the public service. My Department have completed a very full process of consultation with other Departments about the proposals contained in that document and it has now been submitted to Government.

These proposals will provide a worthwhile and broadly based programme which, I am confident, will enable the Civil Service and the wider public service to perform their functions in the most effective manner in the difficult and rapidly changing times which face us.

While I cannot comment in detail on the contents of the White Paper because my proposals must first be approved by the Government, I can say that it will spell out in greater detail the Government's decisions on the public service contained in Building on Reality. It will deal with proposals for new, more accountable systems of management, proposals to free Ministers from the details of day-to-day administration of their Departments, staff mobility and co-ordination across the public service.

Much, however, has already been accomplished in the past 12 months. As Members of the House will be aware, I have constantly pointed to the need for systems of accountable management in the public service and such a new system has been in operation in my own Department for the past year.

It was developed with the intentions of promoting a more cost-conscious approach to management and of generating a greater sense of personal responsibility among individual managers for the efficient use of the resources allocated to them.

The system is based on a departmental plan which takes a methodical view of the overall aim and objectives of the Department. For this, clear statements of the programmes being carried out to achieve these objectives, and their cost, were prepared. Within these programmes, the personal objectives and budgets of individual managers down to principal level were identified. These features facilitated a complete review of the Department's activities by the Management Committee towards the end of 1984.

Following this review, the system has been refined and the departmental plan for 1985 has now been completed. The system has also been expanded to include personal objectives and budgets for assistant principals. The intention in this is that responsibility within programmes, and for resources used, should be delegated as far down the management structure as possible, thus giving individuals a more challenging and rewarding role in the Department's activities.

Work is also progressing in financial aspects of the system. The intention is that the total costs involved in any of the Department's activities will be identified with the relevant programmes and objectives of individuals. In this way a "value for money" attitude towards the Department's activities is being increasingly cultivated. The benefits derived from a particular programme can be viewed more readily in the light of the cost of that programme. It is intended that the preparation of the Department's Estimates for forthcoming years will rest on this programme basis, taking greater account of the activities for which funds are being provided, who is administratively responsible for them and what is expected to be achieved with them.

Some development work remains to be done. When this has been completed, the system will be extended to all other Departments. I am well aware that conditions vary from Department to Department due to differences of size and functions being carried out. Therefore a rigid adherence to the type of system developed in my Department cannot be imposed. Departments will be invited to view the system which is operating, to assess the many benefits which it has to offer and to adapt it to cater for their own needs.

Another significant development now in place for almost 18 months, is that of the Top Level Appointments Committee which allows for a new, more merit-based system of making appointments to top levels in the Civil Service. Under the scheme all appointments to posts at the level of assistant secretary (including departmental and professional equivalents) and above are now made following consideration of a recommendation of the committee.

To date, 30 vacancies have been filled through the new arrangements, including seven secretaries of Departments. Nine of the appointments involved movement between Departments. This represents a major breakthrough in the Government's policy to encourage lateral mobility in the civil and public service.

As part of the new arrangements the tenure of office of secretaries of Departments was changed to provide that secretaries appointed under the new arrangements would serve for not more than seven years. Secretaries of Departments appointed under the new system must retire from such posts at the age of 60. However, officers aged 55 or over on the date the new scheme started (i.e. January 1984) continue to be eligible for appointment as secretary but, if appointed, will have to retire after five years and, in any event, on reaching the age of 65.

The scheme has widened promotional opportunities throughout the Civil Service for officers at principal and assistant secretary levels, including departmental and professional equivalents. The underlying thrust of the scheme towards greater mobility and more competitive systems of promotion is reflected in developments relating to other Civil Service promotional schemes at middle and senior management levels.

This is reflected in particular in the recent introduction of an interdepartmental scheme of promotion to the grade of principal and certain related grades. This scheme provides that one in three of all existing posts and all new posts will be filled by interdepartmental competition. Half the vacancies arising at assistant principal level and half the vacancies at higher executive officer level are now filled by interdepartmental competition. The net result of these changes is that competitive interdepartmental promotion schemes now apply to at least all general service management grades in the Civil Service. These provide that different proportions of vacancies at different levels are filled by interdepartmental competition.

Effective appraisal schemes are an essential component of any system of management based on personal responsibility and of any system of promotion based on merit. They also provide an invaluable mechanism for identifying the training and development needs of staff. Schemes are now in operation for all grades from executive officer upwards in the general administrative stream, for all posts coming under the Top Level Appointments Committee, and for certain other departmental grades.

Arising out of decisions of the Government Task Force on Employment, schemes of career breaks and job-sharing have been introduced in the Civil Service. Under the job-sharing scheme, serving civil servants may opt to share equally the duties and responsibilities of a particular post in return for half pay and other benefits. All vacancies, including those occurring at recruitment level, are filled, thus providing additional job opportunities in the Civil Service for new recruits. Up to the end of April 1985, there were 297 applications for job-sharing, of which 150 had been granted at that time.

In addition to introducing job-sharing for serving civil servants, arrangements have been made to recruit a total of 180 staff, comprising 90 clerical assistants, 60 clerical officers and 30 executive officers, on a job-sharing basis during 1985. Job-sharing recruits will be offered full time employment after a minimum of two years' service.

Under the career break scheme, the majority of civil servants will be eligible to apply for a career break which will consist of special leave without pay for a period of not less than a year and not more than three years. Career breaks may be used for a wide variety of reasons including domestic responsibilities, further education, setting up a business, or any other reason.

Vacancies arising when serving officers take career breaks will be filled, as will consequential vacancies including those at recruitment level. This increases job opportunities in the Civil Service for new recruits. Officers returning after a career break will be assigned to vacancies as and when they arise. Up to the end of April 1985, there were 766 applications for career breaks, of which 751 have been granted.

It will be seen that the net effect in the first year of operation of both the job-sharing and career break schemes is that some 800 or 900 additional people have obtained employment in the Civil Service, in addition to the benefit which has been obtained by the participants in the schemes.

In view of the success of the schemes in the Civil Service the Government decided to extend them to other areas in the public sector and a commitment to this effect is given in the national plan. Government Ministers have been asked to have the schemes promoted in all State agencies attached to their Departments. Career break schemes have already been introduced in the local authority and health areas and negotiations on schemes for the teaching area, for the Garda and for the clerical and administrative staff in the VECs are well advanced.

It is hoped that the success which the schemes have enjoyed in the Civil Service will be replicated in the wider public service. All necessary steps will be taken to ensure that the schemes are promoted vigorously throughout the public sector.

In order to give staff fresh experiences and more challenging tasks, as well as to introduce new ideas, the Government are determined to arrange for a significant number of temporary exchanges between the Civil Service, the rest of the public sector — particularly Departments' own agencies — and the private sector. Although a scheme of exchanges was agreed in 1979 the number of staff involved to date has been very disappointing, despite a Government directive to Departments in July 1983 which required 56 exchanges in all, of which nine were to be with the private sector. In fact, there has been particular difficulty in relation to the number of exchanges between the Civil Service and the private sector.

While 24 exchanges have taken place within the Civil Service and with semi-State bodies since July 1983, only five private sector firms or organisations have exchanged staff with the Civil Service since the scheme began in 1979 — Guinness, Irish Cement, Stokes Kennedy Crowley, the Federated Union of Employers and the Bank of Ireland.

Because these exchanges are designed to develop the individuals who take part, to provide an intake of special skills and to improve communication and understanding between the public service and the private sector, and added impetus has now been given to the scheme by the appointment of a senior officer in my Department with specific responsibility for ensuring that more exchanges with the private sector take place. There have been very encouraging indications recently from several of the large private sector firms and I hope to be in a position next year to report considerable progress in the development of the staff exchange scheme, especially in relation to movement between the private and public sectors.

A scheme of Anglo-Irish exchanges also exists. As well as contributing to the development of British and Irish civil servants, the scheme is intended to improve mutual understanding between the two countries. Exchanges can be for periods of six months to two years and about three exchanges — each way — are envisaged at any one time. Despite unhelpful comment at the time of the announcement of the scheme, I am pleased that its implementation has already begun.

A radically revised staff suggestion scheme, INPUT, has been introduced in the Civil Service to encourage initiative and creativity. It offers prizes of from £50 to £1,000 for suggestions from civil servants on how to do things better, how to cut costs or how to avoid waste. Prize winners are determined by an interdepartmental committee under the chairmanship of an officer of my Department.

The Government are determined to continue their programme of increased utilisation of information technology to improve the efficiency of public service administration, to increase the effectiveness of management and professional staff and to make access to services more readily available to the public. The widespread use of modern technology is essential to deliver an increasingly complex range of services at a time when we are committed to further reductions in Civil Service numbers. During the past year we have strengthened the organisational arrangements for the management of information technology in the Civil Service.

Much of the work which was previously carried out by the Central Data Processing Services (CDPS) of my Department has been decentralised in order to give local management greater responsibility for, and control of, their own information processing. The major impact of this decision has been the transfer of a large number of CDPS personnel to the Departments of Social Welfare, Justice and Health. It has also strengthened the recent trend of providing for new systems through the installation of local computors rather than through the expansion of the CDPS mainframe capacity.

Central support, co-ordination and control of such widespread development is important if the momentum is to be maintained and resources used to best advantage. For this purpose CDPS has been restructured into three separate functions within my Department.

A Central Computing Service (CCS) has been established to develop and support common and service-wide applications. The CCS will also support smaller Departments which have not as yet established systems development services. Both Departments and the CCS will make the fullest use of the most modern systems development aids and will make use of off-the-shelf and turnkey solutions whenever they are available and justifiable.

The second new function is an Information Management Advisory Service (IMAS) to advise and assist Departments with the development of plans and to co-ordinate plans between Departments. During the coming year all Departments will be required to produce plans for the utilisation of information technology and this planning process will be the vehicle for ongoing review and co-ordination of progress in this area. The plans will identify clear objectives for the use of technology, specific projects to address those objectives, and the resources necessary to implement them. These plans will ensure that investment decisions are based on the best possible information in relation to the costs, benefits and overall impact of proposed projects.

The advisory service will also undertake research into areas of information technology which are of particular relevance, e.g. 4th generation aids, networking, etc., and will formulate guidelines and standards for the acquisition, introduction and use of these.

Growth in the capability of microcomputers has been remarkable in recent years and we are establishing within IMAS a microcomputer support centre to demonstrate the potential of this particular technology in a Civil Service environment and to support users in identifying uses for it.

The third function to be exercised centrally is one of control on expenditure and monitoring the achievement of results. While we are committed to more extensive usage of technology it is important that expenditure on it should be as tightly controlled as all public expenditure at present. In future this function will be administered by the vote control section of my Department.

In parallel with the above developments to encourage more active progress at Departmental level, we are conscious that individual applications of technology sometimes depend on the availability of central infrastructures. One avenue which we are actively considering is the extent to which an interdepartmental communications network would facilitate the development of trans-departmental information processing services. This is an exciting and interesting area for exploration and I have recently invited a number of firms of consultants to tender for a consultancy project related to this initiative.

Members of the House will be particularly interested in two proposed developments of direct relevance to their work as public representatives. The proposals of the Leader of the House in relation to the use of technology in the business of the Houses of the Oireachtas are progressing and we would expect to see the introduction of some facilities this year. I have also commenced a study of the potential improvements which information technology could bring to the administration of Ministers' private offices and we expect to commence implementation in some offices this year. I hope that the introduction of that technology will, as well as being of benefit to the Department, result in an improved standard of service in handling queries from public representatives and members of the public addressed to individual Ministers.

