Debate contribution: Public-sector Transformation

Debate contribution by Mr John O'Dowd on 4 March 2025.

MLA

Mr John O'Dowd

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

4 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Ministerial Statement

Heading

Public-sector Transformation

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4832857

Read the official Assembly record

Text

First, I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to my Assembly colleagues for the administrative error that led to the delay in today's proceedings. The Executive's Programme for Government, 'Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most', has made the reform and transformation of our public services one of our nine key priorities. As our society changes, we must ensure that our public services adapt and evolve to meet the new and changing needs of communities. As an Executive, we have been clear that we want to transform the delivery of public services and make life better for the people whom we serve. I am pleased to announce today £129 million of transformation programme funding for innovative projects that will support and drive the transformation of our public services. That funding will make a real difference in improving health outcomes for citizens, supporting children with special educational needs (SEN) and in funding initiatives in our justice system to make our communities safer. It will also support infrastructure projects to address pressure on our constrained drainage and waste water infrastructure and make improvements in the planning system, which is central to economic growth. All those are key priorities in our Programme for Government. The final package for a restored Executive included £235 million in ring-fenced transformation funding over a five-year period commencing in 2024-25. On 9 May 2024, the Executive agreed to establish an interim board, chaired by the head of the Civil Service, Jayne Brady, and the assessment criteria to consider transformation proposals from Departments. The criteria upon which proposals were sought included those that could increase the financial sustainability of public services; transform the model of delivery of public services to improve effectiveness and efficiency; and increase prevention, cost savings and early intervention. The interim board assessed 47 proposals from Departments, and proposals that were deemed to be transformative progressed to stage 2 assessment. It is the proposals that were successful in that assessment that I will allocate funding to today. The interim board presented its recommendations to the previous Finance Minister, who put forward her recommendations to Executive colleagues. Those recommendations were approved on 28 January. As a result of that work and following my efforts to agree the terms of reference for the interim board with the Secretary of State and, separately, to secure release of the funding from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I am now in a position to announce the proposals that have been successful in the first tranche of transformation funding. Six successful proposals will benefit from funding across a five-year period. The successful proposals and funding amounts are as follows. There is £61 million for the Department of Health's primary care multidisciplinary team (MDT) proposal. MDTs are a partnership between GP federations and health and social care trusts that have introduced new early intervention, physiotherapy, social work and mental health roles in general practice to work alongside existing teams. The transformation funding will enable the completion of the model in seven existing MDT areas and the expansion to an additional five GP federation areas, with a combined population coverage of around 670,000 people. That will improve health outcomes for citizens as well as helping to address health inequalities across the North. There is £27·5 million for the Department of Education's special educational needs proposal. That proposal aims to reform services to ensure that there are better outcomes for children. It will support a suite of pilot programmes that focus on early intervention and on building an appropriately skilled education workforce. It aims to help address the unsustainable financial trajectory of SEN provision and to improve the support that is provided to children and young people with special educational needs, ensuring that they have equal opportunities to participate in all aspects of life, with greater emotional well-being, societal inclusion and life skills. There is £20·45 million for the joint Department of Justice and Public Prosecution Service (PPS) proposal on speeding up and transforming the criminal justice system. That proposal aims to support the transformation of criminal justice to reduce delay and maximise efficiencies. That will happen through the promotion of more timely engagement between the PSNI and the prosecution and defence services. The proposal will also target alternative approaches to out-of-court disposals for lower-level crime, which will free up capacity in our courts for more serious cases. There is £2·19 million for the Department of Justice's modernisation of electronic monitoring proposal. That proposal will allow DOJ to transform the way in which it monitors individuals who are released into the community. The funding will enable the creation of a multidisciplinary team to examine the technical and policy implications of implementing GPS location monitoring for those on bail or on licence who are fitted with an electronic tag. There is £15 million for the Department for Infrastructure's urban drainage proposal. That proposal will fund a pilot project to make a robust case for how we can transform the way in which rainwater is managed in our towns and cities. The pilot will use nature-based drainage solutions to demonstrate the benefits of managing rainwater naturally on the surface to slow its flow into our rivers and piped drainage systems. There is £3 million for the Department for Infrastructure's transforming planning proposal. That proposal will lead to the appointment of independent persons to deliver reports on planning and environmental considerations relating to major "hear and report" work. That will help the Planning Appeals Commission to address its resource issues and will drive economic delivery through our planning system. In addition, £300,000 will be allocated to the Executive Office to undertake a digital maturity assessment. Eighteen of the original 47 proposals that are digital in nature will be assessed collectively as part of that digital maturity assessment to ensure a more strategic, system-wide approach to digital transformation. Funding was also allocated for the administration and operation of the public-sector transformation board, including for the provision of expert advice to support the delivery of Departments' proposals. The board's secretariat will monitor and report on the progress of funded projects as they are implemented to ensure that projects deliver their outcomes. I will formally notify Departments of their funding allocations, including the conditions of approvals, to enable spend to commence in 2024-25. Following the allocation of the funds, approximately £102·5 million remains for distribution. That funding will be utilised through a combination of digital proposals, which are deemed to be transformational and agreed by the Executive, and proposals received following any subsequent call for transformation proposals. My expectation is that the second call for proposals will take place in late spring or summer of this year. I therefore place on record my thanks to the public-sector transformation board for all its work during that process and to all Departments for their engagement and active participation in the transformation programme. Having come from the Department for Infrastructure, I can say that the process that has been undertaken has been a positive one so far. Officials have reflected to me that the novel and innovative process has challenged them. led to the development of strong proposals and allowed Departments to demonstrate how they can accelerate the transformation of public services when given the opportunity. While the £235 million in funding will in no way tackle the magnitude of the issues at hand, it will be significant in helping to develop and implement a model of delivery to stimulate the wider transformation of public services. Transformation will take time, and this is a step on that journey. It also demonstrates the Executive's commitment to the reform and transformation of our public services, as published in the Programme for Government this week.

