TAXPAYERS MUST be shown that public services can be provided efficiently and existing waste must be eliminated before the public will be prepared to support them properly, according to a draft Labour Party reform plan.
The report from the party’s 21st century commission, the publication of which was delayed last year because of complaints from trade unions, is due to go before the party’s conference in Mullingar in March. Chaired by accountant Greg Sparks, the commission of some 20 members was asked to make recommendations about modernisation and reform.
Its report recommends greater power for the party leader, Eamon Gilmore, and the parliamentary party; the elimination of groups such as Labour Youth and Labour Women and looser ties with trade unions.
“Yes, there is waste in the public service. If we believe in quality public services, then it is imperative for us to demand the best possible return on our investment,” says the opening chapter of the commission document.
“Unless we convince people that the public sector can deliver high-quality services in an efficient and cost effective manner, we will not persuade them to invest – nor should they,” it goes on.
The existing “command and control” management model in the public services must be abandoned and replaced by greater flexibility, more local control and greater risk-taking and innovation.
Labour’s duty, says the reform document, is to demonstrate that taxes can be used to pay for high-quality, affordable public services “not just to those who can afford to buy them privately”.
“Otherwise, we will not persuade people to invest in them financially or politically, or indeed to work in them. We have to demonstrate that the public service can sustain the highest international standards, adapting to changing times and to the evolving needs of the people . . . ,” it says.
However, many things in Ireland can only be done by the public sector and too many issues “have been ceded to ownership” in the unproven belief that the private sector can deliver better results.
“We must, as a community, accept that there are some things in life which can only be delivered when we work together. Not everything can be bought in a neatly packaged box as a purely private transaction.
“For some time now, the public realm has been under pressure. This country has neglected the space in our lives where we meet each other as equal citizens, come together to provide certain things in common and engage with each other in the governing of our community. That public space has suffered from both concerted assault and deliberate neglect.
“Too much public territory has been ceded to private ownership, based on an ideological argument that the market will deliver better results, but with no clear benefit for the citizen.
“And in too many cases, golden circles have determined the distribution of society’s wealth, where the rights of citizens and the needs of the public should have held sway. At the same time, the quality of public debate has declined and confidence in public institutions, both in their probity and in their efficiency, has been eroded,” it goes on. The balance must now be redressed: “A new generation of parents, many of whom have spent time living abroad, are deeply unhappy with what Ireland has to offer to their children. They are unapologetic about demanding the best for their children – the best healthcare, the best schools, the best childcare and, yes, the best playgrounds.
“They know that these things are publicly provided in other countries and they wonder why they cannot be provided here,” it states.
High-quality public services are the “hallmark of a humane and civilised society”, but in Ireland this belief has been replaced by a “barely concealed contempt for the public sector and a lauding of all things private”.
“We have arguments over the ownership of services and not about their quality or the efficiency of their delivery or even the need for them,” says the group.