Our policy and action in relation to information technology are based on continuing review of the latest developments and best practices in this rapidly evolving and critical area. We will continue to promote and expedite its effective utilisation as an essential feature of developing public services to meet modern requirements.

The Ombudsman's first year in office was a busy one as his annual report, which was recently published, reveals. The report shows that a total of 2,267 complaints were received. These were received from every county in Ireland and involved almost all of the Government Departments and offices subject to investigation by the Ombudsman. The majority of the complaints were in the areas of social welfare, taxation or telecommunications. The nature and extent of the complaints received clearly underline the need for the office and fully justifies its establishment.

There have been a number of important developments recently concerning the Ombudsman. A major extension of his remit took place on 1 April last. In addition to Government Departments and offices, the Ombudsman is now empowered to investigate complaints relating to health boards, local authorities, An Post and Bord Telecom Éireann. Deputies will also recall that the Ombudsman Act, 1980, was amended last November to provide that orders altering the Schedules to the Act require a positive motion of approval by both Houses of the Oireachtas.

Members of the House were thus fully involved in the decision to extend the remit of the Ombudsman and I am pleased to say that this extension was heartily approved by all sides. The Schedules to the 1980 Act have also been updated to take account of a number of bodies which have been established since the original legislation was enacted. This is a major expansion of the Ombudsman's remit and it means that the actions of an additional 100,000 public servants approximately fall within his jurisdiction.

The Estimates being discussed today reflect that expansion, and in particular the broadening of the Ombudsman's role in relation to the health boards, local authorities, An Post and Bord Telecom Éireann. A total amount of £655,000 is being provided this year which is a major increase over 1984 when the Estimate totalled almost £244,000. Staffing costs are of course the major element in the Estimate for the office. I understand that a competition to recruit 12 additional investigators has also been completed. I would like to take this opportunity of wishing the Ombudsman and his staff every success in their important work.

A reduction in the numbers in and cost of the public service has been a prime concern of the Government. There are two main reasons for this. Because of the extra numbers taken into the public service up to mid-1981, often with little or no regard as to whether these staff were necessary or could be gainfully employed, we were satisfied that there were substantial reserves of staff in public service organisations generally which needed to be shaken out. Secondly, we have been concerned at the sheer scale of the public service pay bill — £2,464 million for 1985 — and the budgetary problems associated with providing for expenditure of those dimensions.

In general, our aim has been, and still is, to reduce the size of the public service to a level more in keeping with the country's requirements and the capacity of the taxpayer to sustain it. And so we have continued various restrictions aimed at reducing public service numbers and are committed to maintaining that approach over the period of the national plan.

In the Civil Service the embargo on the filling of two out of every three vacancies continues. Since 1981 the number of Civil Service posts has been reduced through this method by 2,800 or 8.3 per cent. The embargo is not, however, applied blindly. Exceptions have been made, for instance, in relation to vacancies arising from career breaks and job sharing schemes. Such vacancies are filled in all circumstances so that the potential of these schemes to create employment openings can be realised. Also where special difficulties were acknowledged to exist, e.g. in relation to the Department of Social Welfare and the Revenue Commissioners, extra staff has been provided by redeployment from other Departments. The operation of the embargo is being supplemented by reviews of Departments and of schemes and programmes. The overall result will be a slimmer and fitter Civil Service more suited to our national needs, and to our national pocket.

Elsewhere in the public service the curbs on numbers are being applied mostly indirectly through control of cash allocations. In this way management will be provided with an added incentive to review its projects and procedures and to streamline its services and provide them in the most cost-effective way possible. While allocations will be limited and numbers employed will fall, I am satisfied that sufficient resources will be available to ensure that with good management and direction a satisfactory level of services will be maintained. Over the period of the national plan the target is that the public service numbers will fall by 5,000 of which the Civil Service will provide 1,500.

The underlying purpose of many of the changes introduced in the public service is to improve its efficiency and effectiveness, its value for money and its courtesy in dealing with the public. I have taken a number of specific initiatives designed to impact directly on the interaction between the public service and the general public. Some examples are as follows. A major advertising campaign was run in press and on TV to publicise the Government decision that civil servants must give their name when using the telephone, must clearly indicate their name and designation in all correspondence with the public and must wear a name badge if they deal regularly with the public. Major improvements were carried out in a number of public office areas to pilot the type of improvements which can be made in such areas in all Departments. The State Services entry in the telephone directories (Parts I and II) was redesigned and now includes an easy-reference alphabetic listing of services together with the normal Department-by-Department entry. It is printed in pages of a different colour from the remainder of the directory. A special Forms Design Unit has been established. The unit is equipped with modern computer-aided design equipment and has as its objective the improvement and simplification of the presentation and layout of Civil Service forms.

On the general question of public service pay policy, the basic policy is set out in some detail in the national plan which indicated that achievement of the Government's public expenditure targets requires that the growth in the pay and pensions bill be severely restricted over the years 1985 to 1987.

I have previously suggested in this House that if individual Deputies or members of the public come across examples of badly designed, misleading or upsetting public service or Civil Service forms I would be very appreciative if they would bring them to my attention, pointing out the areas where the public have difficulty in comprehending the complexity of the types of answers being sought. Again, I ask the House for co-operation in bringing details of such forms to our attention. There are still some 30,000 forms being used by the public and it is self-evident that there will be many forms which were not designed to the highest standard and some of which we have yet to come across.

The underlying philosophy is that in order to avoid severe reductions in staff numbers, which could cause a sharp deterioration in public services and increase unemployment, it is necessary to curtail the growth in average pay per head over the period of the plan. The cash limits specified in the plan permit payment of special pay increases committed or sanctioned at the date of the plan, including payment of phases yet to be implemented under the terms of the 1983 PSPA. It is not possible, however, to provide for any further special increases over the period of the plan.

Last year the cost of Exchequer pay and pensions increased by 7.4 per cent to £2,337 million. The provision for 1985 has been increased by a further 5.4 per cent to £2,464 million to meet the cost of implementing the 24th round pay increase in the public service, the carry-forward cost of the second phase of the 1983 Public Service Pay Agreement and the cost of special increases which were sanctioned or committed before the publication of the plan.

I now turn to some of the financial details relating to this group of Estimates.

The Estimates for Vote 19 — the Office of the Minister for the Public Service — is £7.4 million, which is an increase of £1.106 million on the 1984 outturn. The Vote covers the day to day running expenses of the Department and comes in the main under four broad heads, three of expenditure and one, Appropriations-in-Aid of income. Pay of staff amounts to £4.870 million which is 66 per cent of the total Estimate. This provision reflects the transfer of 68 staff to the Departments of Social Welfare, Justice and Health during March/April 1985, arising from the implementation of the Government decision on the Report of the Review Body on computerisation in the Government Services.

The second item of major expenditure is £900,000 for the purchase, leasing, renting and maintenance of computer equipment used by the Department's Central Computing Service. A provision of £1.068 million has been provided by way of a grant-in-aid for the Institute of Public Administration. This grant-in-aid is a contribution towards the general expenses of the institute and includes the corporate subscriptions on behalf of Government Departments. The institute is involved in the training and education of public servants, in promoting and undertaking administrative research and in publishing sources of material on public administration. Appropriations-in-Aid on the Vote are expected to come to £1 million in 1985. These arise mainly from receipts in respect of computer services provided by the Central Computing Service for bodies other than Government Departments.

The second vote is Vote 20, the Civil Service Commission. The cost of running the Civil Service Commission and Local Appointments Commission in 1985 is estimated at a net amount of £1,140,000. This amount is required to cover the cost of salaries, wages and allowances of the staff of the two commissions, the cost of the competitions run by them and various other expenses. The gross cost comes to £2,060,000 but revenue received will reduce this by £920,000 to £1,140,000.

The third Vote is Vote 22 — Superannuation and Retired Allowances — which requires a net amount of £43.442 million. The Vote covers payments of pension and retirement lump sums to established and non-established civil servants, to their widows and widows of the Judiciary. The increase on this Vote compared to the 1984 outturn is due to the increase in the number of pensioners and the revision of pensions in line with pay increases.

As regards Vote 49 — Increases in Remuneration and Pensions — this Vote provides £108 million to meet the cost to the Exchequer of implementing the decision announced in the budget to make provision for a 24th Round settlement in the public service based on the terms of the arbitrator's finding for certain civil servants. The arbitrator recommended a seven month pay pause followed by a 3 per cent increase from 1 January 1985 and a further 3 per cent from 1 July 1985. The provision in the Vote will be distributed to Departments and the State bodies later in the year when the full extent of excesses on departmental provisions for pay can be assessed.

Mr. B. Ahern

The functions and the importance of the Department of the Public Service are not always recognised by this House. While many of us have often asked if the Department have any real function or whether they should be part of another Department, the officials have been of great help to the Minister over the last year. I will not deal at length with the report of the Committee on Public Expenditure because we will be dealing with it later, but in that report Mr. Murphy, Secretary of the Department, set down what he thought were the five main functions of the Department. They show clearly the importance of the Department in the overall running of the public service in its broadest sense. Sometimes people tend to think of this Department as being just another Department without any relationship with the rest of the Civil Service and the public service. The functions of that Department as set out in the report were, first, to allocate functions and responsibilities between different Departments and different parts of the public service in the best possible way; second, to help the Departments or organisations to organise themselves in the best way, to have effective top management systems, a proper allocation of responsibility and adequate information systems, computer systems and other systems; third, to recruit the best people, to put them in the right places, to promote them and motivate them, and that was described as their manpower, planning and personnel policy; fourth, to look after pay, conditions, pensions and all the control and regulatory work of the Civil Service and the public service; and, fifth, to bring about fundamental changes by standing back and looking at the public service in a much more objective way. When we are discussing the annual Estimate of this Department we must consider these five points, which are the functions of the Department as set down by the Minister and his officials.

I accept what the Minister said about job creation, career breaks, job sharing, the Top Level Appointments Committee and so on. All are helping in some way. Some are effective and some are a cause for disappointment — for example, the job-sharing and other schemes. But I welcome the Minister's promise to broaden the career breaks and job-sharing schemes into all sections of the public service because anything that will create jobs in the public service is better than the present position of stagnation.

The setting up of the Top Level Appointments Committee is to be welcomed. It appeared to outsiders that promotion in the public service was on the basis of seniority and not always ability. From my 15 years experience in the public service promotion under the old system seemed to be on seniority. It did not seem logical that a person of 40 or 45 years could not become a secretary or an assistant secretary of a Department. It always appeared that such a person was around 60 years of age but under the new system that has dramatically changed. I hold the view that the Top Level Appointments Committee appear to be doing the job properly.

I could read a litany of the number of times — and he did it again today — the Minister promised to give us the facts about the reform of the public service. Since November 1983 he has promised in this House, and more often elsewhere, that the White Paper would issue shortly. I will not read out the number of times this has been promised because it would be a pointless exercise. The Minister has been in office for two and a half years and there has been great talk of reshuffles and changes, but we still have no White Paper. The Minister said this morning that the White Paper is now with the Government. If it suffers the same fate as the Broadcasting Bill we should see it in two to three years' time. We can talk ad nauseum about reform, technology and changes of emphases, but until we have the White Paper clearly showing what reforms are intended and what is likely to happen, we will never know what this Government are thinking in the area of public service reform.

