Debate contribution: Waste and Inefficiency in Government

Debate contribution by Mr Harry Harvey on 23 March 2026.

MLA: Mr Harry Harvey
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 23 March 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Waste and Inefficiency in Government
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5465975

Text

Households the length and breadth of Northern Ireland are increasingly looking at their own finances in light of the global context and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Against such a backdrop, it is all the more important that this place not only recognises the need to drive efficiency and tackle wasteful spending but moves to do something about it. In speaking to the issue, I will home in on what is, for me, the fundamental in the motion: Civil Service and wider public-sector spend. That is where, I believe, the greatest impact can be made and where the Finance Minister has sufficient vires to make a positive impact. The present situation is unsustainable, and recent efforts towards reform have, thus far, been paltry in effecting meaningful change.
As expenditure on the front-line delivery of health and education continues to grow exponentially, now is the time to tackle duplication, bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake and general inefficiency across the sector and in its administrative functions in particular. Numerous reports by the Audit Office and others have identified a myriad of issues and listed many recommendations on the subject of Civil Service reform. The actions required could be broadly characterised as being in two principal areas: the need for evidence-led workforce management in the first instance and the robust performance management of that workforce in the second.
I certainly will.
I thank the Member for her comments. I appreciate her making them in an intervention. There is considerable evidence underpinning the Audit Office concerns that current workforce management is not sufficiently underpinned by evidence. The Comptroller and Auditor General noted recently that, in the absence of a robust, data-driven workforce plan that aligned business priorities with required roles, skills and existing talent, the Civil Service could not reliably identify genuine skill surpluses or deficits across the organisation. If we do not know what we have or what we need, it is little wonder that the Civil Service requires transformation. Take the issue of reliance on agency work. The number of agency workers operating across the Civil Service doubled between 2019 and 2025. With no workforce plan, there is no framework to determine whether the rising demand for agency workers reflects a genuine requirement. In a similar vein, the lack of performance management is astounding. The Civil Service does not routinely collect data on the underperformance of staff, and workforce productivity is not formally measured. Obviously, that totally negates any ability to assess performance in order to identify concerns or to incentivise and acknowledge good performance at an individual or collective level. It is evident that there is much low-hanging fruit ripe for the Finance Minister's picking when it comes to efficiency and waste across the Civil Service alone, not to mention other areas of the public sector, with addressing the lack of performance monitoring a logical first step. We can all call for efficiency. It is incumbent on us all to put feet to our words and action to our statements, and I trust that, in the time to come, we shall see action flowing from the motion.

514 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Awaiting analysis

This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification