Howlin 'pussyfooting' on reform, says Ross

THE LEGACY of social partnership was one of the reasons public expenditure was so high in the Republic, Independent TD Shane Ross claimed yesterday.

He said Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin should admit the model had failed, that the Croke Park agreement on public service pay was its legacy and that the the Government was moving in a different direction.

“Instead, he pussyfoots around with aspirations of reform but very little delivery,” said Mr Ross.

“Why does he think we have seen such problems in bodies like Fás, CIE and the HSE?’’ Fás, he said, was a problem structurally as well as being subject to inefficiencies, neglect, negligence and a great degree of malpractice at board level and in its training programmes.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the runaway wages we saw in the period of the first benchmarking deal were a result of the social partnership model which virtually everybody worshipped for so long,” he added.

“There we saw a one-off deal which gave public servants an increase of 8.9 per cent regardless of performance, although it was in theory tied to performance.”

Mr Ross was speaking during a debate on the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill 2011 establishing Mr Howlin’s new department.

Mr Howlin said the Croke Park agreement meant staff needed to be willing to retrain, where necessary, to take on more responsibility, to work across professional and technical boundaries and to be open to travelling within a radius of 45km to take up new positions.

The Government, said Mr Howlin, had made it clear it wished to honour the commitments contained in the agreement, but that would only be possible if it was implemented in full.

“Notwithstanding the progress to date, it is clear that much more needs to be done,’’ he added.