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.

The sentences handed down yesterday in the case involving two former directors of Anglo Irish Bank, Patrick Whelan and William McAteer, point to an area that might well be considered under any reform programme.

Last April Judge Martin Nolan said he felt it would be unfair to imprison either man as he believed the former financial regulator had “led them into error and illegality”. In other words because of advice, or an impression, given by one of the very senior figures in the State’s financial infrastructure inappropriate decisions were made.

But this has no consequences for the retired regulator who continues to enjoy a very substantial state pension. Surely that is not the kind of environment that encourages best behaviour?

One of the measures, most frequently advanced with the intention of improving our public service is regular performance appraisal of senior civil servants by an independent body— just as happens right across the private sector. Would it not be prudent to include a clause in all future contracts that if after an individual retires it is established decisons taken by them faciliated wrong doing that their pension entiltments could be reviewed? This clause might only be invoked in the most exceptional circumstacnes but it would make rulings like yesterday’s ever more unlikely. Such a clause might also be a powewrful weapon inthe essential fight against white-collar crime.