It is very disappointing for all those who rushed to make submissions in 1983 that this White Paper has not yet issued. We were told that this paper would issue in 1983, then Easter 1984, then autumn 1984, Christmas 1984, spring 1985, Easter 1985, summer 1985 and now it is with the Government. I hope there really is a White Paper and that some day we will see it. Like the spokesman on Labour, I am in a very frustrating situation because we have been promised a White Paper on manpower authority for the last two years and my information is that we might get it in 1986 but that it is not even with the Government yet. We should be thankful for small mercies. I meet groups and discuss what might be in these documents, but this is very frustrating because we do not know what they will contain. If these delays are not the Minister's fault, it must be equally frustrating for him that this White Paper is still not available. It is fruitless to bring out a White Paper in the dying days of a Government. In my view this is a major disappointment and a failure on the part of the Department and the Minister.

The national plan set out the guidelines of what would happen in the public service pay area over the next three years. As is normal with this Minister, there was tough talk and he said there would be no arbitrator. There was a long battle about the appointment of an arbitrator and whether he would have any say in the matter. At the end of the day there was an arbitrator and he issued his independent findings. Overnight the Government accepted his findings and all the hard talk and all that was written in the national plan was for nothing. Perhaps the success from the Government's point of view was that they achieved something by saying that they would give nothing, that civil servants might be made redundant and that there might not be enough money to pay pensions. We were given the impression that the arbitrator would be intimidated and would give a smaller percentage than he would have otherwise given. But I do not believe that happened, nor does anybody else believe it. I believe the arbitrator reached his decision independently and that the Government caved in. I assume that what we read in the national plan has gone by the board and perhaps the Minister would tell us if these decisions will be made by the arbitrator over the next few years and that whatever he decides in the area of pay increases will be given.

In my opinion it is vitally important that the Government bring their case to arbitration. They should fight their case and get the best advice possible from Finance and elsewhere to show that the public service is a heavy cost factor on the State, that money does not grow on trees and that they have to be very careful about the amount of money they give. The correct way to do this is to set out your case at arbitration and not attack and beat down everybody else and at the end of the day give in. When you do that you create ill-feeling with people saying things they do not mean, threats of public servants going on strike and then the day before the strike appointment an arbitrator who is allowed to make an independent report.

People who do not consider the matter too deeply say there must be an "us and them" situation, that there must be a tough public service and so on. We see a new approach in the public service unions. I do not believe these militant people would have been leading the unions in earlier days. In some cases these people are using political influence, something which did not happen in the public service at one time. I believe this is happening because people believe they have to show strength, because if they do not sort out this "bully boy Minister" he will walk all over them, they well get nothing and there may be redundancies. This may not be as the Minister sees it, but this is what people are saying. People in positions of authority in the unions are using those tactics.

It is easy to see the reason for their success in the last few years. One does not have to go to any particular Department to see why they are so successful and so organised. Perhaps there is a problem, because responsible unions and associations such as the Association of Higher Civil Servants whose membership would be made up of politically impartial people never being involved in corruption and always serving well politicians of all parties, are beginning to ask what one has to do to win battles and to wonder should they become more organised and more militant. That is a bad step for our Civil Service.

Decentralisation has always been regarded by my party as an important part of Civil Service reform. Literally nothing has been done about it by this Government. The Minister should tell the House whether he totally disagrees with plans for decentralisation, or if he feels that the policies which were there in the past are just nonsense. I put forward the alternative view that the growth of urbanisation around Dublin throughout the sixties has not necessarily been a good thing and it has not helped the public service to have all the national schemes and services for the public based in the Dublin area. What services should be moved out is a matter for the Government. I strongly contend that there must be many services which could better serve the people for whom they were set up in the first place if they were based in the rural parts of the country or in other cities. Fianna Fáil in Government had plans and went a long way down the road to fostering that scheme of decentralisation. Does the Minister consider the matter dead and of no future value?

There has been much talk, particularly in the Committee on Public Expenditure, about the funding of pensions. I noted that the Minister did not say much about that. Is the proposal put forward by that committee that adequate examination be undertaken to ensure that the necessary funds are available to look after our future liabilities and their costing and monitoring being considered? This is a matter causing concern to other Governments and other administrations. People should not make wild statements that pension schemes can no longer be funded and that certain pensions have to be eliminated. Some have attempted to highlight just a few pensions, to make a public controversy about them. It makes good reading but the purpose behind it is beyond me. I ask the Minister to assure the House on this point and to cost the future pension liabilities. If there is a problem, let it be brought into the open. If it is impossible to continue to fund pension schemes for the public service at large as at present we might as well know that. Anyone in the private sector will tell you that it is almost impossible to buy a pension scheme which would equate with that of the public service. It is a perk and I have said that in the past to some of the groups of civil servants whom I have met. When they say that they have lost out compared with manufacturing industry and other sectors, they must also remember the element of their pension scheme which is a huge cost to the State and a huge perk to them. They like to forget about this, but they must take it into account. They are in a privileged position in that regard. The Minister must ensure that we are not told a pension scheme is being funded when, in effect, it is not.

From my early days of working in a hospital in the city I was involved with CDPS in a large way. It was a headache for me for many years, but was of great benefit to my workload later on. I have great respect for the people in the CDPS but, I wonder have they moved with the times. When one visits the commercial industries abroad and sees the present capabilities of computers and the progress made in the commercial world of computers, I am not so sure that the CDPS, for one reason or other, have managed to keep up. They had established themselves in the mid-seventies to do great things, but I am not convinced that they have continued to make progress. Perhaps it is lack of resources, or their ability to hold on to key people. The major problem always was that once a person was trained he or she went to the outside world, to the world computer industry. They were robbed of many of the better people. For a long time I have considered that key people should not be paid on a graded structure, but on merit. The State loses the best brains in computers and technology after their preliminary years of training in the central computer agency. When they become of benefit to the State, they go out into commercial enterprises.

When any Member of this House goes into any Government Department as against going into banks, insurance or commercial life, the first thing noticed is the lack of modern technology. There seems to be a block to using automation and technology as used in other areas. The public service have failed very badly to get people to use these new techniques. Whether the problem is that of convincing people to use them or the unions to adopt them or of retraining staff, we have moved very slowly. The Civil Service in this regard are in the same position as the banks and insurance companies were ten years ago.

The amount of paper work still clogging Government Departments and the massive delays in numerous Government Departments show that we have not moved away from manual systems. Far too much work is still being attempted manually which could be done much better by computers, as in the whole area of recording. So much of the work is repetitive and standardised that it could not be more ideal for computerisation. If banking, insurance work, complicated stock exchange control, ordering and purchasing systems can be computerised, as is being done in almost any small business employing 20 people, it is amazing to find large Government Departments with several hundreds of staff where even a micro-processor or a hi-tech typewriter is a rare item.

To find typing pools in 1985 puts the Civil Service back in the Victorian age. That is sad in the age of computers, particularly as this country is probably exporting a high proportion of the best computers manufactured in the world today. Irish people are involved in their manufacture and in training programmes. I do not believe that computerisation of the public service, with the use of videos in information offices and quick feedback, cannot be brought in in less than 12 months' time. If the people at present involved are expected to make this change, it may probably take that long, but I think it would be worth the investment.

The Minister said his own aims for his Department are efficiency, effectiveness, value for money and courtesy in dealing with the public. Nobody should put it better, but can he do that, with heaps of files on floors and 19th century cabinets, when all that paperwork could be microfilmed? It can be done by a few people on 12 months training courses. Perhaps it is in a few areas in the public service——

Mr. Kelly

That is the objection to it. That is why it is not brought in.

Mr. B. Ahern

Whatever the reason, it is necessary.

Mr. Kelly

Then let us drag it out from under the table.

Mr. B. Ahern

While the Deputy was absent from the House I said whatever the objection — even if it is an objection by the union — the matter should be brought out into the open. It is incomprehensible that we should continue on in this inefficient way. The Association of Higher Civil Servants have said that they have no objection to computerisation. They point out that their association made a lengthy submission to the Minister and they maintain that the content of that submission should set aside once and for all the caricature of the Civil Service so often put forward by Ministers and journalists that they are opposed to all changes in structures and practices. They point out that they are willing to be involved in consultation regarding modernisation and technology. The Minister can tell the House the facts of the matter. I agree with Deputy Kelly that we should find out those facts once and for all. The Minister has set out his commitment to have efficiency, effectiveness and value for money in the public service. We have thousands of civil servants going around with files, biros and pencils, gathering information, duplicating work day in and day out. All I ask is that the necessary changes be made.

In the House recently the Minister for Health, Deputy Desmond, said that Fianna Fáil had stated they would do away with the embargo on their return to office. That was the first I heard of it. The only commitment given in regard to this matter by Fianna Fáil was that we would look more sympathetically at areas where it would be of benefit to the State to relax the embargo. In my view the system of filling one in three vacancies tends to be too arbitrary. It is used within Departments to reduce certain grades of staff while other grades protect themselves. In most Departments there is a shortage of messengers and ushers but in the senior grades there are not many vacancies. If we are to have redeployment in the Civil Service it should not be done in such an arbitrary way. If people are recruited on the basis that they will be employed by the Civil Service at a particular location and if they are then sent somewhere else, I do not understand why that system does not hold throughout the service and not just for some people. I welcome what is being done by the Top Level Appointments Committee and the fact that there has been so much movement within Departments. It should happen in all grades. At the moment the staff in the tax offices are overworked. The embargo is affecting them severely; there is far too much overtime and the staff are under pressure, but in other Departments there are people twiddling their thumbs, although perhaps not to the same degree as in the past. When money can be collected by the State to help our balance of payments and to make our tax system more equitable, the embargo should not be applied too arbitrarily. There is considerable dissatisfaction among the staff in the tax offices. One has only to look at the people who represent them to realise the way they are moving in Irish society. The embargo has created much frustration in that area.

What is the difficulty about redeploying in the public service? This matter is dealt with in the committee that was chaired by Deputy Keating and I am sure we will have an opportunity at a later date to discuss their recommendations. That committee stated that the Department of the Public Service should incorporate into their manpower planning systems procedures to identify surplus staff in order to facilitate their early redeployment. I should like to know why that has not been done. We must question how we can get around the embargo where this is necessary by using the mechanism of redeployment. The lack of planning in this area is to be regretted.

We have had many debates in this House on the office of the Ombudsman in the past 18 months. In his 1984 report the Ombudsman said that while his office cannot impose their findings on the public service, they can inform the Oireachtas of any failure by a Department to respect his recommendations. Throughout the world recommendations from the office of the Ombudsman are accepted by Government Departments.

The Ombudsman referred to many problems that are the cause of much concern to our citizens. They relate to social insurance, law of domicile, deserted husbands, various tax anomalies affecting widows, trade disputes where people are locked out and delay in the payment of benefits. If a person cannot pay the Revenue Commissioners for five or six years he is charged a penal interest rate but that does not apply to a Department where an old age pensioner is deprived of a pension for many years. When the pensioner eventually gets the money after many years the civil servants very carefully work out the interest rate obtaining at that time. This is in sharp contrast to the attitude adopted by the Revenue Commissioners. A Government cannot have it both ways.