The purpose of setting up a board to look at those matters and to make recommendations to the Executive was that its members were believed to be best placed to do so from a transformation perspective across the entire Executive. The Member suggests that all of the £235 million should have been given to Health, and that is a proposal on its own. However, we currently give around 51% of our total Budget to Health. The question is this: how much more can we give to Health? Today's announcements, and the innovations and transformation that we are making today, will ensure that the general public will see genuine transformation across our public services. The funding for Health that I have announced is transformational. Where they are in operation, the multidisciplinary teams have made a hugely significant difference to the delivery of healthcare, and the further funding that we have announced today will continue that. The announcement that I have made today will ensure that approximately a third of the population is covered by multidisciplinary teams. That is a good start.

As part of the terms and conditions of allocation of funding to each of the Departments, they will be asked to recommend experts in their field to be appointed to the transformation board, subject to its agreement to those appointments. Those experts will report back, through the transformation board, to me, and I in turn will report back to the Executive. There will be continuous monitoring of the projects to determine whether they are delivering the transformation that they said that they would deliver, and those appropriately qualified individuals will do that.

The primary care multidisciplinary team programme is a partnership with GP federations and trusts. The programme has introduced new early intervention physiotherapy, social work and mental health roles into general practice to work alongside existing teams in seven of the 17 GP federations. The MDTs help to stabilise primary care, transform access to services for patients, focus on prevention and management of conditions away from hospital settings, and can better utilise the skills of the community and voluntary sector.

MDTs will improve health outcomes for citizens as well as helping to address health inequalities across the region.

The £61 million across five years that we are announcing for Health today is about improving health outcomes for citizens and keeping people out of the hospital setting. Primary care has significant pressures as do hospital settings. I am not in any way stepping into the shoes of the Health Minister, but, if we can support the primary care sector, it means that fewer people end up in hospital.

The transformation board cannot take on the role of Departments or Ministers and nor should it. It carries the specific role of the implementation of the proposals that were brought forward by Departments to the transformation board. While experts will be appointed to monitor and report, the wider discussions in any Department and the wider implications, positive and negative, will have to be managed by the Minister and his or her team.

The interim transformation board made recommendations to my predecessor that were then brought to the Executive for a decision. The decisions are being made by the democratically appointed Executive here, so there is full accountability around the decisions and their implementation.

We are all acutely aware that we are approaching the end of the financial year. The reprofiling of the spend is accepted, and we continue our discussions with the Treasury on that, but there is no issue in that regard. We are not expecting a full spend in this financial year, given that we are three weeks or whatever it may be from the end of the financial year. The reprofiling of the spend is needed and accepted and will be progressed.

A discussion is going on in the Dáil as to whether the Opposition should sit on the Government Benches, and you often remind me of that discussion.

You always remind me of that discussion.

There are terms of reference. They were agreed by the Executive and the NIO. We appointed a board to do a job, which was to look at the proposals coming forward from Departments, and it is only right and proper that that board was allowed to do its job. If I or my predecessor interfered in the role of the board, I suspect, you would accuse me of interfering in the role of the board. Let the board do its job. It brought forward the proposals to my predecessor. My predecessor brought them to the Executive. The Executive scrutinised those proposals, voted on them and accepted them. That is the process that has been in place.

It is up to Departments and Ministers what they do when the next round of funding is announced. I suggest that they take on board the feedback from the transformation board as part of the stage 2 process. In my statement, I reflected on the fact that, when I was in the Department for Infrastructure, my officials found the process to be challenging but very useful. If Ministers are to resubmit proposals, my advice to them is that they fully take on board the feedback received from the transformation board.

I am definitely stepping back in time now. When I was first appointed Minister for Infrastructure, how we might reform planning was always front and centre of discussions in the Chamber, with interested parties and with a broader audience. Given the pressures on the Planning Appeals Commission, it was clear that we needed to take the step of appointing independent examiners. The transformation funding gave us the opportunity to do that. We made a bid, and I am thankful that the transformation board accepted it. That will take some of the pressure off planning, allowing decisions to be made much more quickly than they would have been without the funding, and thus we will support the economy moving forward.

