Daniel McConnell: Civil servants now prefer to operate with no oversight

The trojan horse of GDPR has been widely misused by government departments

In January it emerged that in his new role as head of the Department of Health Robert Watt had been claiming an €81,000 pay rise to his €300,000 a year salary, despite previously stating he would waive the rise until such time as ‘the economy begins to recover’.

About four years ago, I rang the Department of Finance press office to enquire about the publication of the annual finance accounts.

This usually contained details of pension payments to former senior office holders such as past presidents, taoisigh, ministers, and law officers.

I was told by the genial press officer, whom I know well and like, that because of new EU laws on privacy, commonly referred to as GDPR, such data was now private and no longer fit for public consumption.

Even though they had been published year-in year-out for decades without fail.

I smelled a rat.

Then three years ago, the department was again back in the firing line when it refused to publish the details of how much it paid to barristers involved in the €14bn Apple escrow account, again citing the presence of GDPR.

Now, getting frustrated, I went to the Data Protection Commission to ask what the department was saying within the rules.

The DPC, under the leadership of Helen Dixon, came back with an unambiguous statement.

Dixon’s office provided information showing how her office had continued to publish or release details of payments to third parties, including barristers, even after the introduction of GDPR, in sharp contrast to the position taken by the Department of Finance.

Labour TD Alan Kelly took up the issue, saying the department’s refusal to publish the information created a worrying precedent. It meant that this precedent set by the Government allowed people to constitute themselves as individuals for payment purposes, therefore they did not have to declare income and it wouldn't be made public.

“So a sole trader who is giving advice or does anything for the State, we will never know how much you’re paid because GDPR will prevent it. This is insane,” he said.

Misuse of legislation

Then Public Accounts Committee chairman and now junior finance minister Seán Fleming piled in, saying if it was intended to interpret GDPR to ensure no payment to any individual could ever be published again, then that is a total misuse and an abuse of the legislation that was introduced to prevent every payment to every individual never being disclosed.

Today, it is payments to barristers, tomorrow, if this goes unchallenged, all payments by the State will be beyond the reach of the public, I wrote back in 2019.

And lo and behold, this week, we have top civil servants, whose pay has always been made public in light of the crucial role they play in our system of government, turning the screw for their own benefit.

As my colleague and keen PAC watcher Cianan Brennan wrote this week, the Department of Public Expenditure (DPER) says it is currently considering legal advice about the legal soundness of publishing details of the salaries of secretaries-general.

The issue had arisen in January after it emerged that Robert Watt in his new role as head of the Department of Health had been claiming an €81,000 pay rise to his €300,000 a year salary, despite previously stating he would waive the rise until such time as “the economy begins to recover”.

According to Cianan’s report, the department said publishing the actual remuneration of a secretary-general “might stray into issues of personal information, as well as matters related to tax legislation”.

Utter hogwash.

Advice from the Attorney General on the matter was finally received on September 27, DPER said, some eight months after the matter was first raised at PAC.

“The department is considering this advice at present,” it said.

That is civil service code for we want to do this and will keep pushing this until we get it.

Watt’s move from the DPER to the Department of Health in April 2021 saw him attain a salary that was €81,000 in excess of other secretaries-general.

Let us not also forget that Watt, appointed in 2011 under the old rules, has seen a massive improvement to his pension because his retirement pot will be based on his final salary and not his career average salary.

The truth is this latest move to hide their salaries is a blatant attempt by Watt and his contemporaries to remove their activities, step by step, from the full glare of media and public attention.

It is outrageous.

They know they score when they work for the public sector and having their salaries and pensions (which they spend, it seems an inordinate amount of time concentrating on) being published goes with the turf.

Worse still, from the answers to PAC, these cosseted princes and princesses of the permanent government are using our taxpayer-funded resources in order to tell us to take a hike.

It is galling and the silence so far from their political masters is deafening.

It is yet another example of just how powerful our permanent government system has become since the financial crash.

 It is clear that the balance of power in Ireland is stacked very clearly in favour of our unelected civil servants who are protected by tenure and will be rewarded with gold-plated pensions on retirement.

There is a part of me that is not surprised if you saw how contemptuous Watt and his fellow officials were of the PAC and the Finance Committee when they sought to ask legitimate questions about the botched secondment to Trinity College Dublin involving the now-former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan.

The manner of the appointment was subsequently subject to a highly critical report by the joint committee on finance, which said that Mr Watt had behaved with “an utter disregard” for transparency.

Why the need to hide?

The question is why would they do this?

Why if everything is above board, why the need to hide?

The truth is, there is no legitimate reason for these people to seek to rip up the long-standing rule book except to benefit them and deprive the public of knowing the truth.

Experience has taught us time and time again, where there are shadows, dodgy things tend to go on.

Also, a wider lens is required to understand fully the significance of what the officials are seeking to do.

The PAC is the only standing committee in the Dáil and plays a crucial role in holding departments and agencies to account.

Since the Angela Kerins episode, the powers that be have been hell-bent on nobbling the committee and severely curtailing its ability to dig out the misdeeds as to how taxpayers’ money is spent. Our money.

The pattern is clear and the dogged attempts to chip away at the PAC’s power and therefore the public’s ability to forensically examine matters of significance show a hard-pressed desire to hide from true accountability.

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That is why the trojan horse of GDPR has been so widely misused by government departments.

It must stop.

It is us, you and me, who pay the price for this.