Secretary general to explain €2.9m justice department spend on consultants

Consultants at EY were paid €2.9m for their advice in the restructuring of the Department of Justice, TDs will be told today.

The restructuring, initiated after the resignation of then Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald in late 2017, has been completed, and top officials will appear before the Oireachtas Justice Committee today.

In evidence, department secretary general Aidan O’Driscoll will tell TDs that he and his colleagues have “just completed the biggest ever restructuring of a government department in the history of the State.”

He warned however that “the period of greatest risk is now and over the next few months, as we seek to stabilise the new organisation and adapt to the new ways of working.”

He will ask members for forbearance “if in this period we do not meet the high standards that you might reasonably expect of us.”

He will say that in the old model, staff were expected to work across a wide range of activities, continually reprioritising competing tasks of varied natures, importance and urgency.

Aidan O'Driscoll

“So in a subject area, a member of staff might, in a typical day, review a policy document, write responses to parliamentary questions, provide policy observations on international or European proposals, work with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel on the drafting of new legislation and, typically, pause each of those tasks to respond to urgent media queries,” he will say.

“In addition the Department itself has grown over time in an unplanned and unstructured manner in response to various needs and crises. In this regard it is no different to other Departments,” he will add.

Mr O’Driscoll will also say the department is behind the curve in terms of the development of ICT systems.

Under the new structures, the work of the department is now structured into five functional areas — policy development, governance of agencies, preparation of legislation, operations, and transparency.

The department has also been realigned under two pillars, one covering civil justice, equality and immigration, and the other, criminal justice, each led by a deputy secretary general.

Mr O’Driscoll will say the Government-appointed oversight group recommended the procurement of external expertise to help the internal team implement the new operating model, and that after a procurement process, EY were appointed to partner with the department on the project at a cost of €2.9m, excluding VAT.