An Bord Snip: Enterprise, Trade and Employment

Written by Rob Heigh of Gazette
Headline items:

Departmental snips will lead to €238m in “savings” and 600 redundancies – respectively meaning, in other words, reductions of 12% of budget and 11% of workforce.

Recommendations:

All science, technology and innovation funding channeled through one pipeline to remove what they identify as the duplication of resources and to allow prioritisation of projects with largest likely financial returns.

There will be a review of programmes, grants and supports given by EI.

The IDA’s regional offices are to be “rationalised”.

County enterprise boards are to be subsumed under single umbrella of Enterprise Ireland. They will “lose functions as appropriate”.

All “state-funded employment services”, i.e. all FAS activities, to be united into one single service.

Overlap between payments from DSFA and FAS where claimants are on employment schemes to end. One person, one payment. Saving of €100m by this action.

Cessation of Skillnets and FAS services to business. Funds for training will be for the unemployed only. All supplementary allowances and bonus payments to end. Saving of €27m.

“Rationalisation” of bodies who deal with industrial relations, workplace safety and employment rights.

One “centrally-located” industrial relations body will be created – all others nationwide to close, with further rationalisation to follow after the centralisation.

A “Workplace Inspectorate” to be created from merger of the HSA and Employment Rights Authority with the appropriate streamlining from that merger making cost savings.

Some thoughts:

The reduction in administation costs and consolidation of activities within overlapping national organisations appear to be the drivers for the savings.

This would appear to be logical, but the nature of the mergers and the efficiency of the resulting bodies would have to be a concern – would they be able to handle what would effectively be double briefs from previously distinct areas? Though the HSA and the Employment Rights Authority are in the same ballpark, they don’t really play for the same team, and the fear would have to be that their contribution to industry would be diluted.

In addition, centralisation of services effectively withdraws a local perspective from important funding and development decisions, as well as placing a burden on both the individual or business – in terms of dealing with and travelling to a centrally-located unit to state their case – and the service itself – which will need to show a national efficiency while performing their duties with fewer staff and less resources.