The Dáil, by order of 14 September, referred to the Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform, pursuant to Standing Orders 82A(3)(c) and (6)(a) and 159(3), the following Supplementary Estimate, Vote 42 - Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I welcome the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, and his official. I call on him to make his opening statement.
Vote 42 - Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (Supplementary)
I thank the Acting Chairman and members of the sub-committee for facilitating this brief, technical Supplementary Estimate, the purpose of which is to provide for a net additional voted provision of €1,000. The total of the new subhead will eventually be €1.5 million, the sum that will be required to meet the cost of the referendum information programme and so forth. Since I am requiring others to make savings, it is incumbent on me to ensure my Department did not create a new line of expenditure. For this reason, I will find the required moneys from within my budget. A surplus budget has been identified on the Department's change management fund and it is proposed to surrender an allocation from that subhead to meet the funding requirements for the Referendum Commission.
The role of the Referendum Commission is to promote awareness of the referendum, explain the referendum to the electorate and promote participation in the referendum vote. A Referendum Commission comprises a chairperson, who must be a former Supreme Court judge or serving or former High Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Ombudsman and the Clerks of the Dáil and the Seanad. Given the complexity of the legal, constitutional and policy issues arising from the proposed constitutional amendment, which was teased out in the passage of the Bill and my visit to a full meeting of the Joint Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform, it is necessary to establish a Referendum Commission to appropriately inform and advise the electorate in advance of its decision.
The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has signed the establishment order required under the Referendum Act 1998 for the Referendum Commission and public inquiries referendum. The Referendum Commission is funded by the sponsoring Department, which in this case is my Department. When the budget has been allocated it is transferred to the Accounting Officer in the Office of the Ombudsman by means of an agency order. The responsibility for the budget lies with the Accounting Officer of the Office of the Ombudsman. He or she is required to forward to the Accounting Officer of my Department a statement of all payments made, itemising expenditure under the main headings not later than ten weeks following the date of the referendum. Any moneys remaining unspent after the Referendum Commission has completed its work will be returned to my Department.
The complexity of the information campaign required was considered, together with a review of recent referenda information campaigns, the cost of which ranged from €3 million in April 2004 to €5 million in March 2008, to assist in arriving at an appropriate budget. It is my view that an allocation of €1.5 million to meet the costs of running the Oireachtas inquiries referendum campaign is sufficient. I propose that the select sub-committee agree to this allocation. As it is proposed to hold the presidential election and another referendum on the same day, it will be less demanding to get people out to vote than would be the case were this to be a stand-alone referendum. Taking account of the current state of the public finances, I consider €1.5 million to be a sufficient sum for the purpose envisaged. I recommend the proposal to the select sub-committee.
I thank the Minister and ask spokespersons and, if they so wish, members to make a brief contribution.
As the Minister noted, a second referendum will be held on the day in question. I understand a separate referendum commission is required in law for each referendum, although they may comprise the same individuals. Will a further €1.5 million be allocated to cover the costs of the second referendum? Will the referendum campaigns cost €3 million in total? The Referendum Commission usually issues a booklet or commissions advertisements setting out reasons to vote either "Yes" or "No" in a referendum. I presume a single booklet will be issued to cover both referendums. It would be a major waste of resources to print and distribute information separately.
Officials will have examined the breakdown of expenditure on previous referendum campaigns and concluded that a figure of €3 million will be sufficient on this occasion. On which items has expenditure been eliminated? While I do not envisage that a booklet or information leaflet will be sent to all 3 million electors, will such a document be sent to every household? Notwithstanding that Internet campaigns and so on will be used, it is important that people have a document which they can peruse when they come home in the evening or at their leisure. A physical booklet should be provided.
Given that a presidential election will be held on the same day as the referendums, could the information booklet include information on the presidential candidates? While I understand the Minister is not responsible for presidential campaigns, given that four or five candidates will each send letters to 3 million voters, giving a total of 12 million communications, could these communications be included in the booklet providing information on the referendums? In other words, is it possible to have one booklet providing details on the referendums and presidential candidates, rather than having three separate arms of government involved in addition to the work to be done on the by-election to be held on the same day? The returning officer will have to issue the polling cards to each voter. It would be a waste if a separate polling card had to issue to each voter in respect of the presidential election, and also in respect of the referendum and, in Dublin West, in respect of the by-election.
To be clear, this is the more complex of the two referenda. The net issue in the other referendum is fairly straightforward. A little more explanation will be required in the context of the Oireachtas inquiries referendum. Therefore, a slightly different budget is allocated to each. In this case I am proposing a budget of €1.5 million. I understand the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, has proposed a budget of €750,000 for the other referendum. The combined cost will be of the order of €2.25 million. The way documentation will be distributed, given that it is set out in law, is that the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government will issue polling cards to every elector. Attached to the polling card will be a statement that we agreed in the Dáil yesterday, which will simply-----
Will it-----
-----outline what the referendum states. Each elector will get a polling card showing the text of the two referenda to be voted on, Tá or Níl. They will go out without any advocacy or analysis from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. Separate to that, under law, is the role of the referendum commission which is required to conduct an analysis and prepare an explanatory booklet on the impact, independent of my Department or anybody else, of each referenda. It is my hope that a common booklet can be prepared but that is a matter for the commission on which to make a judgment.
A Deputy
That is not saying it should.
Perhaps the Deputy would make those views known. It appears to me that there would be a convincing case to be made for a single booklet stating there are two questions. Part 1 of the booklet outlines the first question, the case for and against, as the independent commission determines and part 2 deals outlines the second question, setting out the case for and against. That would be the more efficient way of dealing with it. Members will have received a briefing note from my Department, the last page of which contains our estimate of the individual breakdown of costs, print, distribution with An Post, publicity - TV, radio, press advertisements - consultancy contingency and so on.
