The Taoiseach has said that he wants the remit of the Ombudsman extended to all bodies which receive at least half their funding from the Exchequer. Speaking at the annual conference of the Institute of Public Administration yesterday, Mr Ahern also said that the Government was prepared to "look again" at the constitutional amendment on cabinet confidentiality, if the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution so recommended.
Mr Ahern told the conference, whose theme this year was "Governance and Accountability in the Public Sector", that he wanted to see a number of administrative measures introduced in the near future. These included a reduction in the amount of red tape facing small and medium enterprises, added powers for the Ombudsman and legislation that would entitle ordinary citizens to demand delivery of services from Government Departments within specific time limits.
He said he hoped to build on the existing Quality Customer Service initiative with new proposals next week, when he would introduce a specific Customer Service Action Plan for his own Department. Other Departments were expected to follow within a few weeks.
"These will, for the first time, set out clearly the levels of service to which all Government Departments and agencies are committing," he said. "Although simple in concept, I believe this is a very powerful tool of accountability, as it will enable performance to be monitored and assessed in a way which has never before been possible."
The county manager for Fingal (north Co Dublin), Mr William Soffe, said that local authorities should be able to measure an acceptable level of performance in areas like response rates to emergency calls, repairs to water-supply breakdowns or answering letters. He said it might be more problematical when it came to areas like producing development or waste-management plans.
The Ombusdman, Mr Kevin Murphy, said he foresaw major difficulties for the Government in the new referendum to ratify the Amsterdam Treaty. The changes were complex, and a whole series of booklets would probably be required to explain them. However, because of the Supreme Court judgment in the case brought by the Green MEP Ms Patricia McKenna during the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, Mr Murphy said, there was a reluctance by the Government and civil servants to provide information. One solution might be the establishment of a new independent commission with a remit to provide "a balanced expose" of both sides of the argument.
Mr Murphy also said there were considerable gaps in the protection of human rights. Given the increasing level of world co-operation between ombudsmen and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, he felt a Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights was needed. From his own experience, Mr Murphy said, travellers, people with disabilities, refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants were the most atrisk groups within Ireland.
Prof Andrew Gray, of Durham University, warned public service managers not to become too enamoured of buzz-words like "customer" and "accountability". While some public services were being put on a commercial basis, those involved in managing them should not lose sight of the fact that their ultimate responsibility was to provide services to citizens.
There was also a danger that too much emphasis on allocating blame when things went wrong would be confused with accountability, leading public servants to concentrate their energies on avoiding responsibility.