Taoiseach Brian Cowen has called for fundamental reform of the public service to meet the country's needs in the new economic environment.
Mr Cowen said there would have to be a 'challenging agenda of relentless change' to meet the challenge - but he said public servants should view reform as an opportunity rather than a threat.
In an interview on RTÉ's This Weekprogramme, Mr Cowen said the Government needed to secure an immediate saving of €1.3 billion in the public sector pay bill in next month's budget, but that reform needed to continue over the next couple of years.
He said change could not come overnight, but that over the next two to three years agreement must be reached where everybody was on board for the reforms.
The Taoiseach said a blueprint had been put in place for public service reform but that it was not happening fast enough.
“What we are looking for is we have to make an adjustment next year of €4 billion. I have indicated to the union leadership that the order of saving we need to get in public service pay next year is of the order of €1.3 billion. And as any employer would, in this case the State, has to sit down with the employees’ representatives and listen to and discuss options that are available to make sure we make those sort of savings.”
“We have to take up this opportunity that this crisis imposes on us, in my opinion, to set about a structural reform in the whole public service. We have to get the savings for next year. That’s the imperative in the immediate term.”
Mr Cowen said the immediate focus had to be the forthcoming budget, but that there had to be recognition that the present public service as it was being provided was "not sustainable long-term".
He said the discussions with unions should be a first step in thinking about "a total reform" of the public service.
He said the Defence Forces were now far more efficient and far better equipped, and with better productivity, than when they had greater numbers. He also cited the Revenue Commissioners as an area where reform had been achieved through new technology.
“Numbers are not the gauge of everything,” he said.
It was about making sure there was a public service in the future that was “affordable, efficient, effective and joined up”. It was also about getting rid of administrative boundaries that were simply causing cost throughout the system.
“We need to recognise that public service reform is not an attack on public services,” he said.
Mr Cowen noted the McCarthy report on public service numbers and spending was part the process of examining public sector reform. There were 30 agencies in the process of being amalgamated and another 43 were being looked at, he added.
“We have to sit down with our employees’ representatives and engage in a way that will deal with all of that and make sure the taxpayer gets best value for money.”
Speaking on the same programme general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions (Ictu), David Begg, said the best defence of public service jobs is to “have them as efficient and as effective as they can be”.
Mr Begg said unions did not have to protect every existing working practice in the public service.
In a debate with Danny McCoy, director general of the employers’ group Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec), he said trade unions had to protect job security and pay and conditions in the public service.
“We don’t have to protect every existing working practice in the public service,” he said.
“The best defence of public services is to have them as efficient and as effective as they can be to a point where people will never wish to see them changed.”
Meanwhile, Mr McCoy said the gap that has developed in the Government’s finances was extraordinary and as an employer the Government had to cut costs through either job losses or wage reduction.
He said if there was increased taxation it would have to focus on middle and lower income earners, but taxation hadn’t worked in the 1980s.
“The reality of the Irish economy is that we don’t have a sufficient number of tax payers in the high income to make up this gap that we have,” he said.
“If you really want to go the taxation route it will be on the low and middle income earners who are already suffering here.”
He rejected an Ictu suggestion that the Government’s recovery plan timeline should be extended to 2017.
“It is better that we take the pain up front and set the line of vision to get the economy going again,” he said.
Mr McCoy said the Government needed to introduce a jobs stimulus package in the Budget and should consider introducing a scheme to utilise unemployment benefit to subsidise wages and so keep people in jobs.