Successful private sector candidate worked for civil service in past

THE sole applicant from the private sector to secure a top-level civil service job over the past five years had previously worked with the Department of Finance, it has emerged.

It follows this week’s report in the Irish Examiner which revealed that only one out of 314 applicants from the private sector was successful in securing a high-ranking job in the civil service since 2005.

However, it has now been revealed that the lone successful candidate, Robert Watt, a former Indecon economist who was appointed assistant secretary at the Department of Finance in 2007, had previously worked in the same department before leaving to work in the private sector six years earlier.

The latest revelation provides further evidence about how the civil service remains effectively a closed shop for private sector applicants seeking to fill the most senior vacancies through open competition, despite the Government’s recognition that it needs to recruit more people with specialist expertise from outside the State sector.

Figures provided by the Department of Finance, which has responsibility for public sector reform, show that private sector applicants had a 0.3% success rate in securing one of 82 top-level vacancies filled by open competition over the past five years, although they represented 19% of all candidates.

Members of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee recently criticised the Department of Finance for the lack of specialist banking expertise among its staff. Several Opposition TDs claimed there was a need for such expertise among civil servants to make the Department less dependent on other sources of information such as the Financial Regulator and Central Bank.

Secretary general of the Department of Finance, Kevin Cardiff, admitted to the PAC that it would have been better if they had been “less reliant on other sources and more reliant on internal sources”.

He added: “I do not disagree with the diagnosis that we need a greater internal reliance on specialist skills.”

Mr Cardiff accepted that a core team of specialist experts was important and an issue which would need to be confronted as part of reform of the public sector.

The filling of vacancies at assistant secretary level and higher in Government departments is overseen by the Top Level Appointments Committee which consists of five members – four top-ranking civil servants and one “outside” individual, Eileen Fitzpatrick who is an executive director of the National Treasury Management Agency.

TLAC chairman, Ciarán Connolly, who is also assistant secretary at the Department of Finance told the PAC last month that there was “significant enough” expertise being recruited into the civil service from the private sector.

It is understood that one applicant from the private sector who was recently offered a job turned it down.

Yesterday, Labour TD, Róisín Shortall, described the civil service’s non-existent level of recruitment from the private sector as “scandalous.”

“The overall figures are extremely disappointing. There is a need for more promotional posts to be opened to outside competition,” said Ms Shortall.