MINISTER HOWLIN: Thank you very much indeed Siobhan. Thank you for your presentation first, I find it very instructive and useful for me in the reform agenda that has been entrusted to me and I want to thank all of you for inviting me to this important conference.
I understand that you represent a range of professions, access officers, disability liaison officers, equality officers, and human resource staff from government departments, public bodies, and local authorities.
I see also that there are staff here from the departmental monitoring committees for part 5 of the Disability Act 2005. Also from disability organisations and public sector trade unions. So it's a very impressive gathering of people to address important issues today.
As a country we must cut public spending, and return stability to our public expenditure. I'm fed up saying that and I'm sure the people of Ireland are fed up hearing that, but that's the difficult reality that we have to face.
However, we must also maintain, as far as is possible, the quality public services that so many of our citizens, in fact all our citizens, rely on. Greater numbers of citizens need those public services now than ever before, and we must reform our public services in a way that allows us to provide the most necessary services to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens, and at the same time to rebuild our broken economy.
We need, therefore, to think how we design, plan and deliver our public services so that we can both effectively and efficiently meet the needs of all citizens.
Last November I launched a comprehensive public service reform plan. That plan outlined key commitments and specific actions for change right across the public service. And these changes involved central themes, placing the customer at the core of everything we do. I know that Eithne will remember our mutual great friend Michael D Higgins, he hated the word customer and it keeps recurring in my speeches, he also said we don't have customers, we have citizens. So I should say placing the citizen at the core of everything we do.
Maximising new and innovative service delivery channels, radically reducing our costs by driving better value for money, leading, organising and working in new ways and probably most important of all, a strong focus on implementation and delivery.
In addition, departments and major offices have produced their own integrated reform delivery plans, which place central initiatives in the context of specific organisational and sectoral reforms.
Perhaps reform initiatives in the past lacked sufficient focus on the key issue of delivery. To this end, the reform and delivery office that I have established in my department is driving and implementing reform centrally.
I have recruited an external director for that who has great experience in delivering reform in the private sector, and all of that is being driven by a cabinet subcommittee, which meets regularly, to ensure that the timeline to targets we have set in the reform plan are met.
I believe that we're moving towards a smaller, more responsive, more accountable and more results focused public service, even in the way we actually account for money, which is the other side of my job, reform and control of public expenditure, so we're not simply looking at how much money has been spent, but what we're getting for the money. It has to be objective focused.
Earlier this year my department published revised guidelines for the preparation of customer charters and action plans. The customer charter initiative obliges public services to engage with citizens and with their customers to set targets for service standards, to measure performance, and to report publicly on their outcomes.
It is this interaction between public service and the users of public services that must be strengthened in order to ensure that resources are focused on delivering improved services as effectively as possible.
We are also developing the use of technology as a means of reducing the administrative burden on citizens and improving the speed and quality of services and it's instructive in Siobhan's presentation how embracing technology can be of use to all of us.
In April my department published a new E‑government strategy, which sets the basis for further progress in providing citizens with an increased range of channels for accessing services. There are more than 300 services available now online. And a huge quantum of people would as a first resort now, if you were going to renew your driving licence or motor tax, as a matter of course, go online to do it.
Interaction with the public service does not have to mean queuing up in public offices or writing repeatedly in order to avail of services, there must be and there are better ways of doing business.
Of course we know we've some way to travel yet, in designing and delivering the perfect public service model, there are some gaps in the system and I'm sure there is nobody in this room who couldn't point out several to me right now, both structurally and in terms of the processes involved.
But we're committed to closing those gaps and ensuring that we listen to the key groups, public servants who work and deliver those services and the citizenry, members of our community for whom public services are an important part of their everyday lives.
Today's conference hosted by the National Disability Authority to provide a space for learning and focusing on public services, looking at public buildings, analysing public information and information channels and looking at online services, making them more accessible, particularly for customers who have a disability. Like Siobhan, I was disheartened to learn that attitudes to people with disabilities has actually deteriorated, as indicated in the most recent report of the NDA. One would have thought that the natural progression is for people to have a greater understanding of disability issues and to be embracing citizenship in the fullest sense.
