A "ROOT and branch review" of State services is required to remove costs and barriers that are preventing the public availing of services they are entitled to, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey told the Kenmare economic conference on Saturday.
In a hard-hitting speech on how the public sector needs to change - delivered just four days before the budget - Mr Dempsey said one of the downsides of more than a decade of prosperity was that people came to believe that "money solved everything".
However, those kinds of solutions may not have been the best options available, he said.
"Duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy inevitably often prevented what started out as a good intention not in fact delivering for the citizen," he said.
Mr Dempsey said that, due to the financial crisis, it was "extraordinarily difficult" for any minister to stand still and look at how we redefine the civil and public service for the coming decades.
"It's difficult to think speculatively about making the civil and public service fit for purpose as a magnet employer over the longer term. It is difficult but imperative - it has to be done."
However, he defended the role of the public sector in the financial crisis. "The public sector are not responsible for what is happening today, either here in Ireland or internationally in the banking sector," he said.
Mr Dempsey said the emphasis in the public sector needed to change from "activity to outcome". For too long the focus had been on hours worked and not on outcomes, he said.
He said that to achieve the radical proposals he was suggesting, the public sector needed the Department of Finance to re-establish its role as "the department of the public service . . . a role that became somewhat diluted over the past decade or so," he said.
He said failure to reward good performance "rots an organisation from the ground up" and that it was "deeply demotivating" for high performers.
Mr Dempsey said the Civil Service needed to become "as demanding as the private sector", where failure to deliver resulted in warnings "before the person heads for the exit door".
