Is the public service really fit for purpose?

THEY’RE calling it Croke Park II even though it wasn’t hatched within an ass’s roar of the GAA’s headquarters.

Last week’s deal on public sector pay is likely to ensure that the old stadium will once again be subjected to all forms of abuse, merely because three years ago it provided a room in which peace-talks were hatched.

This time around the deal was done across town in Lansdowne House, so maybe it’s time to back off and desist from taking Croker’s name in vain in the fire and brimstone to come.

Last week’s deal is of course far more serious than such superfluous observations. Since Monday, the media has been full of the detail and reaction. But while it’s all about pay and conditions, there has been precious little about the service itself. Is the public service fit for purpose in today’s world? What climate exists within the service?

Two of the contributions on radio last week illustrate the point. On RTÉ’s Liveline on Monday, a woman by the name of Jean threw her tuppence worth into the debate over the latest deal.

“My first job out of college was in the public sector, in the IT industry,” she told Joe Duffy.

“I left and took a job in the private sector at a pay decrease … the blatant lack of responsibility [in the public sector] and accountability and the attitude of, ‘That’s not my job, not in my remit or payscale’. From the low scale right up to the high — and I would be mid range. I couldn’t handle it, the politics alone, so I got out.”

Her story was not unusual. Other refugees from the public sector often tell a similar tale. And those who enter the sector at a later stage of their career often whisper about their shock at the moribund climate.

That’s not to say that everybody working within has their youthful, or natural, enthusiasm beaten out of them. It’s a tribute to many that they manage to maintain a healthy application to the job, and don’t succumb to a climate in which the job is about accumulating entitlements, rather than doing their best. But all the evidence suggests it’s not made easy for those who do continue to get the best out of themselves.

Take the teacher who is really skilled at the much-dismissed art of actually teaching. She is passionate about her vocation, but often she need only look elsewhere within her school to see somebody who is equally rewarded, but takes life easy. Inevitably, those who do least shout loudest about their entitlements.

Deadwood isn’t confined to the public sector. But those who cruise and doss in the private sector tend to, by and large, do so at their peril. For the worker in that sector who is naturally disposed towards doing as little as possible, fear replaces the lack of initiative. There is precious little to fear for those who take the proverbial in a state job. And in an environment of such impunity, it is inevitable that a feeling which is not conducive to steady application creeps in and pollutes the climate.

The second radio contribution that highlighted the climate in the service came on Today With Pat Kenny. Reporter Valerie Cox was interviewing a former CEO of the Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals about horses being brought into this country from Britain without the proper papers. The interviewee said that he’d informed the Department of Agriculture about this practice a few years ago, suggesting that inspectors should be checking up at points of entry.

He said he was asked by a department official what days the horses were “coming across“, and he said at the weekend. “I was told ‘We don’t work Saturdays and Sundays’,” the interviewee said. Wild horses, it would seem, will not drag them to the ports once the sun goes down of a Friday.

A neutral observer might conclude from that vignette that the service is run not primarily for the benefit of the public, but the employees.

A complete lack of weekend cover among social workers cropped up a few years ago in a tragic case in the South East where a woman took her own life and that of her two children. That situation has been addressed somewhat, but in other areas, where health and welfare are not the issue, the public must live with a service that operates exclusively on a 9-5 basis.

For example, it’s not possible to get married by the State on weekends. While God will facilitate nuptials through His various churches on a seven-day basis, the public service needs two days of rest.

So instead of a registrar performing the ceremony on Saturday, many of the wedding guests must take a day off work, which involves the public facilitating the service which is ostensibly designed to facilitate the public.

A culture has grown up that deems weekends sacrosanct, irrespective of the task at hand. In such a climate, working the weekends is regarded as a sacrifice of monumental proportions, which demands major recompense.

This is the climate in which 24/7 frontline workers are highly paid for their time outside the Monday to Friday 9-5 hours. The gardaí, nurses, fire personnel, etc can’t be blamed for the stance they have taken to preserve these payments. In a functioning service, their basic salaries would take account of these hours, but in the Irish public service this would cause problems for “relativities” — where it’s not the job that you do which matters, but the entitlements that come with your position.

Trade unions have played a major role in rendering the service into its moribund state. Management doesn’t appear to be motivated to reconfigure attitudes and the politicians have no real interest in tackling the issue. Brendan Howlin is the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, and while the former element of his brief has got all the headlines, even he appears to have forgotten the latter element.

Despite all that, it should be pointed out, that there are still many who swim against the tide of apathy. In every walk of the service there are those who continually demonstrate fidelity to the ethic of public service. But in many cases it’s not made easy for them.

Now the airwaves are thick again with the sound of protest from across the public sector that they can’t take anymore. There is certainly a case to be made that the 24/7 workers are getting the short end of the stick in this deal. It is also true that many at low payscales are in dire straits.

But if large swathes of the service are to reject the deal and protest, then they will requires support from those beyond the service. Whether it will be forthcoming remains to be seen.

But irrespective of the merits of any particular case, the knowledge that many within the service have it cushy in some regards, will impinge on any attempt to effect a social solidarity.