I realise that to deal with many of these matters requires amendment of our legislation. The Ombudsman has just issued his first report and the Minister has it in his power to take the necessary action with regard to the recommendations made. I have always supported the establishment of the office of the Ombudsman. I pressed for the employment of investigators and extra staff. If the office costs £650,000, so be it. I submit that Ministers should be instructed in the next budget or when they next bring a Bill before the House to eliminate the anomalies that have been pointed out. We should not allow them to build up until we next have a major Bill which may take ten or 20 years to deal with the matter. Mr. Mills and his staff are people of high integrity and I know they would not be interested in just issuing reports and findings that are not implemented.

I was glad to hear the Minister mention the prize system now operating in the Department of the Public Service. Staff must be given some incentive. If a person thinks he is just one in thousands of a workforce he will have no interest in putting forward new ideas. Often civil servants are considered to be procrastinators but I should like to see them being given some incentive to become initiators of new ideas.

One thing that appals me in the public service in general and not just the Civil Service is the way people are happy to be late and to count sick leave as being in addition to annual leave. I have been criticised before for saying that. In industry employees are given bonuses for coming into work on time. Some reward should be given to dedicated civil servants who for years and years turn up for work in time and give of their best. I am sure a scheme could be devised by the Department whereby an extra day's leave could be given to people who do not abuse their sick leave or turn up for work late. Some civil servants ask what is the point in not taking the seven days uncertified sick leave when there is no reward for those who turn up for work when they are not feeling well. The Minister should try to give incentives to lowly paid civil servants and there are very many of them.

The public image of the Civil Service is that at times it tends to be unresponsive to the public needs. Time and again we hear people complain that they went to office A and were sent to office B by a shabby looking girl in jeans. When they got there they were told to go to office C and then they were told that they should have gone to the second floor in office A in the first place and not the top floor. That kind of thing should not happen. When one goes to the AIB one is not told to go to the Bank of Ireland. Why does this happen every day? Why do we have to deal with young people who do not understand the system? It appears that once a person becomes familiar with the system they are no longer left to deal with people over the counter. Why do we not have public offices in the city where people could go and talk to competent staff who could help them to fill in their forms or direct them to the relevant sections for help? Why should it be so difficult to do that?

There are many forms to be filled and they are all complicated. There are many people who are not even able to follow simple forms. Many people who get forms to fill out for free electricity or for free transport do not understand them. People tend to become confused by forms and would much prefer to deal with a qualified person in an office and ask them a few basic questions. Staff should be competent to deal with the public. This would cut down the amount of work in Government Departments and would save people from having to go to their public representatives to get help. The public view is that the Civil Service is full of bureaucracy, delays, frustrations and inaction. There are unnecessary costs as a result of the way people are treated.

It should be very easy to minimise the flow of paper and to use videos. In 1977 I did a party political broadcast on our manifesto which dealt with simplification of language in the social welfare forms. I know some of the staff who deal with the property tax form. The people filling up the forms should be in good jobs but no one seems to be able to follow the form and the errors that are in the returned forms are unbelievable. Many problems could be solved if information offices were based in key areas where people could ask questions and get simple, civilised answers. At present that is not possible. I will not generalise about civil servants but people find it difficult to communicate with them. Many people find it difficult to deal with the staff who man the counters. That is a fact and not a sweeping statement. Everyone knows it.

I thank the officials of the Department for the way they have co-operated with me during the year. I regret that we do not have a White Paper. The Minister sets himself up as a hard man and as a result some of the things which he set out to do have not materialised. He may find it difficult to bring to light some of his reforms and initiatives. Sometimes it is easier to talk and to give and take. One often gets some of the things one wants in that way rather than by trying to browbeat and hammer everyone in sight. That kind of attitude catches up with one and one does not get the co-operation one needs. Perhaps during the autumn or in the recess the White Paper will be issued but there is not much point in having a White Paper if it is left lying there. There are massive problems in the public service. The cost of it is enormous. It is vital that reforms should have started yesterday and not wait for months to come.

I wish the Minister well in his battle to get the White Paper through the Cabinet and before the House so that we can have some action on it at the earliest possible date.

Mr. Keating

I welcome the efforts of the Minister in trying to push for reform and progress in the public service. It is obviously clear that when the Government appointed a separate Minister for the Public Service there was an unprecedented degree of commitment to reform and improvement in that area. No one should underestimate the size or nature of the challenge. It was truly gargantuan in its scale. The reform of the public service is one of the major challenges facing us. If the plans and aspirations of the Minister and the perceptions of a wide variety of commentators in a number of agencies and bodies do not become a reality then unquestionably the present trend of the growing burden of cost and less than totally efficient use of human potential in the public service will continue and will become an albatross around the neck of the country.

There are some 30,000 non-industrial civil servants in the State involving a pay bill of the order of £330 million. In addition the Department of the Public Service function in relation to the entire public sector which numbers some 300,000 people with a total pay bill of about £2,500 million and this is increasing all the time. Therefore, the Department of the Public Service have a key role in ensuring not only that we get good value for money which is an economic issue but, more important, that the full potential of the public service is unleashed to deliver to the country the kind of benefits that can accrue from the excellence that is latent in public servants. But in many cases public servants are hamstrung by lack of clear objectives, by disincentives for initiative or imagination and by lack of any encouragement other than by way of traditional models for recruitment, promotion and transfer though, as the Minister outlined, there is some evidence that that old and accepted model is beginning to change.

While I cannot speak for the Minister I would suspect that he, too, would agree that in some cases this change is frustratingly slow, perhaps for very good reasons but that is how it is seen from the point of view of the public. The major challenge then is to unleash this latent potential. In the context of the economic difficulties we have been experiencing in the past number of years, the public service may have suffered unduly in terms of the bad image it has got. In some cases the public service has become the whipping boy for political omissions. The way in which civil servants do their job and the lack of clarity of the targets and goals each individual has in the work-place, are a product of neglect by successive Governments in attending to bringing on stream the full potential of the public service. There is no point in blaming Departments for being what they are. Each of them has had a succession of political masters who in many cases were too preoccupied with temporary short term political concerns and with living on people's wants rather than on national needs.

If one were to put a simple question to anyone in the public service as to what exactly his job was, one would not receive a clear answer. We should be slow to blame individual public servants, though I would not exonerate some of the senior civil servants who have a responsibility in this respect. Ultimately the buck stops with the Government of the day and successive Governments, understandably perhaps, have relatively speaking reneged on their responsibility to ensure that the public sector becomes the dynamic in Irish society that it must become, first for the sake of the public servants themselves who are entitled to an environment which is conductive to their giving of their best and, secondly, and perhaps principally, because the public can no longer tolerate the incredible tax burden which arises from the growth of the public sector.

Even the Department of the Public Service since their inception have had an incredibly large recruitment picture. Their numbers have continued to grow. That would be understandable if there was a concomitant reduction in staff in other areas but that has not been the case. The embargo, admittedly a blunt instrument though effective in some respects, has tended to keep the lid on to some extent but there has been no fundamental review. Can anyone recall when there was last a dismantling of a Government programme because it no longer was deemed to be relevant to its purpose? Ireland must be the only State that could abolish domestic rates and still have a situation in which all those engaged in rate collection continue to occupy the same jobs. The same applies to the time when tax on cars was abolished. Was there then any proportionate reduction in staff anywhere? There was no such reduction. The staff were redeployed or re-absorbed. Ultimately the test of public service reform is a test of political courage and someone somewhere must say that enough is enough. If we cannot win that battle we must accept, as the Public Service Advisory Council put it so colourfully in their 1984 report, that the concern with public sector reform is enthusiastic but Augustinian, in other words we are in favour of it but not just yet.

I take the view that the public sector has major latent potential. On any occasion on which I have spoken to public servants in this context I have been impressed by their depth of commitment, their level of ability and their downright trustworthiness. Public servants have rendered excellent service to the State through many generations even during times that were shaky politically. But I was impressed more than anything else during those conversations by the depth of frustration on the part of many public servants in trying to do their work. I spoke with young civil servants after they had given three or four years service and I found that the overriding maxim in the environment in which they worked is in relation to any action they deemed to take for which the criterion always was whether there was a precedent for such action.

I was employed in the public sector for a short period and I recall that if one dictated a letter, for instance, it had to accord identically with precedent. There was no room for development, imagination or new ideas, though that is changing. We must acknowledge the efforts of the Minister to bring about change in this area. Attempts to ensure mobility between the public and private sectors have been disappointing to some extent though I am sure that is not due to any fault of the Ministers. Attempts to have promotion on factors other than simply the capacity of someone to stay in the service long enough are good signs but we must ask whether they are sufficient. Many members of the public, and of this House, too, would hold the view that the pace of change must be improved dramatically and that while accepting the clear and urgent commitment of the Minister for the Public Service in this respect, the Government must accept that there are fewer greater economic or social challenges to the country than the challenge as to how the public sector is to be utilised, developed and used to full potential in the coming years. If we fail in that respect not only will there be economic problems created but the social fall-out will be incalculable.

It is worth putting on record that this House — and this is not just lip service — owes a major debt of gratitude to the public service since the foundation of the State. When the Committee on Public Expenditure engaged in discussions on the "value for money" end of the Department of the Public Service I had an opportunity to endeavour to acquaint myself with other public services throughout the world, reading how they perform, how they work. I have to say this, I do not remember any series of incidents of any significance, of fraud, deception or subversion in the public sector here despite the relatively turbulent history we have had in this century. That has to be said. It is important that, in our discussions, in our efforts to motivate, mobilise and bring on stream the potential of the public service, we do nothing to diminish or damage morale in the public sector.

Indeed, in that context, I would say that the very least that should happen is that there should be some clear formula or mechanism devised to ensure that the public sector has the capacity to answer for itself when under attack, very often justified attack, but I have no doubt, in some cases, unfair attack. The image of the public servant as being all absorbent, mute and silent is perhaps outdated. It is right and proper that the public sector should be able to give an account of itself and should be able to answer when it is subjected to unjustified criticism, because some criticism in recent years has been that and has been particularly misplaced because it should have been directed at those of us in this House who have some modicum of responsibility for ensuring that policy is carried through in that area.

Much of the problem arises from a lack of clarity of goal and objective in the public sector. I have no doubt at all but that a cosmic change, a quantum leap forward would take place in the public sector if one were able to ensure that every public servant had clearly in his or her mind — preferably in writing on his or her desk, back pocket or wherever — a clear indication of what precisely was his or her job. I know that progress is being made in that respect. The sooner that system is in place the better because only then can one become accountable. The Minister, in a speech in October 1983, made very clear that the question of management accountability and personal accountability was very close to his heart. It is in that context only that, first of all, one can be accountable from a corporate point of view but perhaps, more importantly, that one can be accountable from a personal point of view which is ultimately what we should strive at — people giving of themselves, achieving tangible and obvious targets, deriving unprecedented job satisfaction and public appreciation out of reaching for and achieving such targets. That to me is a primary goal. It is not principally cost-related. It is not about quantities; it is about the quality of a service. It is about how we can put in place an appreciation in respect of each person of their function which is the basis for meaningful existence for any one of us: what exactly is our role on this little planet?

