Mary Lou McDonald
Question:22. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his views on whether all public expenditure commitments in the programme for Government will be delivered. [9440/14]
View answerWednesday, 26 February 2014
Questions (22)
Written answers
The Government is making strong progress on achieving our targets and priorities regarding the expenditure commitments, as articulated in the Programme for Government. Sustainable public finances are a pre-requisite for economic stability and growth. This Government has therefore pursued a determined deficit reduction strategy. We are committed to reaching the 3% of GDP target for the General Government Deficit by the target date of end-2015. This is a challenging target and one that is set against a difficult economic background which has required fiscal corrections in the form of significant consolidation to voted expenditure. The consolidation measures introduced by this Government have ensured Ireland's successful exit from the EU-IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland. To fully appreciate the scale of the consolidation it must be noted that it has been achieved in the context of increasing demands on public services in particular in the areas of Social Protection, Health and Education.
In order to ensure effective prioritisation of public expenditure, this Government committed to examining all areas of public spending. In 2011, the first Comprehensive Review of Expenditure (CRE) was undertaken and the Comprehensive Expenditure Report was published on 5 December 2011. This document set out three year current expenditure ceilings on an administrative basis for all Departments from 2012-2014. The Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 2013, enacted in July 2013, put the arrangements for these three year expenditure ceilings on a statutory basis.
Changes introduced in relation to the annual estimates process should facilitate more effective financial scrutiny by the Oireachtas Select Committees. Performance budgeting has now been rolled out for all Departments and provides information about the services being purchased with public money and the impacts of these services for society in general.
The Government is committed to making fundamental changes to the way the public service operates to safeguard the delivery of essential services while obtaining value for money for the citizen. Critical to this are the second phase of the Public Service Reform Plan which I launched earlier this year allied with the Haddington Road Agreement, both of which are delivering important workplace efficiencies and enhanced productivity.
I established a new Office of Government Procurement to centralise the procurement of common goods and services across the public service and achieve targeted savings of up to €500m over a three year period, of which €127m savings is targeted in 2014. One of the key priorities of this reform is improving the capacity of SMEs to tender for public sector contracts in order to support innovative Irish firms.
There has also been progress on the introduction of shared services. PeoplePoint, the new Human Resources Shared Services Centre opened in 2013 and the Civil Service Payroll Shared Service Centre commenced in December 2013. Further work is ongoing to progress shared services projects in the areas of Banking and Financial Management services for Government bodies, Learning and Development services and in each of the health, education and local government sectors.
This Government is bringing public expenditure back onto a sustainable path and the delivery of commitments relating to the public service reform agenda should ensure that efficiencies and reformed work practices play a full part in contributing to the overall budgetary consolidation effort which is essential to achieving economic recovery.