merrion street

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, T.D., and the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Robert Watt welcomed the publication of the Department’s Annual Report for 2016.

The Minister stated that the report sets out “a strong record of delivery across a broad range of areas of public expenditure management and reform of the Civil and Public Service”, as the Department continued to implement its Statement of Strategy 2015-2017.

The Annual Report focuses on the main developments during 2016 as the Department pursued its two key strategic goals:

· to manage public expenditure at sustainable levels in a planned, rational and balanced manner in support of Ireland’s economic development and social progress; and
· to have public management and governance structures that are effective and responsive to the citizen, transparent and accountable, and which will thereby improve the effectiveness of public expenditure.

The Secretary General stated that “I would like to thank all the staff in my Department for their work throughout 2016 and for their delivery of the excellent achievements detailed in this report.”

In common with other Government Departments, the Department published a new Statement of Strategy 2016-19 late last year and the Minister stated that “I look forward to working closely with Minister of State Eoghan Murphy and all my Ministerial colleagues as we progress many key programmes of work which are critical to the future of our country.”

Notes for Editors:

The Executive Summary of the report sets out, at a high level, some of the main developments in 2016. Further detail is then included throughout the report.

Some key areas of work included:
Managing Public Expenditure better by overseeing gross current expenditure by Departments of €51.8 billion and managing voted expenditure in line with the Expenditure Report 2017, and by embedding performance budgeting and other expenditure reforms;

Managing Capital and Sectoral Expenditure Policies by overseeing gross capital expenditure by Departments of €4.2 billion, and contributing to key sectoral policy issues;

Proactively addressing issues arising on foot of Brexit, including agreeing terms of a safeguard clause to enable EU-funded cross-border programmes to proceed;

Managing the cost of the public service pay and pensions bill, including establishing the Public Service Pay Commission;

Driving reform in the Civil Service and the Wider Public Service, including by implementing the Civil Service Renewal Plan and the Public Service Reform Plan, and pursuing reforms to deliver open, accountable and ethical government;

Leading the implementation of the Public Service ICT Strategy;

Implementing the Procurement Reform Programme, which delivered procurement savings of €100 million in 2016; and

Progressing the Shared Services Programme by transferring client Departments and public service bodies to the two Civil Services shared services centres, bringing the total amount of customers to circa. 100,000, and advancing the Financial Shared Services Centre project by developing a single finance technology platform.