My alternative approach to public service reform

PERVERSELY, your reporter chose to write a “review” of my speech to the MacGill Summer School as if it were a boxing match rather than tell your readers what I said in the presentation (‘Union fails to make an impact against cuts’, July 22).

So your readers will not be aware that my presentation was neither a “defence” of the public service nor an argument against the need to balance exchequer spending and income.

Rather, it was an outline of a serious alternative approach to public service reform to that set out in the McCarthy report. I argued, in some detail, that the apparently conflicting objectives of citizens’ demands for better services, Government demands for reduced spending and public service workers’ demands for pay protection and job security could be accommodated if real reform was devolved to local levels where services are actually delivered.