The head of the union representing junior staff in the civil service has criticised what he said were the “serious failures of economic policy” that have resulted in the present crisis.
General secretary of the Civil Public and Services Union Blair Horan said although the public service had been cost-effective and innovative over the past decade, it was in the area of public policy that the main failures had occurred.
He was addressing the MacGill summer school in Donegal today.
“The reality is that the free-market neo-liberal approach to economic policy is a key factor behind the catastrophic failure that has occurred,” he said.
He said the modernisation programme in the public service had brought about real, cost-effective improvements in public services. Ireland compared well with other countries in this area, he said.
An OECD review of the Irish public service published in 2008 pointed the way forward to a more integrated public service that had citizens’ needs and their empowerment as a central policy objective.
It also called for a more integrated public service “with a focus on outputs and outcomes rather than inputs and process”.
Mr Horan said a new approach should have a more citizen-centred approach, should provide value for taxpayers’ money and should have a focus on outputs and outcomes rather than process.
But he said having a more citizen-centred public service would not be achieved easily, or by simply declaring it a policy goal.
From his own experience over the last 23 years dealing with the public service, it was a “cultural shift in mindset” that would be required to bring about a more citizen-friendly approach to public services, rather than “any concessions that are in the gift of trade unions to concede”.
“It was no accident in my view that long after the CPSU dispute ended in the Passport Office, that it was management who resisted exercising discretion in respect of individual citizens with immediate travel needs,” he said.
Mr Horan told his audience there was “a traditional hierarchical approach in the civil service that is culturally deeply embedded, in particular of command and control as a method of organisation”.
“Despite 12 years of partnership committees this has not fundamentally changed. It will be difficult for management to allow for more autonomy, team working and individual discretion to take place at the level of front line service provision,” he said.
“Some front line staff are often comfortable with the routines, where they know what’s expected of them, and have not always demanded a more participatory or team working approach.
“If the needs of citizens are to be put centre stage, there will have to be a fundamentally different approach that allows for more autonomy and discretion along with team working at the front line level.
“The priority given to growth in senior management numbers over front line staff in the Civil Service over the past decade does not augur well for a new approach," he said.
On policy issues, Mr Horan questioned whether it was “simply a political failure where wrong choices were made, which perhaps went against the policy advice given”, or whether the policy advice was “equally flawed”.
“The decision to examine the role of the Department of Finance in the crisis over the past decade should throw some light on this question.”
He said the response to the housing crisis adopted after the Bacon reports was to concentrate on increasing supply. “This ultimately served only to fuel the property spiral rather than to dampen it down.”
His own union had warned of “the potential disastrous consequences for our successful economic model as early as March 1998”.
“In a joint report with Siptu in 1999 we called for measures to curb price rises through control of building land.”
Mr Horan said that in being critical of official economic policy and commentators such as the ESRI, he was “not suggesting that we in the trade union movement got everything right”.
But he said it had “called the housing crisis correctly and identified the potential problems from runaway house price inflation at a very early stage”.