A performance management and development system was introduced into the civil service in 2000. Annual assessments were based on a five-point rating scale for each of the 36,000 members of staff.

This year the world looks back and remembers the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The scale of human slaughter achieved nothing except to sow the seeds of the Second World War.

THE HSE has removed religious statues from two hospitals in Killarney (Irish Examiner, March 10).