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The Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform, Mr. Brendan Howlin T.D., today called for the public to submit creative, constructive proposals for saving millions of euro across every area of Government spending.

The Minister was launching a public consultation exercise on the Comprehensive Review of Expenditure (CRE), which aims to identify major savings and efficiencies to reduce the State’s expenditure levels. These savings will go towards meeting the Government’s overall targets for fiscal consolidation over the coming years, in line with the requirements of the EU/IMF Programme of Financial Assistance.

While the Comprehensive Review is now underway within each Government Department, Minister Howlin said he did not see the Review as confined to the public service alone. “All citizens want to see better value for their money, as part of this I would urge people to put forward their ideas and proposals on how to achieve this. The Government wants to know what practices people consider to be wasteful and can be eliminated, the future role of various bodies and agencies and what spending programmes could be reformed or organised in different, more cost-effective ways.”

Minister Howlin invited comments and suggestions from all citizens to be submitted via his new website. “I am looking for ideas from everyone and anyone in Ireland, whether from the public or private sectors. I do appreciate that many users of public services – as well as public servants themselves – will have a clear view of wasteful practices, of spending programmes and schemes that offer poor value for money, or areas where staff could be freed up for other duties. I am asking everyone to let me have their constructive proposals so that they can be considered in the context of the review. The challenge facing our country is so great that no reasonable proposal can be ignored. That is why I have set up a dedicated area on my Department’s website, to capture these suggestions centrally to feed into the current expenditure review.”

Also today, the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform launched a new online Databank giving full access to expenditure information, and staff numbers and payroll information, since 1994. Minister Howlin welcomed this initiative, which he said “may also prompt people to come up with new ideas for how resources could be reallocated, or savings made” in the Comprehensive Review.

The public are invited to make submissions on the Review via http://per.gov.ie/comprehensive-review-of-expenditure/

The new online Databank is available at http://databank.per.gov.ie