I have seen train loads of young people decanted after a weekend in rural parts into this city less than totally motivated or enthusiastic about facing into their offices in the public service. On some of these journeys, having perhaps attended a meeting in the country, I have discussed with them how they perceive their job. Frankly, most of them see themselves as punching in time. From their point of view the overriding benefit of their job is that it offers, the magic word, security. I have often come away feeling that it is extremely sad that we cannot somehow set these young people psychologically on fire with an enthusiasm for their work. That is the direction in which we must move — clear targets. I believe that the departmental and sectoral targets should not merely be clear but should be publicly available, open to public discussion and exchange of views so that all of us can have an input into whether or not the targets which sectors of the public service set themselves are appropriate.

I would say this in relation to the Minister's remarks this morning — a great deal of it has to do with internal mechanisms and administration which, I suppose, is appropriate to an Estimates speech. But surely the real emphasis should be on the fact that when a Department is all dressed up where exactly does it go, what is its function? Dare one say it: are there Government Departments which no longer have any function? Are there Government Departments the weighting of which is now totally disproportionate to similar Departments which occupy similar places around the Cabinet table? There should come a time in the history of any State, perhaps regularly, when such departmental structuring should be reviewed There have been one or two relatively cosmetic changes, movements of one section to another in recent years. Apart from that I do not recall anybody asking the fundamental question: is there any need any longer for some of these Departments? Perhaps, when viewed on their scale, by the passage of events, the growth of technology, the growth in agriculture or trends in any given area in the economy or society, they may no longer be relevant when they may have been essential at an earlier stage.

If that lack of clarity exists at a corporate or sectoral level what hope have we for ensuring that individuals now in place in offices all over this country can know exactly what is their job and, if they do not know what is their job, there is no way in which they can be doing the best job possible. All else is subordinate to that. In that context I am sure the Minister was and is conscious of the extraordinary situation relating to grades in the public sector. I gather there are approximately 1,000 grades in the public service — incredible for a country with three and a half million people, the whole population of which could be lost in a borough in London. Frankly, I can only say that it staggers the imagination that such a situation can be allowed to obtain. I am sure there are good historical reasons for it but that simply must cease.

I know from my own brief experience that one of the most frustrating aspects of people working in the public sector must be the absolute lack of any clear reward for extraordinary effort. A particular effort, initiative or work above and beyond the call of duty does not seem to warrant particular appreciation. I remember on one occasion saying to an individual in a Department that I thought he had done an excellent job. His reply was that he had been in that Department for 23 years and that was the first time that any public representative had ever said that to him. In itself that speaks volumes about the way we treat people in the public service, about the way we see them as human beings and as people with potential. Ultimately, it is not about systems, sectors, Departments, it is about people being allowed, facilitated and encouraged to give of their very best. That is the environment that has to be created. Ultimately such Departments, and particularly the Department of the Public Service, must be seen to be the repository of excellence in ensuring that their effect in galvanishing the structures of the State is of the highest possible order.

That is one aspect that troubles me slightly about the present functions of the Department of the Public Service. It is far from clear to me whether or not, even with their best efforts, they can have what I might describe as a salutary effect on other Departments when the distilled wisdom of the Department of the Public Service eventually emerges. When they proffer systems to be put in place, when they proffer models of management, or models of accountability to other Departments, the fact is that such other Departments can simply say: that is very nice, thank you very much, we will look at that and we will let you know.

If the Department of the Public Service is to be effective and taken seriously it should be seen, not just to have a salutary and chastening effect on other Departments, but perhaps its writ should be mandatory when it offers such administrative models, when it offers advice in an area in respect of which it is presumed to be, is perceived to be, is hoped to be, and was created to be the essential repository of excellence and high standards. There is at present some degree of overlap, duplication and fuzziness about the effects of the Department of the Public Service on other Departments. That is a pity. If there is a monitor for getting the best out of the system, which undoubtedly there is, and if there is a monitor for evaluating the expenditure, which undoubtedly there is, then the Department of the Public Service should know about it and other Departments should take it as law.

Sometimes we in this House can be immersed in our work and lost to public scrutiny. From the point of view of the layman the image of the public sector and of the Civil Service is bad, perhaps unjustly bad. I am convinced that a lot of it has to do with the question of motivation of staff. One of the curses of political life is the nonsensical representations in which we get involved day in and day out, few of us having the courage to dispense with them because there are two or three others in our constituency whom we believe will more than assiduously fill the vacuum. They feel the same as us. The reason for these representations is undoubtedly the preception that public representatives by their nature are totally immoral and will use any inside track which they are perceived to have, but which very often they do not have, in pursuit of any end regardless of its moral content, in pursuit of what might be seen to be some political advantage in three or four years' time. It is all nonsense.

If I had my way I would legislate against such representations, such seeking of preferment or advancement or advantage for an individual on spurious grounds. It is immoral and unethical that that should be pursued, but it is. In fairness to this Minister, on his coming to office he sent us all a very clear letter which indicated that certain kinds of representations would be accepted in a certain way and would be detrimental to the interests of the people about whom representations were being advanced. That is one reason why people come to public representatives. I am not even sure it is the main reason. The main reason is because of the failure of people to elicit from the public service, a public service, a response appropriately due to them. Time and time again people's letters are not answered, their phone calls not returned, and there is no record when one wishes to pursue the matter. Listening to this Minister I am sure that peoples names are at least emblazoned on their fronts as a help in that respect. Would the Minister consider going further? Whoever devised the system in the planning law as operated by local authorities whereby an application for planning permission had to be decided upon within eight weeks was extremely far seeing. I do not know how that provision got through the bureaucratic labyrinth of the time.

Mr. Kelly

I will take an informed guess that it was because the English have a similar provision in their legislation.

Mr. Keating

That was a wise provision which has worked quite well. It has not been that people have failed to get decisions. They got decisions and there have not been any pleas about understaffing or about difficulties in understanding submissions. There is a form whereby the local authority can request further information on something. The system works. Any one of us knows that if we apply for planning permission we will get a considered decision within eight weeks. We cannot write a simple letter to any Department and be sure that we would ever get an answer, even an acknowledgment. That is not good enough. Could not a system be devised to ensure that people are automatically entitled to an answer within a certain period. It might be difficult to administer but in spirit it is essential. There should be a clear understanding that it is the public who foot the bill and they are entitled to a public service. They are the masters. The psychology in many quarters is the contrary. The public are a bloody nuisance to be humoured. They pass the buck, saying it is somebody else's responsibility and send them to another floor. That is the frustrating, tantalising, mind boggling perception of many people of the public service. Some of this is totally unjustified. I have met public servants who have gone to inordinate lengths to try to be of help and who I am sure are bad mouthed by members of the public who ultimately did not get something to which they were not entitled anyway and who should not blame anybody but themselves.

Time and again the Order Paper is cluttered up with nonsensical questions to the Department of Social Welfare, for example, not because anyone believes it will advance the cause of the claimant in any way but because the Department are unable to answer their correspondence. Other Departments are similarly affected. That is the mechanism which smart Deputies have decided to use instead of making normal inquiries. If we outlaw a lot of the representations and galvanise the public service by the regulation I mentioned, or some permutation of it, to ensure that people get replies and service we would be doing a good job for the country.

The responsibilities of the Department of the Public Service were outlined to the Committee on Public Expenditure by the secretary and his officials when they came to talk to us. That is contained in our report which will be discussed later on this evening. Those responsibilities are in many cases stated generally. I am heartened to note that the Minister is at present and has been for some time developing a clear crystallisation of those global and general objectives into specific areas of accountability and action in respect of each section of his own Department and each Department in Government. In a debate of this nature it would be wrong not to refer to the report from the Public Service Advisory Council, a body of voluntary people who have tried to suggest recommendations as to how the public service could be improved. I had the pleasure of meeting them recently and I gathered that they were quite dispirited at the lack of attention to their regular reports. Their 1984 report says, in relation to the council, that it seems as if little notice was taken of their observations or recommendations and that the apparent indifference by the decision makers did not enhance the role of the council. I have gone through this report and a summary of recommendations contained in their previous reports. They offer not just food for thought but precise areas of the Department of the Public Service needing attention. They make a point which was reflected in some ways in the Minister's speech this morning when he talked about the creation of functions and the allocations in the Department. They make a point about restructuring in the Department:

The only apparent result of this restructuring is a significant increase in the number of personnel employed in the departments concerned. The rearrangement of functions has the cosmetic effect of giving the impression that something is being done. It does not necessarily result in a more efficient and effective administration.

That has a point. Perhaps people busily engaged in reorganisation can lose sight of the overall objective, which may need a totally different approach. It points out a paradox which I am sure the Minister for the Public Service must grapple with in his work. They said:

The paradox of the Public Service is that on the one hand it is a unity implementing Government policy and on the other it is an amalgamation of autonomous and semi-autonomous units each seeking a greater allocation of resources and each endeavouring to extend its influence.

It is remarkable that the success of a Minister is quite often based on public perception of how much taxation he can levy implicitly on the heads of those who are deemed to benefit, how much one can fight for at the Cabinet table regardless of what one does with it.

The council deserve the thanks of this House for their work. As far as I can judge, they have worked hard and honestly trying to put forward a variety of views, many of them very significant. In one of their reports they refer to the point I have mentioned about the reform programme needing clear targets. They make the point in their report No.2 that there should be an acceptable system of appeals against the decision of public servants. Perhaps the Ombudsman's office will help to deal with that, although I must say that the excellent report from the Ombudsman, which was presented in a uniquely clear style, had as its most underlying note the somewhat demented and frustrating appeal which many public representatives and members of the public have when they hope that change will come about in anomalous systems and situations which they have come across. May be the Ombudsman should be given yet more power to insist in some way that the findings are in due course given mandatory effect.

In their report No. 6 the council make a very important point which I commend to the Minister's attention. They said that the citizen should be better educated about the public service and they developed that in detail in their report. It is extraordinary that in our education system as yet the root of a Latin verb is still deemed more important than a knowledge of our institutions or our public service and that there is no automatic formal element in the education curriculum which emphasises the vast areas of institutional, corporate systems with which the citizen and the school leaver when he grows to adulthood come in regular contact with. It is incredible that we do not talk to people except in the context of the famous civics course. As a former teacher of civics along with other subjects, I know how importantly that is rated in the school curriculum and in the perception of the Department of Education and of many parents when it comes to examination time. No, we are concerned principally with trigonometry and other more important esoteric subjects. The Minister for the Public Service might consider the possibility of nudging the arm of some of his Cabinet colleagues and insisting that one way of helping the public to understand the extraordinary size and scale of the public sector might be to educate young people to understand what it is all about at that stage so that later on it will not become, as it is in many cases, little more than a bewildering monolithic maze.

The Public Service Advisory Council, chaired by Liam St. John Devlin, should be thanked. They were given the task of monitoring reform in the public service and there is need to redress what seems to be a note in their reports that perhaps their remarks are not receiving due attention. Their latest report is in some respects an indictment of the lack of progress in the reorganisation area since the publication of the Devlin report in 1969. They have a contribution to offer and should be hearkened to and they deserve the thanks of the House.

I want to refer briefly to one or two points in the Minister's speech. I am pleased to see the Minister pushing ahead with his proposals for new and more accountable systems of management and the intention implicit therein of reforming the necessary legislation to allow for accountability by public servants. At present a Minister is deemed to be responsible for the last nut and bolt of decisions taken way down the line. That will be put aside as anachronistic and not in accordance with facts. That accountability should not be misinterpreted. It is not simply about placing blame. It should also be about giving credit, and the excellence of many decisions by public servants would have to be respected and regarded in that context.

