Labour leader Pat Rabbitte has accused the Government of incompetence in dealing with the public service and pledged that in government his party would ensure that the public was given value for money.
He told the Insurance Institute's annual dinner in Cork that the Government had presided over a massive increase in spending on public services without any corresponding improvement in many of those services. "This represents a vast missed opportunity, because there is no guarantee that the money will always be there to continue to increase spending on these services at its current level.
"In government, Labour is committed to funding public services at a level that is commensurate with a level of provision similar to that enjoyed by citizens in the best of our EU neighbours. However, the emphasis will be on performance and delivery. We will not preside over a situation where public money is squandered without accountability."
He added that it was regrettable that such a shambles had been made of decentralisation and that morale in the public service had been so undermined when a planned negotiated programme of decentralisation was what was needed. He said the State in the 21st century needs to be a smart one, attuned to the enormous changes under way and clear about what is to be done to successfully address them.
"It is important to make clear that the idea of the smart state is not consistent with a bloated and unreformed public sector, or a state hollowed out by unthinking privatisation and the creation of quasi-markets in public services.
"In order to transform public services, we will reform how they are delivered. However such reform will not proceed along the path of centralised targets, top-down management and consumerism pursued by New Labour in the UK. In reforming, we will be guided by the vision that users of public services should not be passive consumers of those services but active participants in their delivery," he said.
Mr Rabbitte told his audience that the environment for the practice of politics had changed a great deal over the last 25 years.
"In the era of the soundbite, the 40 seconds response on the evening news, repetitive coverage of the trivial, the sensational and the scandalous in a more fragmented and diffuse media, it is ironically more difficult to get a hearing for anything a bit more substantial."
