SEANAD REPORT: The Taoiseach and Ministers should be paid more than top civil servants, rather than the other way round, otherwise it might give a misleading impression as to who was really in charge, Dr Martin Mansergh (FF) said.
He feared that what had happened to the Strategic Management Initiative, introduced by the then Taoiseach, Mr Reynolds, was something straight out of "Yes Minister". It might have produced some useful reforms, but savings in costs and numbers in the public service was not one of them.
Earlier, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said he wanted to provide incentives for departments to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The control measures he was speaking about were designed to encourage public service managers to seek and exploit greater efficiencies.
Mr McCreevy said there had been a lot of loose talk to the effect that the Government had abandoned the National Development Plan. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact was that investment in NDP economic and social infrastructure would exceed €12 billion over the period 2000 to 2003. That was €700 million above what had been promised under the plan even after taking account of actual inflation in the construction industry.
An outside police force should be brought in, if necessary, to investigate the handling by gardaí of the Reclaim The Streets demonstration in Dublin last May, Mr Joe O'Toole (Ind) said later.
The Minister for Justice should make clear how he intended to deal with the problem that had been highlighted by the Garda Complaints Board over the difficulties it had encountered in investigating the matter.
He said it seemed quite extraordinary that in the opinion of the complaints body a wrong had been done somewhere but no-one would be brought to justice on the issue.