Civil servants - Government rewarding incompetence

Civil servants who retire are being rehired on a temporary basis because there is nobody trained to replace them.

The Government therefore rehires them to do the job for which they are drawing their pensions.

Last year the Government paid over €1.13m to rehire former civil servants to do such jobs. Almost half of the total amount was paid out by the Department of Justice, which spent €571,000 re-employing twenty-four retired civil servants. The Attorney Generals’ offices spent €154,000 rehiring just two former officials on a contract basis.

The practice of rehiring retired personnel is widespread within the Government, with former employees being rehired by the Departments of Environment, Foreign Affairs, Gaeltacht Affairs, and Communication, Marine and Natural Resources, according to a report by the Controller and Auditor General. There have also been similar examples of such rehiring - albeit on a much smaller scale, in the Garda Síochána and the Land Registry office.

In the commercial world employees are generally expected to ensure that others are trained to replace them, but too many civil servants play their own bureaucratic game of making themselves indispensable by ensuring that those reporting to them are not properly trained to take over.

By rehiring such people the State is really rewarding incompetence and essentially encouraging other bureaucrats to persist with such flawed practices in their own self-interest. Rehiring retired officials should not be permitted, except in the most extraordinary circumstance and then only with at least ministerial, if not Cabinet approval.