The Public Service Agreement, 2010-2014 (the "Croke Park" Agreement) provides a framework for public service management and staff to work together to reduce the cost of delivery of public services while also maintaining or improving the quality of those services. An Implementation Body was established to drive the implementation of the Agreement across all sectors and ensure that early, robust and verifiable reforms were secured that would in turn lead to verifiable and sustainable savings in the cost of public service delivery. My Department's initial Action Plan under the Croke Park Agreement was submitted to the Implementation Body in October 2010, followed by a second iteration in early January 2011. The initiatives in the Action Plan, which build on-going reforms in the Department's business processes, are kept under continuous review and have yielded significant savings in the administrative costs of running the Department. These reforms are contributing to the effort to meet the challenge of maintaining the range, quality and geographic scope of the policy, programme management, promotional and frontline citizen services provided by the Department with the reduced resources available.
The Department regularly reports to the Implementation Body, most recently in early May, on progress being made in implementing the actions specified in our Action Plan as well as on savings being achieved. These progress and savings reports are published on the Department's and the Implementation Body's websites. The Deputy will also be aware that the Government recently noted the contents of the Implementation Body's second annual progress report, for Quarter One 2011 to Quarter One 2012, the key conclusions of which included:
that, during the period in question exchequer pay bill savings of €650m were achieved, driven by a reduction of 11,530 in staff numbers;
that the parties to the Agreement had continued to meet their commitments in terms of facilitating further reductions in staff numbers and in the cost of delivering public services as well as staff redeployments across functional boundaries and reconfiguration of organisations and services; and
that industrial peace had been maintained across the public service. Within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, substantial and ongoing savings have been achieved inter alia through overall staffing reductions of approximately 12%, Mission closures in the Holy See, Tehran and Dili, re-grading or suppression of diplomatic posts in various other Missions, negotiated rent reductions, cutbacks in premium overtime payments and increased use of video conferencing technology.
My Department is fully cognisant of the extremely difficult economic and budgetary circumstances facing the State and of the need to introduce further reforms and achieve further savings. Under my direction, it remains fully committed to ensuring that its responsibilities are fulfilled and that the frontline services it provides to the public are delivered as cost-effectively as possible. It is working hard to achieve reforms and savings within the specified timeframes and I am very satisfied with the progress being made in this regard. There are no State bodies under the aegis of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
