Radical reforms are needed in the management of public spending to achieve a greater focus on improving services to the public, according to a new report.
Spending agencies should be made much more accountable for the results they achieve, the report from the National Economic and Social Council says, and must be more willing to shift resources from programmes that are not working to ones that are effective, or have a higher priority.
In other key recommendations the report calls for a much stronger emphasis on what is achieved by government spending.
The information on public spending currently presented as part of the Budget process should show what is intended to be achieved with the resources being spent.
Oireachtas committees, backed up by professional staff, could then examine the outcomes.
Government Departments and agencies must also buy into this "evaluation culture".
To do this they must invest in new information systems and in staff with the skills to monitor and evaluate spending programmes.
The report - Achieving Quality Outcomes: The Management of Public Expenditure - says public service reforms here have been much slower than in other developed countries. While some reform has been achieved, the report argues that the Irish system still finds it difficult to take a strategic approach to the management of public spending.
The NESC is a body charged with advising Government on economic and social policy.
Its council includes representatives of the Government, employers, trade unions, farmers and social and community organisations, so its reports carry considerable weight. It comes at a time when the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, is seeking to put in place a system to ensure better value from public spending.
The public service system - run by the government of the day - is slow in reallocating spending from old to new priorities, the report finds. It still puts an excessive focus on inputs, such as money and people employed, rather than what is achieved by public bodies and public spending. "Departments and agencies must show that their spending accords with the Estimates and the Budget, but are not held accountable for the effectiveness of their policies and services," according to the NESC. A fundamental problem, the report says, is the lack of people in Government Departments with the relevant skills to collect, organise and analyse data on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending.
Examining the trend internationally, the NESC says that the general direction of reform is that spending agencies "are given greater flexibility in using resources in exchange for being held responsible for results".
However, it concedes that the evidence shows it is difficult to get the public services to "manage for results".
The report examines how different countries have used league tables, service charters and other reporting mechanisms to measure performance.
The report studies the management of spending in the Republic. It highlights a major shortcoming as being "major gaps in the availability of organised information on what is being achieved through public expenditure".
Investment in information systems to overcome this is essential, it says.
Together with a focus on what it achieved, this could help in greater prioritisation, it says and "sunset clauses" - requiring a pro-active decision to continue an agency or programme after a given period - should be considered when new programmes are introduced.