I know that the Member races pigeons

I do not know how much he knows about greyhounds, but I know that he races pigeons. Would we all like to do things more quickly? Yes, we would. First of all, the board was appointed in May, and there was a call for proposals from Departments. Those proposals had to be drafted, detailed and submitted. The board then had to work its way through 47 proposals. I think that, in total, there was £750 million worth of bids. The board had to work its way through those. It then had to work with the NIO and the Treasury. I do not know whether the Member will ever have the opportunity to do that, but, at times, it is snail's pace. We are an awful place for looking at the glass as half-empty. We have just announced £129 million worth of transformation funding for our Departments. From this point on, let us make sure that that £129 million is used effectively and efficiently to deliver the transformation that is needed.

It has presented a challenge and an opportunity to Departments to think about what they could do should resources become available to them, and I am not talking only about external resources. As we move forward and have political and financial stability, Departments need to start looking at their budgets to see whether they can allocate even small amounts of money to transformation.

As we approach the spending review in June, and we move to a three-year resource budget and four-year capital budget, there is an opportunity for Departments to continue transformation, which is necessary and central to the Programme for Government, and to look at their own pots of money to see whether there is a small amount of money that they could use to continue the transformation work.

As the Member will be aware, response times from statutory consultees are improving through measures that have been taken in the Department for Infrastructure. The independent inspectors will be appointed by the Department for Infrastructure, as they can be under planning legislation. They will be focused on delivering responses and findings to hearings and moving those hearings forward, rather than involving themselves in the minutiae of planning operations.

It may be up to the individual Departments to publish their bids. I will take a look at who is responsible for that. In principle, I have no difficulty with publishing the bids, but it may be up to individual Departments to publish them. Today, I have announced the funding allocations. It will be up to individual Departments to set out how they propose to deliver that funding in line with the letter of offer that will issue from my Department. As I said, experts will be appointed to oversee the delivery of those projects. I am not suggesting for one second that the funding that I have announced today will solve all the problems that Departments face, but it is a significant step forward with regard to transformation of services, how those services are delivered and the objective of delivering them. As I said to an earlier questioner, there are also opportunities now for Departments to look individually at how they deliver transformation within the budgets that are allocated to them.

I look forward to the day when I stand up in the Chamber and respond to a proposal from the "constructive Opposition". I really do look forward to that day, because the "constructive Opposition" have now had a year to bring forward their alternative proposals.

Well, if you are interested, Mary Lou and her colleagues produce an alternative Budget and alternative Programme for Government each year. I am just looking forward to reading the same from the "constructive Opposition". I will say this: if I had not stood up here —

It is difficult to respond, Mr Speaker.

He clearly does not want to hear the answer.

If I had not stood up here today as a member of a constructive Executive and announced £61 million of investment in Health, far fewer people would be able to access multidisciplinary teams, and the GP whom the Member refers to would be justified in his criticism of the slowness of delivery. We have just accelerated that delivery.

Some £27·5 million from the transformation fund has been allocated to the Department of Education for the special educational needs proposal. The delivery is focused on two strands. The first is focused on providing the right support at the right time for children and young people with SEN: for example, it will incorporate a range of tests and trial initiatives over three academic years, including early childhood interventions, alternative models of support for children with SEN, the development of special schools as centres of expertise and the piloting of inclusive play and nurture approaches. The second strand will focus on building a skilled and confident education workforce and ensuring that it is equipped and empowered to build supportive learning environments for pupils.

We will have a debate about that on another occasion.

The recommendations were made by the transformation board to the previous Finance Minister, who brought them to the Executive for ratification and agreement, or, if they so chose, disagreement. I should declare an interest as the former Infrastructure Minister. Of course, I would have liked to see the full £9 million given, but the board was dealing with bids of up to £750 million, so it had to make decisions or recommendations on the basis of the funding available to it. I think that the decisions and recommendations that have been made are good and will make a huge difference to the planning system and, therefore, to our economy.

I plan to make the board permanent before the second round and to propose a number of appointments to it that reflect different skill sets. In fairness to the three people who have worked on the interim board, they have done an excellent job. They have carried out their remit and allowed me, as Finance Minister, and the Executive to make this announcement today to transform public services. I will propose that we appoint at least two new people to the board: one will be an expert in science and data; the other's expertise will be in value for money.

I cannot recall whether it is the full amount that was bid for, but it is quite a substantial investment. It looks at one of the elements of how we tackle the huge challenge of waste water infrastructure moving forward. Although not the sole solution, sustainable urban drainage will give us another option for how we deal with that huge challenge and in a way that is friendly to the environment.

It is not my role today to answer questions on the Programme for Government. I understand that there was a full debate in the Chamber yesterday on the Programme for Government. I can, however, assure Mr Gaston that I will work with the Health Minister, as I will with all other Ministers, to deliver the Programme for Government commitments.

3,453 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:02 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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