Cowen silent on civil service job losses
In the budget, Mr Cowen said the review of all administrative spending across government departments and State bodies would begin without delay. Each department will be required to provide specific proposals to “maximise administrative savings” to the Department of Finance by March 1.
Finance will then evaluate the proposals, using “outside efficiency experts” if needed, before reporting to the Government, which will decide on what actions should be taken.
“These savings will be used in reducing the cost of existing level of services for 2009 and any department who fails to do so would lose out in the spending round for 2009,” said Mr Cowen in the budget.
Although he said the measures identified should not “jeopardise the maintenance of frontline services”, Mr Cowen said he was particularly interested in “possible inefficiencies due to the multiplicity of boards and agencies” and “the need for better sharing of certain services”.
Asked if this would mean redundancies, Mr Cowen said: “No, no decisions on any of that at this stage.
“Let’s see what emerges. I don’t think it’s helpful to be speculating on any of that for the moment until we see what’s doable, what’s affordable and what can be achieved.” He insisted the review was “not a paper exercise” but a “very serious and important initiative”.
But Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that, “to have any credibility whatsoever”, the new review would have to start by:
* Suspending the recent pay hikes for ministers and senior public sector managers and making them conditional on performance and efficiencies delivered.
* Insisting every public body deliver independently audited efficiency improvement of at least 2% during 2008.
* Instituting an immediate audit of every agency with the aim of “far-reaching rationalisation”.
* Holding back €500 million and requiring bodies to bid for new resources on the basis of “delivering best practice at the front line”.
Mr Kenny said that over the last decade, the Government had wasted numerous opportunities to achieve public service reform.
Examples were the failure to use the benchmarking process to “to leverage real reform” and the “huge expansion of bureaucracy” in the HSE.
He said the British government had lowered cost inflation in the public sector and delivered value-for-money improvements through its ambitious reform programme.
“If cost inflation in the Irish public sector had been kept down to the British rate, we would have had an additional €13 billion for tax reforms or frontline services such as education and health over the period 2000 to 2007, including an additional €3.2bn in 2007 alone,” said Mr Kenny.
