There can be no doubt that public sector reform is one of the central challenges facing the Government. As Exchequer resources become scarce, a key task is to find ways to improve public services in a cost effective way.
Unfortunately a value-for-money focus was absent during the boom years, making the task now facing the Government all the more difficult.
So how is the Government dealing with this issue? Not in a very strategic fashion, judging by developments over the past week. First, action plans published by the Department of Finance suggested that the payment of the benchmarking awards would not lead to any marked acceleration in reform in the civil service.
The plans are full of jargon and unspecific commitments, leaving public sector managers with much work to do to secure any significant progress on foot of the substantial payments.
Following this came yesterday's publication of the latest public sector employment figures. While the figures are incomplete - as they exclude the health service - they do suggest that recruitment restrictions introduced at Budget day are starting to have an impact.
The combination of employment restrictions and extra payments to those who remain indicate that the public will be paying more for services, which will at best remain at their current standard - and could actually disimprove. This represents a significant challenge for the Government as it grapples with reform of the health service and a difficult budgetary position.
It is important to realise that the public service has made significant progress in recent years under a number of modernisation programmes. Like their colleagues in the private sector, many public servants have been forced to adapt and improve their productivity and in certain areas of health and education have worked under difficult conditions. A recent study by the European Central Bank suggested that the public service here compared well in international terms.
That said, the Government does not have a clear strategy for reform. After a few years of loose spending, the slowdown - combined with the burden of benchmarking - has led to rather crude employment restrictions. Time will reveal the impact of these, but the concern is that services to the public will suffer further. This will be exacerbated as the financial cost of benchmarking will force the Government to cut back other areas of non-pay spending in December's Budget.
It is increasingly clear that the year-to-year Budget cycle does not provide a framework to address these issues. The move to multi-annual planning must be accelerating and combined with public-sector reform plans to offer a strategy for delivering and paying for decent public services. Instead, this Government seems content to keep its fingers crossed and hope that an economic upturn will allow it to start spending again before the next election. Given the lacklustre nature of the international recovery, this is not a wise strategy.