A senior Minister yesterday said reforms should be introduced to make himself and Government colleagues more accountable.
The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, told the MacGill Summer School that despite all the reforms of recent years, Government departments still largely operated as "silos", dealing solely with their own programmes.
"This is quite simply too short-sighted. The budget and estimates should provide information and accountability on whole-of-government or cross-cutting issues which are of real concern and immediate interest to citizens; issues such as poverty, childcare, environmental sustainability and research and innovation," he added.
He suggested the introduction of multi-year current expenditure plans, with a greater emphasis on the outputs and outcomes, rather than inputs. They all needed, he said, to place a greater emphasis on the results of expenditure rather than how much they spent. "If we adopt this approach, you can truly hold Ministers accountable because the targets will be set and failure to achieve them will be very public," Mr Dempsey said.
"This is what accountability should be about. This would also offer a chance for the opposition to engage in real politics." Mr Dempsey said that navel-gazing about Ireland's economic miracle left people feeling "kinda hollow".
"We are, as individuals, greater than the sum of our wealth, or our debts as the case may be," he added.
"We have plateaued in terms of our economic success," he said. "We now have an opportunity to pause for a while and make sure we are not leaving any individual or groups behind."
He called for a "balanced scoreboard" which would measure such indicators as the standard of living, reduction of absolute and relative poverty, quality of family life, quality of childcare, how the elderly were cared for, multiculturalism, quality of housing, education, health, and integrity in public and business life.
Noting that it was a decade away from the centenary of the 1916 Rising, the Minister suggested that a number of "centenary goals" should be agreed between the political system, social partners, civil society and representatives of the Churches.
