False start: Kenny left red-faced as FG launches its blueprint

FINE GAEL believes it can save €5 billion and revolutionise the public sector if it was elected to serve a five-year term in government.

But is its lengthy plan a considered blueprint for reconfiguring how the state deals with its citizens or an ill-advised adventure in change for change’s sake?

To convince the country of its commitment, the party has produced a 85-page policy document which reinforces its promise to reinvent the public sector.

At its core is an attempt to change the philosophy underpinning state agencies as services that customers/ taxpayers pay for rather than bodies who are handed money to decide what the public gets.

Bodies get money for what they do rather than getting money for what they think they might have to do.

Departments will be pared down, they will be more focused on their core responsibility and be asked to share services to cut costs and reach agreed targets if they want to get their full budget allocations.

Senior civil servants will be held accountable for the performance of their departments, and sacked if necessary.

There are a number of other headline-grabbing initiatives. These include scrapping the Seanad, pooling ministerial cars and cutting the number of TDs.

But when it comes to saving money, these are the fluff on the Fine Gael fundamentals.

On the surface the party has answered critics of the opposition by putting a tangible policy on the table that, if implemented as planned, could save €1bn a year.

But it also raises a lot of unanswered questions which are not picking over the peripheral issues but strike at the heart of whether this agenda is realistic or not.

Yesterday, party leader Enda Kenny made a awful attempt at selling the plan to the country on RTÉ’s This Week. Presenter Richard Crowley was insistent on getting specifics.

And, yet again, Mr Kenny could regurgitate the sound bites but did not seem to have got to grips with the details of his own plan.

The most obvious case was the questioning on the proposal to dismantle the HSE in a number of stages over five years.

This was not new. It had been released as part of Dr James Reilly’s Fair Care strategy.

But while Mr Kenny knew the system on which it was modelled, the Dutch reforms, he messed up on the specifics.

He said doctors and nurses and front-line staff will be protected, hospitals would be passed over to local trust managers and administrators would be expected to find work with insurance companies.

But Mr Crowley pressed him on a very fundamental question in the plan: who will employ the nurses, doctors and health workers?

This is because if the HSE is broken up and hospitals and health centres given to trusts there would be a question of who would pay the salaries and be held accountable.

On the basis of Mr Crowley’s questions it was obvious Mr Kenny did not have a handle on the small print.

Similarly, the party has to wrestle with the basic question of when its grand plan could be triggered. Will there be a D-Day or a drip feed of reforms akin to the promises in the Croke Park agreement?

If Fine Gael got into power and had a clean slate it would aim to revolutionise the structures of the public sector. But while claiming this should be done within five years there are obvious and basic hurdles which would take longer to break down.

For instance, Fine Gael wants to place the 1,300 top civil servants on permanent probation. This means those who are on the assistant principal grade and above will be the subject of a public service performance body. They could be sanctioned or sacked if their work is continually below par and targets are not met

Fine Gael also promises to cap public sector pay at €200,000.

However, Mr Kenny promised Fine Gael would stick to the pay terms negotiated under the Croke Park agreement.

So, why would anybody currently protected by the current cozy public sector arrangements for top-line managers volunteer to sign up for the Fine Gael plan?

The Fine Gael option is to allow existing contracts to run down and the highest graded civil servants would be rehired on tougher terms.

But this whittling down process could take up to seven years until all current contracts run their course.

Does this mean the performance monitors would be set up but could only look at those who volunteer to be subject of scrutiny? And will two different systems of a management operate in the meantime?

Secretary generals and chief executives of semi-state companies already earn more than the limit and they can see out their seven-year contracts.

Therein lies a contradiction – a five-year plan subject to a seven-year transfer.

The person behind the policy document, Enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton, recognised there will be problems.

“I’m not naive enough to think there won’t be resistance but I believe there’s a compelling case for change. We have no alternative,” Mr Bruton said.

The plan adopts a number of schemes to entice the civil service to change with cheaper alternative structures, but it does not discuss the methods it would use if the tanker refuses to turn around on its own steam.

This may be politically motivated, to avoid a pre-emptive clash with public sector workers, but leaves a lot of questions that it will have to find better answers for than the confused attempt of Mr Kenny yesterday.