Public service bodies have a responsibility to be leaders in challenging negative attitudes by ensuring greater understanding and awareness of disability and how to deliver services better to customers with disabilities.
As I've already mentioned, by understanding the needs of as many customers as possible and the wide range of abilities; all of us are disabled in some way ‑‑ and by designing our services to be as accessible as possible, we can deliver better services that meet the needs of all citizens.
By better understanding how to make online information and services accessible to people with disabilities, and people with varying levels of expertise in reading, or in technology, or using the web, we can deliver information and services to more people, more of the time and at the same time reduce costs.
It's important that public buildings and facilities are designed and maintained in a way that any customer who needs to use a public building can do so as safely and as independently as possible, with ease.
I'm conscious that there are great examples of getting this right in parts of the public service, as I am of areas where we have a lot more to do.
As you know, the Disability Act places specific obligations on all government departments and public sector bodies in employing and supporting staff with disabilities. The public service, as Siobhan has said, should be a model employer, a model to employers in the private and voluntary sectors. This can enrich the work of the public service, enrich the working environment for all and positively influenced service design and service delivery.
This morning's session, making public services accessible, I understand will feature a presentation and discussions that will help us all to learn how to plan our services in a way that is accessible to all our citizens.
The NDA has developed a range of resources to provide you, provide all of us, with a guide as to how to plan for and improve accessible services.
Disability training can allow public servants to understand the needs of the ever-growing number of our citizens who have a disability and to make sure that citizens are treated with respect in a safe and in a welcoming environment.
The National Disability Authority's free E‑learning facility provides great value for money for public bodies who want to improve their staff's learning skills, and I think it's a very good model and I understand that, as Siobhan has said, has been launched by my departmental secretary Rob Walsh.
By better understanding the legal requirements on employment of people with disabilities, by using the national development ‑‑ National Disability Authority's guidelines for retaining employees who acquire disabilities, public service leaders can avoid losing skilled people, and make sure that each employee's skills are used to focus on delivering a word class public service.
This afternoon's session, employing people with disabilities, will feature presentations and discussions that will focus on how a positive work culture can make the public service a very good employer for anybody with a disability.
As the public service is being changed, is being transformed, it's important that staff are fully on board, including staff with disabilities. I recognise that many staff with disabilities have acquired their disabilities during their working lives and it's important that effective policies are in place to ensure that we retain them, recognising their skills, their expertise and all that they have done to date.
The National Disability Authority has developed guidelines to assist employers on retention policies, and I'm pleased to learn that these guidelines are being picked up by IBEC and ICTU to guide national employment practice, that's a very welcome expansion.
The government is working to achieve better focus on customer service, to maximise innovative service delivery channels as I have said, to drive better value for money, as we must do, to promote organising and working in new ways, and to better implement the strategies that we have developed and talked about for years.
By learning and adapting new effective ways to ensure all citizens can access public services, access public buildings and access all information that they need to be complete and full citizens of this Republic, by better understanding the range of abilities of all our citizens, and by maximising the opportunities of the broad range of very skilled and dedicated staff who work in the public service, we can improve the interaction between citizens with disabilities and public service bodies.
Events such as this conference allow us to increase our understanding and improve our skills so that we can focus on making the most of our resources to deliver public services that all of us as a country and as a nation can be proud of.
I wish all of you well in your discussion and deliberations today. I look forward to hearing from the results and I thank you most sincerely for inviting me to be part of today's session.
From: "thomaschambers@eircom.net" <thomaschambers@eircom.net>
To: Okey Williams Kalu <okeywillie@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:32:15 AM
Subject: Fw: Ministers Speech
can you copy/paste the speech for me please.
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: Jacinta G. Byrne
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 1:17 PM
To: thomaschambers@eircom.net
Subject: Ministers Speech
Dear Tom
Very sorry to hear that you are not well. I hope things get better soon.
I attach Minister Howlin's speech at the Camden Court in June this year.
If you need anything else, just let me know.
Best wishes
Jacinta
(See attached file: Speech by Minister Howlin Camden Court Hotel June
2012.doc)
Jacinta Byrne
National Disability Authority
25 Clyde Road
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Find us at http://goo.gl/maps/gOjcj
http://accessibility.ie/
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