Public Expenditure Policy

2. Deputy Ged Nash asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation to provide details of his proposed public spending efficiency task force; its terms of reference and membership, and when the task force will commence its work. [75204/26]

The Minister announced in the budget two weeks ago that he plans to establish a public spending efficiency task force. Will he place on the record of the House the terms of reference of that task force and when it is intended to start its work?

I thank Deputy Nash. Public expenditure must be managed to maximise value for money for the taxpayer and support the delivery of Government priorities within the voted allocations. Achieving value for money in public expenditure is a key Government priority. Over the past two years, a number of initiatives have been introduced to strengthen the focus on value for money and to drive efficiencies across the public service. This work is underpinned by the Government's objective of ensuring that investment in public services and infrastructure improves living standards for the people of Ireland, both now and in the future. To support this objective, my Department has developed robust guidance and comprehensive frameworks. These are intended to ensure that every public body and official treats public funds with due care and places financial responsibility at the heart of their public duties. Value for money is achieved through the efficient and effective use of public funds and resources to deliver better public services and improved outcomes. In July 2025, my Department published a circular entitled Value for Money Obligations. It outlines the key mechanisms and guidance in place to help civil and public servants to meet their value-for-money obligations. It also makes clear that value for money must be placed at the forefront of decision-making in all projects and programmes involving public funds. Earlier this year, my Department published a circular which introduced an expenditure control and escalation process to strengthen expenditure management across the Government. It provides greater clarity on the accountability and responsibilities of Departments in managing public expenditure. It also sets out the different phases of escalation and the corrective actions available where expenditure pressures emerge. Budget 2026 placed greater emphasis on reform, efficiency and the outputs and outcomes supported by public spending. This ensures a clearer link between investment and service levels being delivered for the population. As the Deputy knows, in September 2026 I wrote to all Ministers asking them to identify efficiencies and reforms in the context of the Estimates process for budget 2027. Reforms and efficiencies were published and are set out in the budget 2027 documentation. Building on this work, as the Deputy has said, it is my intention to establish a new public spending efficiency task force whose mandate will be to scrutinise day-to-day public spending. The task force will identify key areas across the public service where there is scope to achieve greater efficiency and will recommend specific actions to improve service delivery and secure better value for money. I will come back with more detail.

This seems to me to be an admission that the Minister's Department is simply not working. Clearly, one of the core objectives of his Department should be to drive efficiency in public spending and to drive accountability on public spending. If this is an admission, I welcome the Minister's candour that the function of the Department simply is not working. As Minister, he needs to take responsibility for that. We have the circular from 2025 and we have the circular from earlier this year. Can I assume that the fact that the Minister is setting up this task force is a further admission that those two circulars do not have their intended effect? We know that voted expenditure has increased by over €50 billion since 2019 and much of that has been unplanned. I suggest that a starting point in terms of looking at public spending efficiency would be for the Minister to properly monitor and measure the size and scale of the public service. Does he have a size and scale of a public service in mind? My view is that it may in fact be too small to service the needs of this economy and society.

I reject the conclusion the Deputy has come to, except to say that the work of the task force is to complement rather than replace the wide range of policy and expenditure analysis undertaken and published annually by Departments. Departments will remain responsible for conducting detailed policy analysis and expenditure evaluations within their respective sectors. I have asked officials to establish this task force with terms of reference to be finalised and work to commence within three months, as I said on budget day. Further details will be announced in due course when decisions have been made with respect to it. The work of this task force will inform the approach to budget 2028 and subsequent budgets over the lifetime of the Government, supporting greater economy, efficiency and effectiveness across day-to-day public spending. There was a lot of rhetoric in here on budget day. My sole objective is to build an effective and better system of public services for all of the people we represent. There is always room for improvement everywhere. My objective here is to support that objective in a positive way and not in a divisive way, as has been remarked in terms of international comparisons, and to build better public services. We have well documented analysis from the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service of where we can improve outputs across the existing base of spend. It should always be an objective to do more and to do better. That is the context in which it has been established.

It should be one of the Minister's core objectives to do exactly that and to have value for money and accountability in public spending. As I said in my earlier contribution, public spending has increased significantly over the past six years. Much of that has been unplanned. The Minister and his predecessors need to take some responsibility for that. The Minister said in the expenditure report for the budget that he wants to examine "a small number of key areas where there is scope for improvement". Will he outline to the House where he believes there is scope for improvement? Specifically, what are those "key areas" he referred to? We all know that in expenditure in the health service, for example, the excessive reliance on agency staff and outsourcing is a false economy. We would all be better off if people were engaged on permanent contracts as whole-time equivalents to deliver the services on which we all depend. Does the Minister have a view on the correct size of the public service and its scale for a country this size and with our ambitions? As part of this, will we actually have that analysis once and for all? Who will chair this task force? Will it be somebody from the private sector or someone working in the public sector?

I will set out all of the detail when that is concluded within my Department. As I said, it will be established within that three-month period. The Deputy referenced the health system. Of course there are examples of opportunities, such as the work that the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, is doing on agency banks to get conversions by having staff banks. That would be a better use of public money than some of the agency costs we have. There are countless examples. That speaks to the need for a proper structure and system of additional oversight which challenges different Departments and agencies across every element of government on how we can deliver more across the existing base of spend and how that can inform the Estimates conversation for budget 2028. This is being done with the sole focus of delivering and building a better State, not undermining different areas of public services. I want to ensure that when the people we all represent hear about an increase in an allocation to a given area, they will have confidence that it will result in an improvement in waiting times and delivery. That is what this task force is designed to do.

We will set out and be transparent about the terms of reference and membership when they have been decided.