We have extraordinary trustworthiness, great maturity and fine potential in the public service. We can trust them to do the right thing and to do it very often. Therefore, we should devolve responsibility, and that means also that when things go wrong those who have made the decisions will have to accept the responsibility rather than some unfortunate Minister coming in here and being expected to carry the can for something about which he knows nothing at all. Possibly he had no hand, act or part in taking that decision. Ultimately, the cream would rise to the top and people who have standards of excellence will be recognised and acknowledged in that context.

The question of mobility and trying to have an exchange of public servants with the private sector is an initiative which, even though fraught with some difficulties and with the problem that it has not taken off in the way we all hoped, should nevertheless be persisted with. It is a good idea and I hope that there will be no discouragement of it. I want to raise one small point in passing about the scheme of career breaks and job-sharing. Career breaks are notionally a fine idea, the idea being that a public servant will have an opportunity of refreshing himself in some other area of work, perhaps gathering further information, taking on domestic responsibilities and so on. However, the Minister should look at the number of career breaks being taken for the setting up of private companies by people in the public sector. There is nothing wrong in that and I would encourage it. However, there is a grey area of overlap where some public servants have been engaged in developing business concepts and in some cases business models and organisations while still engaged in the public sector and have taken the career break as an opportunity for hedging their bets. If the business works, then that is the last we see of them; if the business does not work, there is always a job to fall back on. That is not what the career break was intended to do and, even though one cannot legislate against human nature, there are and have been abuses and serious abuses where people have utilised experience, information and data garnered by their experience in the public sector to establish a base for private companies outside, and the lines of demarcation have been anything but clear.

That should be covered in legislation, and I am sure that the Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism would have something to say about that, but let me give an example. As late as yesterday morning I received a letter from a senior officer of a local authority because I had made inquiries about how a contract was placed and why a particular company was not considered. I was told inter alia that one of the reasons that this company were not considered was that the two main directors of the company were full-time employees of a semi-State company and were doing a nixer — that was his word, not mine. I do not want to go into detail, but what I am saying is that the career break is a refreshing, exciting opportunity, but if there is a whiff of abuse it should be attended to. There has been more than a whiff of abuse in a number of cases and I am quite happy to tell the Minister, as I have told one of his colleagues, of one or two examples that have come to my notice. I suppose as long as human nature is what it is somebody will always try to bend the rule and in this House we are no different from anybody else. But if the problem arises we should try to deal with it.

All of us should congratulate the Ombudsman, Mr. Michael Mills, and his staff on the immediate integrity they have brought to their job and the clarity of their report. The implications of that report should be listened to by Government and perhaps there should be some system whereby its recommendations would be considered formally in this House in deference to the Ombudsman's office and the wisdom to be distilled from the report.

It is clear that the Minister for the Public Service is concerned to ensure that the objectives we have spoken about are pursued. I take this opportunity to mention a matter which slightly irritated me yesterday. Many semi-State bodies and Government Departments issue commissioned reports and others. I often wonder whether Members of the Oireachtas are excluded from the ambit of circulation of such reports. Yesterday I was asked to make some intelligent comment on a report relating to the possibility of local property taxation. I did not have the report; neither do I have it today. I never have these reports until perhaps a week or two later. If he thinks the point is valid, the Minister might nudge those in positions of authority in Government Departments and semi-State bodies to ensure that Members of this House, who by their agreement fund such bodies, will at least be afforded the courtesy of getting such documents at the same time as members of the public. It would help us in our responses.

I wish the Minister well in his work and look forward to the impending White Paper. I hope it will assist him to bring into full flower the potential of the public service.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Allen)

I call Deputy Kelly. I remind Deputies that the Minister must be called on to conclude not later than 1.15 p.m.

Mr. Kelly

I should like to recall to the House, with all the talk about public service reform, that it is by no means a new subject. It is now almost of "draining the Shannon" vintage. Long before I came into either of these Houses public service reform and improvement was something which Governments, at least on the surface, made signs of being interested in.

It is now 20 years since the Public Service Review Group were set up under the chairmanship of Mr. Devlin and they reported about 1966 or 1967. I can remember all the excitement and talk about the Aireacht concept, the idea of splitting Departments so that the more gifted personnel, political and official, would be able to think out policy over the long term in a glass-domed penthouse without being bothered by the nuts and bolts of dealing with correspondence and so on. Down the line there would be the purely executive part of the Department whose job it would be to put into practice — and they would feel honoured to do so — the solutions which the Aireacht devised and passed down the line.

I remember the late Deputy Colley talking ceaselessly, it seemed to me, about the Aireacht concept, how everything would change when we got that concept into place and how the structures — that word was coming into vogue — which the Civil Service would adopt would revolutionise and streamline everything. This was the era when words such as "evaluating", "co-ordinating" and "monitoring" began to be used to describe even the most ordinary functions which every businessman, even the humblest cobbler or candlestick maker, automatically discharges without being conscious of them, such as watching what he is at and calculating profit and loss. It was an era in which there was a great deal of talk and new vocabulary, but in which nothing really seemed to change. I could almost sense that the people working in the public service who had spent all their lives there did not for a second experience the flutter of a heart beat or allow their blood pressure to go up by a point on account of the revolutionary changes and monitoring, restructuring, evaluating, co-ordinating and dividing between Aireacht and executive which were being promised.

That whole chapter in public administration and the mechanics of Government would be quite reasonable material for a Ph. D. thesis from someone who had managed to escape from the world of the Aireacht. An enormous amount of time and fuss and paper and ink can be wasted on something from which very little comes. The only analogue to this I can remember anywhere else was the amount of time wasted in the years 1967, 1968 and 1969 on the proposed merger of the two university colleges in Dublin.

Time moved on and the Government changed in 1973. One of the first acts of the new Government was to set up a Department of the Public Service under Deputy Richie Ryan, who was simultaneously Minister for Finance. Liam Cosgrave's Government felt they did not need to apologise for merely having a Front Bench of members of the Government plus seven Parliamentary Secretaries. They did not have a battery of 15 Ministers of State with three times the supporting staff. They did not seem to mind doubling up Departments and Deputy Ryan was in charge of two Departments.

Those years rolled by. The oil crisis and trouble in the North of Ireland tended to overshadow many things. In due course that Government went out of office and in 1977 Deputy Lynch was re-elected Taoiseach and sat where the Minister for the Public Service, Deputy Boland, is now sitting. On 5 July he made a short acceptance speech. I said many a bitter thing to Deputy Lynch in my time but I never thought he was blasé or self-important about the eminence he reached. He is personally a very modest man. It cannot, therefore, have been merely the sense of taking the whole thing for granted or being bored which led him to make a fairly short acceptance speech which is reported in volume 300 of the Official Report.

We in the Opposition were lying flattened from the defeat he had inflicted on us and it was quite open to him to speak for 25 columns of the Official Report about the North of Ireland, the EC or anything he liked. He did not do so. He placed in the centre of his short speech public service reform. He did indeed make the mistake of supposing that merely to create a whole series of new posts at ministerial level by retitling Parliamentary Secretaries as Ministers of State was a significant step in public service reform.

I well remember the pitiful excuses given for that move when it was eventually promoted here by Deputy Colley. It was said that Irish Parliamentary Secretaries going to meetings abroad tended to be cold shouldered or downgraded by foreigners who did not understand that a Parliamentary Secretary in this State was a genuine ministerial office-holder. They tended to mix it up with mere official grades in their own countries. Of all the pitiful things I ever heard, that must be in the short list for the prize. One could nearly contrive a few lines from a children's primer to describe the condition of the newly uptitled Parliamentary Secretaries going to Brussels or Strasbourg: "Pat is on the mat, Pat has a new hat, `See my new hat', says Pat." Merely because the Belgians did not understand that a Parliamentary Secretary was a Ministerial office-holder we had to change the title of the office and that was public sector reform. That was the only public service reform I could see, and a very negative one it was, implemented by Deputy Lynch and Deputy Haughey and we have kept it on. There is no use in making a party point out of this.

Mr. Barrett

(Dublin North-West): They did not have handlers at that time.

Mr. Kelly

There were plenty of handlers and their handling went beyond merely giving advice. One had to take the roughs with the smoothies in those days. There was a lot of rough handling and I have not forgotten the kind of handling that accompanied the episodes in 1982 about which people inside and outside the Dáil can give evidence.

The smoke has cleared away after some years and, instead of Parliamentary Secretaries, we have now 15 Ministers of State supported by three times the staff which the seven wretched Parliamentary Secretaries enjoyed, discharging roughly the same quantum of work and costing six to seven times as much compared with what there was when Deputy Cosgrave left office and now. It will be exactly eight years tomorrow since Deputy Cosgrave left. The only public service reform I can see is that the second line Minister row has risen from seven to 15, that the total establishment in numbers has trebled and that the total expense has sextupled. If that is the kind of example allowed to the public service, it is no wonder they say to themselves that these idiots are not really serious about public sector reform and they do not worry about it. The only step they take is to increase their own numbers and to bow to the kind of junk journalism which talks about putting a couple of half cars into Leitrim or throwing four or give whole cars across the Shannon. They attributed Deputy Cosgrave's defeat in 1977 to the fact that he did not put enough State cars over the Shannon.

There is still a lot of talk about public service reform. We now have a Committee on Public Expenditure under the most active chairmanship of Deputy Keating but I cannot see any serious reform except the reform which the Minister in his characteristic, hard nosed way has insisted on carrying through, namely a very substantial reduction for the first time in the history of this State of public service numbers. If Deputy Boland — the Lord between him and all harm — were to be hit by a thunderbolt leaving this Chamber, his reform will stand as a significant achievement. Indeed, I suspect that in 1977 Deputy Lynch had the same idea in the back of his mind when he said that he considered public service reform to be of fundamental importance for the effective discharge and implementation of the programmes of national renewal and development upon which his party were then embarking.

We have said enough about the programme upon which he then embarked and I am not going to repeat it. Underneath his silken expressions, there was a determination to get better value from the public service and to make sure it delivered a certain quantum of service that cost a great deal less. That is what it is all about because the cost mentioned by Deputy Boland a couple of hours ago is now running at £2.5 billion. I think the Minister merely referred to salaries, let alone pensions or future liability for pensions which is a cloud looming over the State. In 25 years most of us will be gone from the House and that is when the cloud will settle because of the age structure in the Civil Service with which we are now dealing and are pushing off from year to year. Therefore, the sum of £2.5 billion is for salaries, one-third of the whole national budget. That does not take into account the cost of premises, typewriters, expenses, allowances, equipment and plant of all kind. The mere paying of the public service costs one-third of the entire budget. A further one-third of the State's revenue — I know that the Revenue and the budget are unfortunately no longer co-extensive — goes on paying interest on debt and these two items are strongly related to one another. If we had not recklessly expanded the public service in Deputy Lynch's time — although he is not entirely to blame because it had been happening all through the seventies, to be fair — but it happened with particular explosiveness in the era of Dr. Martin O'Donoghue who thought that we had to compare the State to a lot of covered wagons in the mid-west surrounded by whooping Indians, that we only had a certain amount of ammunition left and that we had to break out of the circle now or never. He made his break and the Indians are still whooping. They are getting closer, we are still inside and the covered wagons are fewer in number. Some of the older people have fallen over their rifles and everything is a great deal more dangerous. These two phenomena are related; the recklessness of the public service and the astronomical growth of the public debt belong together because everybody worries about the current budget deficit. That deficit, which apparently with the best will in the world cannot be got down, is directly related to the number of people on the payroll of the State.

