MINSTER FOR Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has said he will bring plans to Cabinet within the next couple of weeks on the Government’s new comprehensive spending review across the public service.
Speaking at a media briefing yesterday, he said the review would look at all public spending in a root and branch manner as well as in every State agency. He said the review would “set a framework of what we want to achieve and we will then engage with the partners on how it will be achieved”.
There has been speculation that the comprehensive spending review could provide the impetus for a Government move to merge State agencies or close quangos.
Mr Howlin said the Government wanted to look at how services were delivered. He said it was not simply an issue relating to the numbers employed.
Asked whether this could result in some public services being out-sourced or privatised, the Minister said: “We have to look where services can best be delivered”. This would be done on a case-by-case basis, he added.
Mr Howlin said the review would be different from the Bord Snip process carried out two years ago by economist Colm McCarthy.
The Government was not interested in the old ways of doing things, in tweaking expenditure, or in a confrontational approach in which the Department of Finance told other departments and agencies to cut this or that. “We need to have a transformational way of doing things.”
The Minister said he had begun drafting a memo for Cabinet. He said the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform would fit in with the review process. The deal, which was signed almost a year ago, “has been successful in what it has achieved to date”.
He said the continued reduction in numbers on the public payroll as well as industrial peace and the savings on the pay bill were “absolutely critical”.
The previous government had set a target of about €310 million to be made this year on the public service pay and pension bill. However, Mr Howlin said, he was not going to give out figures for his targets at this stage. He said the issue had not been discussed by Cabinet.
The Minister said a review of public service numbers would take place next month and a report on what had been achieved and what the Government wanted to achieve would be given to the IMF-EU.
Asked about the rejection of the Department of Finance’s plans to abolish privilege days for staff in the Civil Service this week, he said he wanted to see change. The arbitration board had signalled it wanted the Government to try to achieve this on a public service-wide basis and not just in the Civil Service alone, he said.
Some practices had developed that were not defendable and “we need to have an open discourse on that”. However, he said “people in the public service feel battered and bruised”. There had been a lot of comment that disrespected the public service.
He said trade unions that rejected the Croke Park deal could not expect to come under its guarantees of no further pay cuts or compulsory redundancies.
