Government Document on Public Sector Reform
The Irish Government today published a document entitled Public Service Reform. This document sets out a strategy as to how the Government intends to update or reform the public and civil service over the coming years.
It’s not my place to comment on the nature of the reforms, or whether I agree or disagree with them, but I will highlight some proposed reforms outlined in the “Rationalisation of State Agencies” appendix to the document that might be of interest to those of us in the scientific community in Ireland. The following extracts are taken verbatim from the report:
- Merge Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology & Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Science into consolidated single council under HEA
- Establish the scope to merge Forfás into the Department
- Merge the Digital Hub Development Authority with Enterprise Ireland/IDA
- Commission for Communication Regulation: Merge with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
- Expert Group on Future Skills Needs: Absorb into Department (Education).
- Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation: Absorb into Department (DJEI).
- Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government: Examine absorbing into Science Foundation Ireland.
From my reading of the report, there is no mention of PRTLI or HRB, nor any other mention of SFI, apart from the final bullet point above.
There is further commentary and analysis of the document on the RTE News website.
November 19th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Must admit I never really understood why IRCSET etc weren’t part of EI in the first place. It would also seem to make sense to merge the Chief Scientist into SFI, and indeed to go further and make SFI the provider of choice for science advice to government.
The key fight will be to retain the independence of the funding agencies and not have them dragged down the dead end of “supporting national priorities”.