Everybody knows that I have strategic differences with the Taoiseach and his team in regard to coalition and other matters but he and the Government are as committed to trying to get down the current deficit as they were in 1982 and before then. They cannot do it and it looks as if it will be as bad this year, if not a shade worse. That lends a particular urgency to the question of the size of the public service and getting value for money. I want to repeat what Deputy Keating said about the public service in regard to my own experience of it. It is a most dedicated public service of the highest quality and, long before I came into politics, I held that opinion. There may be exceptions but I never found as a private citizen that I was being shoved from Billy to Jack by the public service and I always found that a polite inquiry received a polite response and that if you treated those working in the public service reasonably you were treated reasonably and helpfully. I have no complaints in that regard and my stint as an office holder convinced me that I was right in the perception.

The public service, by and large, consists of very high principled, dedicated people, none of whom would willingly do anything injurious to the State or none of whom would do anything reckless in regard to the State's welfare. However, no matter how well motivated and dedicated somebody is, when he is administering a system and spending money which is not his own, he will necessarily have less instinctive appreciation of what waste is and what value is than somebody dealing with their own money. We need not waste time on that proposition because it is very obvious. It is only an application in one sphere of the old maxim that everybody's business is nobody's business. The public service, which means the State in the context we are talking about, spends more money in the sense that it chooses the wrong things to spend it on or even when it chooses the right thing to spend it on, it spends more than a private individual would. I have no doubt about that.

It is interesting to watch the State in all its manifestations, even the newest and humblest of them. Even the Committee on Public Expenditure, over which Deputy Keating presides so effectively and where I am not a model attender, had absorbed the services of a certain number of public servants. Not only do they churn out a huge amount of paper every week, but we are now into consultants. This committee is supposed to control public expenditure, not add to it. I do not want to make a point about that committee because obviously a committee cannot work on a shoestring, although my belief is that shoestring operations are usually best, but it seems that no matter what the State does it leaks money as it moves along. I remember a phrase from Shakespeare's Henry IV or Henry V when describing Falstaff abusively, referring to his size, as "lards the lean earth as he walks along", a most expressive phrase suggesting he was so fat that the grease and tallow dropped from him at every step and literally larded the ground beside him. That is an image which could be applied without difficulty to the State. It cannot do anything but it costs money of a kind that the private citizen or private company would avoid.

When I was around ten or 11 years of age I remember reading a story, I think it was a William book, where they set up entertainment and charged a penny entrance but whenever a person wearing spats approached or a person dressed in a way which suggested membership of the upper middle class, the whisper went round the children "It's double for toffs". Somebody dressed like that was charged double, if not ten times the rate an ordinary child would be charged. In the same way it seems the State in all kinds of ways recklessly pays out without the same kind of foresight or prudence an ordinary householder would be obliged to apply.

One does not have to go beyond the confines of this House to see examples of this. This is not a debate on the Houses of the Oireachtas but I have complained about this often enough. Money is thrown away in this building under our eyes, not in huge sums because there is a limit to what you can waste in a single building, albeit one populated by 168 people with a high opinion of their own importance and needs in regard to services and attendance by others. If the sort of thing we see going on in this building is replicated elsewhere in the public service, then the truth of what I am saying will be evident.

In his speech the Minister mentions substantial reserves of staff in public service organisations generally which need to be shaken out. It takes guts to use an expression like that but what he means is that there are too many people with no work to do, with not enough work to do or with no sensible, useful or meaningful work to do. That kind of plain speaking is rare with the Minister. Later he says — and I agree with this —"in general our aim has been, and still is, to reduce the size of the public service to a level more in keeping with the country's requirements and the capacity of the taxpayer to sustain it".

How was the public service ever allowed to get to a level which was out of keeping with the country's requirements and which was beyond the capacity of the taxpayer to sustain? I am not trying to score a political point, because I know part of the answer was the reckless expansionism of 1977 and 1978, and our side probably has been at fault in this regard too, but this has to stop. This Minister is determined to roll back this encroachment of over-employment and overcapacity in the public service. This is the most important problem in front of us and the only one in which any serious economy can be made in the short or long term. That determination may not be headline-worthy but it is the most important dimension of the Government's efforts today. I see nothing more important in front of them than that. The Minister, who seems to thrive on having people annoyed with him, is the right man to put that into practice.

It is true, and I am sure it will be said by the people who feel obliged to stand up for every situation as it is, that the size of the public service relative to our population is not excessive compared with the population of other EC countries. It is only a bit more generous than the public service of any other country in the EC except Greece. The point is we have structural problems which reduce our capacity to afford a public service of that luxuriance. One of them is the enormous number of people who are below or above the working age. The proportion of both our old people and particularly young people is far greater than any other European country. That makes demands on us in regard to the provisions of schools and health services and has implications for transport, infrastructure and so on of a kind which imposes both visible and hidden charges on us which we gladly accept but which oblige us to trim our cloth more stingily in other directions, and the only direction in which we can economise is in the size of the public service.

There is no point talking about the proportion of public servants in Holland and Germany because the Dutch and the Germans have higher industrial and agricultural productivity than we have and they have a far lower dependent population. Perhaps they can afford the luxury of a very plentifully staffed public service but we cannot. Leaving aside Knock Airport, Whitegate and so on, I believe this is the one matter which has driven us out on a limb more than any other — the reckless taking of people onto the public payroll and the pretence that this was defensible job creation. We may create what appears to be a job but at a horrible cost for future generations.

I want to refer to a few suggestions the Minister made. He gracefully admitted that his Department have overall responsibility for expenditure control in the public service. If it is true that is only right. They should have overall responsibility for expenditure control particularly since their own numbers have kept growing quite substantially. They should have dimensions of expenditure and the rate at which it grows at their fingertips. I hope this is not a mean point to score, but last May I put down a question which was answered on 29 May. I asked the Minister for the Public Service if he would state in tabular form the total sum spent by each Department on outside professional consultancies of all kinds in each of the years from 1970 to date. That was a tall order and obviously there had to be a very long tabular statement given in reply, but to my astonishment, even though I had asked the Minister for the Public Service for the reply, I got 17 replies.

I am told that it costs not less than £40 for a Department to answer a question. Obviously, that figure can be greater depending on the complexity of the answer. I should be surprised if the answer to the question I asked could have been supplied by any Department, however much on the ball of a DPS kind, for such a small expenditure in terms of staff time as £40. However, eventually what I got was 17 answers or in money terms, 17 times £40. The format in each case is a little different but the figures are in respect of the amounts spent by the various Departments on outside consultancies in the past 15 years.

I should like the Minister to inquire in the Department why they have not kept track of the growth of outside consultancy expenditure in the public service. Surely it is not beneath his dignity to keep a file on consultancies as a phenomenon. We are used to such matters as tax consultancies, business consultancies and so on, but nobody seems to note or to make much fuss of the degree to which outside consultancies are beginning to be retained by the public service, big and expert though it is. The public service is supposed to have all the answers but it seems as if the number of questions it has answers to diminishes with the years and that the number of matters on which outside people are asked to advise on seems to grow. This is an amazing factor especially in the light of all the technological aids which should tend to reduce mechanical automatic repetitive operations. Despite the Aireacht concept and all the very high powered policy-shaping people at the top, the degree to which in money terms many Departments are apparently forced to seek outside private consultancy service and advice is growing.

The figures given in the Dáil on 29 May, and which appear in the Official Report, do not show a clear pattern in every Department in the way, for instance, that inflation increases might be shown from year to year. Instead, these figures tend to vary from year to year but the overall trend is clear. I do not wish to bore the Minister but I shall read the figures concerned. I have been comparing the figures for the first year in question, 1970, with the last complete year for which figures are available, that is 1984. In 1970, of the 17 Departments from which I have replies, seven or nearly half of them, reported nil in terms of consultancies. In other words, not a penny was spent by these Departments in that year on outside consultancies. The Department of Energy had not been established then. Consequently, I have no figure for the early year in that respect and four other Departments reported that they had not kept separate figures for the pre-1976 years and that it would be disproportionately expensive to provide the figures now. As a result, I do not have figures for 1970 for the Departments of Justice, Finance, Education and Labour and the only money figures I have got in respect of 1970 and 1984 are as follows. In 1970 the Department of the Environment, then known as the Department of Local Government, spent £192 on consultancy services and, in 1984 the corresponding figure was £21,580. In 1984, too, the figure for the Department of Justice was £31,703. In 1970 the Department of Social Welfare spent no money on consultancy services while in 1984 the figure spent in this respect was £492,619. I must add that this includes the provision of computer software. The 1970 figure in respect of Fisheries and Forestry was £1,500 while in 1984 it was £30,438. The Department of the Public Service had not been established in 1970 but in 1984 they spent £200,859 in this respect. That was the amount they spent in respect of consultancies on the dimensions of the public service.

There is no separate figure in respect of the Department of Finance for 1970 but in 1984 the amount was £48,123. In 1970 there was a nil expenditure in the Department of Foreign Affairs in this respect but in 1984 the amount spent on consultancy services was £20,760. Obviously, the expenditure for those years for which there are no separate figures was negligible. In 1984 the figure in respect of the Department of Education was £21,141. The Department of Defence incurred no expenditure in this regard in 1970 but in 1984 the amount spent was £146,028. The Department of Health spent £55,400 on outside consultancies in 1970 and the figure for 1984, which includes for provision for software, was £767,784.

In the earlier year the figure in respect of the Department of Communications was £27,835. That figure is referable too, to the old Department of Transport and Power. In 1984 the figure which includes Posts and Telegraphs amounted to £221,859. In 1970 the then Department of Industry and Commerce spent £313 in this respect while in 1984 the relevant figure was £323,359. The Department of Energy were not in existence in 1970 but in 1984 they spent £530,677 on consultancies. There was a nil expenditure by the Department of Agriculture in this area in 1970 but the expenditure in 1984 amounted to £23,589. In 1970 there was a nil expenditure on consultancies in the Taoiseach's Department but in 1984 the figure in that regard was £21,477. In the earlier year the Gaeltacht figure was nil while in 1984 they spent £56 on consultancies. Molaim iad as an méid a choinneáil chomh íseal sin. One wonders what humble little consultant only charged that amount for his advice to the Department. The figure in respect of the Department of Labour for 1984 was £16,833. Allowing for the fact that the figures for the Departments of Health and Social Welfare include provision for material which apparently cannot be dissociated from the advice, the global consultancy figure for 1984 was £2,918,885, with almost £300,000 of that having been spent by the Department of the Public Service who are supposed to know all the answers. Where is the justification for that sort of expenditure? The public service are supposed to be expert by way of experience and of their self recruiting of specialised grades of advisers. The public service is full of people with specialist qualifications.

I wish to emphasise also, that these figures do not include fees such as architects' fees. That is a separate matter to which the committee chaired by Deputy Keating are giving attention. Neither do these figures include such amounts as the £12 million spent by way of architects' fees in respect of projected prisons of which not one brick has yet been laid.

