THE NEW taskforce which will develop a plan to reform the public service will report back to Taoiseach Brian Cowen by the end of the summer, it has emerged.
Mr Cowen announced in the Dáil yesterday that the nine-person group - comprising leading business figures, an academic and top civil servants - will draw on the recommendations from the report into the public service by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), published this month.
It is expected to draw up what the Taoiseach described as a "new action plan for the public service of the 21st century". Government sources said that the fact he was asking for the group to report so quickly underlined that reform of the public service was an essential priority for him.
The group will be chaired by Dermot McCarthy, the secretary general of Government. It will include four other heads of Government department: Brigid McManus of Education, Michael Scanlon from Health, Geraldine Tallon from Environment and Ciarán Connolly, of the Public Services Management Division in Finance.
Three of its members are drawn from the private sector. They are: Mark Ryan, the managing director in Ireland of Accenture, John Moloney, group managing director of Glanbia, Breege O'Donoghue, director of Penny's.
The ninth member of the group is Paul Haran, the principal of the College of Business and Law in UCD. He is a former secretary general of the Department of Enterprise.
Outlining the rationale behind the establishment of the group, Mr Cowen told the Dáil that the OECD accept that the public service was on a path of modernisation. "It found that our relatively small public sector has contributed to our competitive advantage.
"However, it also acknowledges that there is, overall, an insufficient focus on performance that delivers outcomes in line with the needs of citizens."
He said the main recommendation was that the public service needed to be seen as a more integrated system.
"It is about ensuring that departments, offices, and agencies interact with each other in new ways, ensuring integrated action in policy-making, delivery and implementation," said Mr Cowen.
Responding in the Dáil, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the reform of the public service was like the drainage in the Shannon. "There has been talk about it for a very long time," he said.
Labour's finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said that many people were jumping on the bandwagon and looking for any stick with which to beat the public sector.
"We want a modern responsive and citizen-focused public service. Reform must not be a euphemism for cutbacks or a Trojan horse for a neoliberal agenda where the only way to deal with the public service is to privatise it, outsource it or get rid of it," she said.
The Government said that public service unions would be fully consulted during the process.
