Daniel McConnell: Overpriced, yet falling apart — the public service fails us all
Fine Gael TD Michael Ring said there was no accountability in the public service. File picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
He said we have a dictatorship in this country. It is not a political dictatorship but a public service dictatorship and it has got to such a stage now that they think they are more powerful than the minister.
The local authorities do not care about the housing minister anymore, they are out of hand, he boomed.
“If the minister, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Government do not kick on the public service, I do not know where this country is going to be. It is time a small bit of power came back to the elected representatives,” he added.
Amid some laughter and verbal jousting, Ring went on to say he has been in the Dáil for 26 years.
"There has to be accountability. If these people were working for the private sector they would be accountable. There is no accountability in the public service,” he said.
Usually, when such comments are made, the individual who makes them is dismissed as a crank and a sense is put around that they are not be taken seriously.
“Ah, that’s just Ringer,” was the refrain.
Also, some present in the Dáil that night moved to attack his comments, describing them as a “disgraceful slur” against public servants.
It was no such thing.
The truth is that Ring is absolutely spot on in terms of the deficit in accountability which is endemic within the public service.
It has been a curse that has bedevilled the running of the country for decades.
Worse still, many of those who were at the helm were pensioned off on full or enhanced pension terms, to the tune of millions of euro.
The legacy of the crash and the political upheaval caused by the 2011 general election, which reduced Fianna Fáil to a minority force in Irish politics, is that a major imbalance kicked in between the political class and the top echelons of the public service.
The gross waste of €450m on PPE and ventilators during Covid-19 without any consequences, Champagne-gate, the Robert Watt salary affair, and the botched secondment of Dr Tony Holohan to Trinity College Dublin were stark illustrations of just how imbalanced that relationship now is.
Because of this imbalance, the political establishment is petrified for some reason to call out the poor performance of their officials, even though they are the ones who end up carrying the can for their mistakes.
This week’s furore from Fine Gael TDs including Ring, Paul Kehoe, Bernard Durkan, and Emer Higgins around the delays to passport applications being processed is the latest example of the system failing.
But once again, it appears the bureaucracy is dictating the pace to the politicians rather than the political masters taking hold of the problem and driving change.
We elect politicians and not officials to run the country and all too often we hear our ministers act more like commentators as opposed to drivers of change, as if they are powerless passengers forced to bend the knee to the permanent government, which is unelected and unaccountable.
When accountability is sought, by way of leading Dáil committees such as the Public Accounts Committee, we see senior officials regularly thumb their noses at politicians seeking answers on behalf of the public.
We have also seen the official system, using the Angela Kerins verdict (which found the then PAC had breached her rights by how they treated her), choke the power out of the PAC to render it a soft-touch anaemic body, unable to deliver accountability as it previously did.
The PAC has, in truth, been strangled and senior officials, bolstered by Kerins judgement, are able to obfuscate and avoid accountability.
That imbalance needs to change.
Now, we have seen in recent weeks calls from public sector unions for double-digit pay increases.
Michael McGrath has a golden opportunity to enact the sort of reform so many in this country would simply love to see.
I would argue that in return for a once-off inflation-busting pay rise, McGrath insists on inserting new rules which can allow underperforming staff disciplined and sacked where appropriate.
Not in theory, but in practice.
In theory, people can be sacked and disciplined but, in reality, it rarely happens.
I would also argue that, as with the private sector, were genuine sanctions and accountability brought in for the civil service, then some form of a bonus scheme may be tolerable.
That his department takes up in earnest the scourge of incompetency and instils some real accountability within the system.
It is the job of unions to protect their members but it is not the job of unions to become an impediment to enterprise and delivery.
In its current guise, the public service, because of its risk-averse middle-of-the-road attitude can never be an or will ever be groundbreaking or truly innovative.
Ireland is just about in the top third of countries when it comes to the highest tax rate that can be applied (including social insurance), ranking 13th out of 37 countries with a top rate of 52% on income above €70,044 (that is income tax at 40%, USC of 8% and PRSI at 4%).
The truth of the matter is that we get woeful value for money for that level of taxation.
Our cities are filthy, Dublin especially.
Our health service has been in constant crisis for decades with systemic logjams for our elderly, our disabled, our most needy.
Our transport network is laughable, especially for those in rural areas.
We are in constant breach of our European requirements when it comes to our climate change delivery and environmental standards.
McGrath has a golden opportunity to cement his legacy before he moves to become finance minister in December and a failure to tackle this now will only store up bigger problems for down the line.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