Go raibh maith agat. Ideally, there should be a single booklet. Aside from the obvious cost efficiencies, in terms of the public mind in trying to decide who to elect Uachtaráin na hÉireann-----
They will be separate-----
I know, but just bear in mind this is how people process things. In the case of this particular referendum, the issues are complex and I imagine there will be quite an interesting - hopefully not too technical - and heated debate on it. I support Deputy Fleming in his exhortations to the Minister for efficiency.
The Minister is reallocating money from the change management fund. I presume the Minister has weighed the consequences of that. Will he set out specifically how he makes that saving within that fund and what impact it may have on the reform agenda?
There are two separate questions here. On the efficiency side, I am very anxious that there would be efficiencies. The clerk might convey the views of the committee, in general terms, to the commission, if that is appropriate. I do not know how independent these people are but the views should be expressed. In terms of the savings of €1.5 million, the change agenda is a critical part of the work of my Department. I am in office only a little more than six months but constructing the actual shape of the Department has taken a fair amount of work and crafting, not least the enactment of a very complicated legislation. It has been my intention - it has now been put in place - to have a driver of public service reform within a section of the Department. I have advertised for a senior public official who will be the head of change management to run that office. The TLAC process is engaged currently in doing that. That is not a cost that we have to pick up yet and it was allocated a specific amount in the budget.
The biggest component part of the saving I propose to make is my ambition to create a human resource shared service. Right now every Department has its own human resource management system. My ambition is to have an integrated shared service. Obviously, there will be human resource issues to be dealt with on a departmental basis but working towards an integrated public service there should be one human resource management system. The first step in that regard is to have a shared service. A significant allocation of €800,000 for that purpose will not be expended this year because it is not yet in place. While the budget line for next year is not determined, I would hope the system will be in place for next year but it is not a cost that will arise this year.
Just so that I understand the Minister correctly, the €800,000 is obviously the lion's share. Is the Minister satisfied that by switching resources in this way it will not hamper his efforts?
I can do a lot on the planning, preparation and structural sides but I do not want to waste money. I do not want people hanging around if they are not ready to do the job immediately. We are doing a good deal of work on the procurement side to bring about change management. The Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, has done much preparatory work in respect of procurement and ascertaining how it is done better elsewhere. He has had good dialogue with the UK Government on that issue. Part of the original allocation was for procurement changes also. All of these are supposed to be investments that will pay a significant dividend ultimately. This is not money to be expended to no avail. When we shape next year's budget we might go through this issue in more detail - how the whole change management structure is to be put in place and what specific savings we would target.
I view the change management remit as one of the most important within the new Government. I am slightly concerned that it appears as if things are happening slower than was planned in HR services; otherwise, the money would be spent. I understand the Minister's budget is there because it has not been spent as planned. Will he explain if there is any major reason the shared HR service, which when set up will save a significant amount of money, is not being put in place according to plan?
It was voted a significant amount of money. Before I release any money I want to ensure we are ready to expend it. The original view was that external assistance would be required to create this service. If we are to expend that amount of money on external consultancy, I need to think long and hard about it to ensure it is the right way to proceed.
In the past six months, we have been involved in a complete reorganisation of the way my Department operates. We have broken it away from the old Department of Finance and have set up a completely new structure. We have recruited a new Secretary General, started public service change and political reform divisions and got new people for those and have transferred staff from the Department of the Taoiseach, who were originally involved in the change management process, into my Department. The original budget envisaged was to be shared between the Department of the Taoiseach and the old Department of Finance. Added to that, we have had the matter of negotiating with the troika, the banking crisis and trying to put a floor on it, the establishment of the comprehensive review expenditure and the public capital review, all of which must come to fruition in the next number of weeks. As members can imagine, there are significant pressures with the work. It is important we get it right and I intend, in the course of next year, to ensure that the reform of the public service agenda is front-loaded in the work of my Department.
While this is beyond the scope of the current debate, I wish to inform members that there is a Cabinet sub-committee on public service reform. We worked on a comprehensive presentation to that committee before the summer recess and we have asked a number of people to come back to us with regard to how the strategies should be implemented on a range of issues, such as procurement, e-government, communication, shared services and so on. This work is ground breaking and I look forward to the input of all my colleagues on that. When the Government makes decisions on that, I may come and make a formal presentation to the full committee.
That would be excellent.
I am new to this, but in order for this committee to have an input, would it not make more sense to bring that to the committee before the Government makes a decision? Perhaps that is a naive question and no Government would ever do that. It seems when the answer is obviously "Yes" it is naive.
I will let the Minister answer that.
It is not at all naive. We welcome any ideas on the change agenda. Deputy Fleming will know that within his party Deputy Dara Calleary had responsibility for public service reform. I worked within my party on the issue where we had a formal group and a support group and last year I published a document containing 140 significant reform proposals. Fine Gael did something similar and these proposals have migrated into the programme for Government. This shapes the agenda. I am anxious that we do not open a debate on the what of it, because it is time to start doing now. We need to make the changes as both Government parties have a clear mandate to bring about change. Inputs from everybody are welcome in that process and I will find a mechanism to ensure that every Deputy has a vehicle for input.
Does anyone else have any questions for the Minister? No. With regard to what the Minister has said, we may send a transcript of our discussion to the chairpersons of both referenda so that they can take it into account.
If that is appropriate, but it would be good.
Do we need a formal proposal for the Estimate?
No, there is no need. I thank the Minister and his officials for assisting the committee with its consideration of the Revised Estimates and programme. We have completed our consideration of the Supplementary Estimate for Vote 42 and the clerk will send a message to that effect to the Clerk of the Dáil.