Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin overlapped with his cabinet colleague Richard Bruton in South Korea. Mr Howlin was attending a United Nations conference on public service reform and said the Koreans were very interested in what Ireland has achieved in the past three years in this area.
“Through necessity, as I told them. They are interested in the economic aspects of reform and how we can drive a change agenda and at the same time downsize,” Howlin said before the Irish-Korean Business Networking dinner in the Grand Hyatt in Seoul.
What Mr Howlin was most keen to learn more about was Korea’s expertise in the area of e-government. A UN report showed that Korea has topped the charts in terms of e-government, for the third time in a row.
“We are up 12 places in 22nd place, and to be in the top 25 is regarded as being very good. We have the structures needed in Ireland, but it is the mechanics they do very well here, the platforms and the IT, and I wanted to see if that can be replicated in Ireland because it just makes doing business easier,” said Mr Howlin.