I should like the Minister to look at the whole consultancy picture and ask his Department to open a file on consultancy so that we need not to get 17 answers to a single question. I ask him to call the ad hoc lads of his Department together upstairs into the glass dome on the top of the building one morning and ask would they like to devote their brainpower for a moment or two to finding the reason for consultancy developing such a dimension in the public service and asking was Deputy Kelly wrong in describing the public service as comparable to a Falstaff larding the lean earth, because that is £3 million which has gone into private pockets. I do not begrudge people money for their work and wish all the best to consultants, whoever and wherever they are, but £3 million is some larding.

I repeat an appeal I made here before that the Minister or his Aireacht might look at a suggestion which I previously made that there should be, even if only experimentally, some system for introducing a private sector financial comptroller — let it be a consultant, if he wishes — into the bowels of the Department and keeping him there for three years with only one remit — to sweat down that Department's expenditure. After that three years, his remit or commission would be again up for grabs and, if he had not given substantial value, it would be given to somebody else. The private sector would be genuinely interested in this and the function I would give such a comptroller — I have previously called him a resident Scrooge — imported from the private sector would be no other job but to watch ha'pence and to ask why this carpet is being laid on the stairs, why four officials are accompanying this Minister of State to Nairobi, why this or that is happening and why the need for this.

I accept that a private sector accountant or management consultant put into a job like that would be a very severe irritant. He would irritate me if I worked in the public service, possibly leading me to resign if I felt that my life was being made impossible by him. It would be a matter for a good deal of thought, but an Aireacht should be well up to that, to decide the exact guidelines for such a consultant, who would have got his contract in a particular Department after competitively tendering with other such persons, in order not to pre-empt or usurp the policy-making of a Department. Clearly, such a consultant has no business deciding on policy.

If a Minister decides, let us say, that there should be a free school transport system, it is not the consultant's business to say that that would cost us more than we can afford. That is a political decision for the Minister and the Government to defend. However, it is open to the consultant to say, in regard to putting into place a free school transport system, how that can most cheaply be done and he has a say there. I have said this here and outside and in writing to the public service's own house journal, Seirbhisí Poiblí. I must thank the editorial staff for giving me that platform and not showing any sign of offence at my doing so. I accept that this would be a foreign body in any Department and therefore do not say that it should be applied in every Department as from tomorrow morning.

The Minister might seriously consider introducing that element into one Department, purely as an experiment. If it is a disaster, he can call it off. As I have often said here before, one of the saddest things about all Governments, of whatever colour, is that they are afraid to experiment and to admit that something has gone wrong, but there is no shame in that. Everybody has to have that experience and why politics and Government should be an exception to a general rule of existence, I do not know. What is wrong with trying this in one Department and, if it does not work, saying that they will have to try something else?

I hope the Minister will not be put off by any occasional sarcasms of mine in this regard, but I urge him to see whether that element of private competition would improve matters. This consultant would be in competition with others in a couple of years' time for a renewal of this commission. Let the Minister see whether the injection of a private sector element and private sector criteria in regard to wasting and saving money would not have a beneficial effect. This Minister has shown by the way he has sweated down public service numbers, that he has the guts to attempt such a thing. I would be grateful if he would give a great deal of time to considering its feasibility.

Mr. Boland

I should like to thank the Deputies who have participated in the debate for their contributions which I found interesting and at times, I must say, entertaining, and I hope, in all respects helpful to our work.

Deputy Ahern spoke at some length about the absence of a White Paper on a more modern public service, with a degree of justification. It is no cause for joy to me that the White Paper has, as yet, remained unpublished. I do not think anybody under-estimated the degree of consultation necessary for what has now turned out, in any event, to be a very major document. That consultative process was long, arduous and sometimes, I must confess, wearying. I have referred in the past to those who will always be in any organisation, who are firmly and absolutely rooted in their opposition to any change. Sometimes they happen to be in positions where, through procrastination and the raising of various other issues, they can delay change longer than one might like.

However, as I have said, the draft White Paper is now before the Government and I am pleased to tell the House that the Government have set aside a special meeting on 17 July in order to discuss it, with a view to seeing its publication in the immediate aftermath of that discussion. Tongue in cheek after earlier indications — and on one occasion at least an undertaking — with which Deputy Ahern reasonably had some fun this morning, I say hopefully that the publication of that White Paper will be later in this month.

A number of points have been raised by various people which I might best try to deal with as they were enunciated. Deputy Ahern appeared to be somewhat at odds with himself regarding public service pay policy and the Government attitude towards it. It appeared from some of his remarks that he berated or chastised the Government for the fact that the public service pay bill Estimate is now some millions in excess of the amount provided for in the national plan. On the other hand, he appeared very critical of the Government because of the fact that there was not an immediate appointment of a public service arbitrator, or an early hearing of the 24th round claim for the public service.

I say, in the gentlest way possible, that the Opposition cannot have it both ways. One cannot complain, on the one hand, about the size and cost of the public service pay bill and on the other demand that public servants get immediate and large increases, as the media indicated was his party's demand. His party were reported last year as indicating at a meeting with the Council of Trade Unions that they were opposed to a pay pause and were in favour of a public sector pay increase in line with the cost of living. In fact, the agreement I secured in the ultimate involved a seven months' pay pause and if I had not done so, the public service pay bill for this year would have been substantially higher. It is understandable that points like this are raised in debates on Estimates, but parties must get their priorities right and decide what their policy is. They must decide whether they want to spend more money on public service pay and charge the public more tax in order to pay for it. If that is what they want to do, then that is what they should tell the public.

The Government are firmly committed to containing the cost of the public service pay bill in pursuit of a commitment to taxation reduction. The Opposition want to see the public service pay bill increased, and they enunciate that clearly, but they must set beside that the additional cost to the taxpayer. If we are going to disagree let us disagree on policy lines rather than have a variety of debating points.

Various references were made to technology. The principal Opposition spokesman, having spoken about his knowledge of CDPS, wondered if the Civil Service were falling somewhat behind in the area of technological changes, perhaps to some extent because of the loss or wastage of staff who are inclined to go to more highly remunerated areas. Technology has changed at a dazzling rate in the last few years and I am not sure if any organisation has kept fully up-to-date with that rate of change. I have said several times that I am certain that the rate of adaptation to technology, in particular information technology, is slower here than in other European countries. Europe is somewhat behind America and America is vying with Japan. In the context of large bureaucracies, I do not think the Civil Service is any slower than other large organisations here.

As I said in my speech, a number of important initiatives have been taken. We have set up the information management advisory service, we have hived off the centralised computing service in CDPS to Departments and we have set up a micro computer centre to encourage civil servants to be aware of what is available in that area. Technology now forms an integral part of every training course for every civil servant and, irrespective of the purpose of the course, there is an element in it that is designed specifically to encourage the greater use of technology. There is the challenging concept of the advantages of networking to which I referred in my speech.

Deputy Ahern asked for a clear definition of decentralisation. He said it had been the policy of his Government to favour decentralisation but I have to say that is not so. There was an abuse of the word "decentralisation" and its meaning in the suggestion by a previous Fianna Fáil administration that they would transfer individual Departments or offices from Dublin to other locations throughout the country. That is not decentralisation. Decentralisation is identifying decisions and areas of work that have been centralised and which might better be dealt with on a devolved decentralised basis locally. That is what the Government are committed to do.

In the past few months there was a major announcement regarding the commitment of the Government to decentralise to local authorities functions that are carried out at present by Departments. That is real decentralisation and it will lead to additional jobs in the regions as the centralised Departments are slimmed down and the work and the staff are shed to the local authorities. That was an announcement of fundamental importance to the future of the country which went largely unnoticed and uncommented upon in this House and in the media. The fact that as many services as possible will be administered by the local authorities and that only where it is necessary will services be administered by the central Departments will have a fundamental change on Irish life and on the public service. I am pleased that recently the Government asked me to chair a committee to oversee the implementation of that programme and to identify the areas that are administered centrally at present and which might better be administered by the local authorities.

We should not try to fool ourselves on this matter. There is no point in putting the Department of Fisheries in Killybegs just because that would suit the Killybegs fishermen. It must be realised it would not suit fishermen from Schull or Dunmore East and it would be just as disadvantageous for them as having the Department in Dublin. However, there may be certain functions in the Department that could better be administered by the county councils in Donegal, Waterford or Kerry. That is what real decentralisation means.

Mr. B. Ahern

Has that programme been published? I have not seen it.

Mr. Boland

The proposal was published and a document explaining the matter is available from the Department of the Environment. I should have thought it would have been circulated to all Deputies. I realise the Deputy may have been busy with other things at the time.

Deputy Ahern was concerned, with justification, with regard to the size of the public service pension bill and the fact that it is unfunded. That is a problem. The size of the public service liability will be a problem in the year 2010 or 2015. It is a problem that is not peculiar to this country but is facing other countries at a much earlier stage. Recently I read that two of the more advanced democracies will have a public service pension liability at the turn of the century that is in excess of their total present income from income tax. Very many pension funds, both private and public sector, are under-funded at present. There are downstream consequences for a number of the major funds that have serious implications, and sometimes implications of a more immediate nature than the Civil Service system which is unfunded. I am not sure if there is any particular difference in that context.

I was interested to hear the remarks made by Deputy Keating. However, some of them were contradictory. He is somewhat misled in his suggestion that the Department of the Public Service have continued to grow in size. Figures were supplied to him in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditure and I am surprised he made that mistake. I have shown clearly that numbers in the Department have fallen from 480 to 360 as at last March. This has happened in the past two years and it is a sizeable reduction.

Deputy Keating suggested that the embargo has kept the lid on the growth in the Civil Service. Deputy Kelly's remarks were in contrast to that. He explained how effective the embargo had been. There has been a fall of 2,800 in the size of the Civil Service since 1981, that is, a fall of over 8 per cent. It is a little less than generous to describe that as keeping the lid to some extent on the size of the Civil Service.

I am always interested to listen to public representatives embark on forms of self-flagellation. It intrigues me to hear them complain about clientism and about making representations in the knowledge that they have not the right or the authority to influence decisions while, at the same time, they embark on that course on a daily basis. If a Deputy is not interested in clientism then let him get out of it. He should not complain about the matter publicly in this House and then privately send me bundles of letters asking me to get jobs for people when he is not entitled to do that. I am not going to get jobs for people: they will only get them on merit. Members should not come into this House and proclaim one thing publicly while adopting the opposite course in a private capacity.

As usual, Deputy Kelly was interesting and informative. He was generous enough to praise the effects of the embargo, although he was a little ungracious in suggesting that he thought that was the only reform of the public service that had taken place. In the last two years we set up the office of the Ombudsman and appointed an Ombudsman. We radically changed the system of appointing senior civil servants with the introduction of the top level appointments committee. We created open competition at all administrative and managerial levels from HEO upwards. There are interdepartmental promotion mobility schemes and virtually every second post is now available for filling through interdepartmental schemes. We introduced job sharing and career break schemes which despite the embargo have allowed for the appointment of 800 new people. We introduced performance appraisals so that people will receive promotion based on their ability and their performance on a daily basis. We introduced new technology training. We have given considerable emphasis to improving service to the public at the point of contact.

These are considerable achievements. I hope that when the White Paper is published in the near future I will be in a position to advance that change to a marked extent.

Vote put and agreed to.