Comments on: Minister for Public Service Reform

By: Cathal

Cathal — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:49:06 +0000

Was the proposal for a Minister for Public Sector Reform not floating in the air for several weeks? I recall hearing it ages ago especially when it was leaked that the Depts of Community, Rural&Gaeltacht Affairs plus Dept of Arts, Sport&Tourism would be radically reformed/abolished and possibly a new ministry formed whose responsibility would be reform and implementation of the McCarthy Report.

I was thinking about Bord Snip last night and it struck me that any Minister who was actually on top of his/her brief should be able to pin point savings and reforms in the Departments under their control, cut PR and consultancy budgets in quangos under their control etc.

Id like to see Labour calling on individual Ministers to show true leadership and introduce cuts&reforms in their own depts. Most of the FF ministers have been in office for 10-12 years so they know their way around the place and where the budgets are soft. Along the lines of “what are you doing to reform the public sector”

By: keith

keith — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:42:13 +0000

The Department of Equality & Law Reform wasn’t far from my mind, Neville.

By: Neville

Neville — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:24:19 +0000

Sounds rather like Meryn Taylor and the Department of Equality and Law Reform from 93-97. Liberalising agenda from “Spring Tide” and Mary Robinson, senior politician who was retiring, and I seem to remember a justice front bench spokesperson telling me that most of its agenda (equality) had been implemented in some manner and it therefore made sense that it was folded into Justice after ’97. If the model could be (somewhat) sucessfull in that case, why not public sector reform?

By: EWI

EWI — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:16:36 +0000

I’d be interested to hear your ideas on solving the problem *without* political vision…

I’d be interested in seeing the various ministers and politicians who divvied up decentralisation like spoils of war being made to apologise in public. Until then, I think that you’re going to do more harm than good in letting the pols have yet *another* go at that feeding-trough (and don’t believe that angles aren’t already being devised).

Btw, I thought that Labour were supposedly a socialist party, and pro-union. I see that I may have been mistaken.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:14:47 +0000

You can’t but there is none. It’s a Beckett play. We can’t go on. We’ll go. Godot is the IMF. )

By: keith

keith — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:44:52 +0000

I’d be interested to hear your ideas on solving the problem *without* political vision…

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:39:26 +0000

“The civil servants assigned to this Department should be hand selected from the best and brightest in the rest of the public sector. They should be recruited by the new Department, not sent to it because they’re an inconvenience or of no use to their previous Department (as is alleged to so often happen in the Irish public service).”

This is so going to happen! Heh heh.

Yes, let’s do this, immediately. We’ve had so much success with political vision in the last…eh…decade, this is bound to work. Sure fire winner.

By: keith

keith — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:01:20 +0000

I did mention “vision” and “respect” as qualities a Minister would need. Which probably rules Frankeen out.

By: Eoin Madden

Eoin Madden — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:46:57 +0000

I think Frank Fahy suggested this last week on Newstalk. But Frankeen is always thinking of new ways he could become a minister.

By: Irish Election » Minister for Public Service Reform

Irish Election » Minister for Public Service Reform — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:58:11 +0000

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