Changing the environment - Public sector reform

Over the last few years calls for public sector reform have almost become a mantra; an invoaction that if undertaken — we imagine — might cure all of our ills.

Even if this is as overly ambitious as it is inaccurate it has been obvious for some time that radical change in how we conduct our public affairs is necessary.

This week’s publication of the damning report into how the Department of Justice, and the subsequent request to be reassigned by that department’s secretary general Brian Purcell, is probably just the tip of a very large, immoveable iceberg but nonetheless an indication of the scale of the challenge ahead. There does at last though seem a political recognition and determination that this reform programme must be advanced and put in place in the immediate future.