MINISTER FOR Finance Brian Cowen is expected to say today that while he approves of some of the public sector reforms proposed in a new OECD report, others may be unsuitable for Ireland.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Mr Cowen are expected to welcome the findings of the report at a ceremony in Dublin Castle today and announce the establishment of a high-level implementation body.
The report is expected to say that the public service remained insufficiently focused on its customers, the public. It will call for greater staff mobility between the civil service, State agencies and local authorities.
It will recommend the establishment of a new senior public service and suggest pay reform. The report expresses concern at the implications of the Government’s decentralisation programme.
A case study in the report could also open up once again the row over the centralisation of acute hospital services in different regions, particularly in the north east. It is expected to say that while best practice suggested that there should be one hospital for a population of 500,000, that there could also be a hospital for every 150,000-300,000 people.
On this basis it suggests that there could be two hospitals in the north east, rather than the single hospital planned by the HSE.
Controversially the report will also indicate that fees for Freedom of Information applications, introduced by the Government five years ago, should be scrapped.
Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said the report would highlight a number of Government shortcomings, including the collapse of value-for money disciplines adopted in the past under EU requirements; the damage done by an ill-thought out decentralisation programme; and the habit of creating new agencies for every problem.