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.