THE Government would like to see another national agreement, but not at any price, the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn has said.

Speaking to delegates at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr Quinn warned that negotiation of a fourth national agreement to follow the Programme for Competitiveness and Work would be "very difficult".

He said that, while there was widespread recognition that the social partnership structure had given a great service to the State, it was now essential to refocus on the background to the negotiation of the first wage agreement.

"It is necessary to reinvent the crisis" and to "refocus" on the economic conditions against which the first national wage agreement was struck in 1986 and 1987, Mr Quinn said.

The Government's first priority was to ensure that the existing Programme for Competitiveness and Work was fulfilled, he said.

Replying to delegates' questions, the Minister also stressed that he would welcome the secondment or appointment of senior business executives for a certain period to the public sector. Mr Quinn said such a transfer of skills to the public service was "very necessary" and should be looked at.

"The private sector has done very well with people who came from the public service," he said, adding that bodies such as IBEC could be effective in fostering movement in the other direction.

Mr Quinn said his suggestions of recruiting private sector executives to the public sector some years ago received a "very poor response" and had since been "buried".

Referring to the Government's Strategic Management Initiative for the public service, Mr Quinn told delegates that the new programme would ensure better control of public spending.

Improvements in the flow of information between the various Government Departments would benefit the overall spending position, he said.

The initiative is currency been extended into the wider public service, according to Mr Quinn, and all Government Departments have now been instructed to further develop it within their own organisations.

The Minister said the radical changes proposed within the public service were part of the political commitment for delivering better government.

"This requires a dynamic but corporate approach within the Civil Service as a whole, and the development of mechanisms to facilitate closer cross Departmental co-operation."

The Government would be demanding more from the "creativity and initiative of civil servants, allowing them greater scope to debate and implement more innovative solutions and ideas", he said.

The initiative aims to make the whole framework of accountability in the public service more transparent and flexible than it has been. To do this, Mr Quinn said, the Government would have to make it easier to see what was happening in the "back rooms" of the administrative machine.

Greater transparency would impact positively on the delivery of services and make it easier to identify areas where red tape could be reduced or removed, he said.