'Failure to manage' in public sector - Minister

INTERVIEW:Minister of State Brian Hayes says too many public service managers cannot manage change

THE PUBLIC sector still has too many managers without “any particular skill in management”, the Minister of State for Public Service Reform has said.

Brian Hayes yesterday said these people were also still “paid bloody well”, despite reductions to their salaries.

“One thing I have seen up close is a complete failure to manage. We have people on enormous salaries – €60,000, €70,000 more than I get – who’d be lucky to get a job for €50,000 in the private sector,” he said.

“They’re not managers. They’ve no sense of hitting targets. No sense of putting pressure on people to deliver things. That is something that really annoys me and it annoys the unions as well.”

Ministers of State earn about €130,000.

Public sector pay and conditions should be reduced to rates available in similar-sized European countries if a second Croke Park deal is agreed, he said in an interview with The Irish Times.

He expressed concern about the development of a “two-tier” public sector, where new entrants cannot hope to obtain the same pay and benefits as more experienced workers.

“The dilemma we face is we’ve got to get the savings. We’ve got to hit our targets and it’s a pretty brutal way of doing it. That’s why I think it is important that we reach a new national agreement,” he said.

Key components of any such deal should include “proper benchmarking with the pay and conditions that occur in similar-sized European countries”. Ireland did not have a huge public sector, “but it seems to be relatively well paid vis-a-vis other similar-sized countries”.

Public sector pay rates should also be benchmarked against current rates in the Irish private sector, he said.

“We need to have a proper benchmarking exercise about the sustainability of public sector pay and pensions long-term. Can we afford this? And I think the issue of allowances and pay comes into that.”

He added: “I would love to see a proper benchmarking exercise as part of the next Croke Park deal”.

There is also far too much “territorialism” across the public sector, with departments “believing they’re little fiefdoms”, he said.

“I’ve been very critical of managers but equally I’m critical of the small-mindedness of departments concerned about their own existence and not what the country has to do.”

Mr Hayes said trade unions had been partly responsible for the economic collapse, but there was a “new maturity” in their relationship with the Government.

Senior trade union personnel had realised “that the country has collapsed” and a reconfiguration of the public service was now essential.

“Let’s be honest there was, and probably is, suspicion amongst the public sector about Fine Gael,” he said. “Fine Gael sometimes has a reactionary view about trade unions which isn’t very helpful and not very mature.”

On the incoming property tax, Mr Hayes said the Government should make allowances for people who paid large amounts of stamp duty during the boom years.

“It seems to me for a group of people who are in negative equity, who’ve been crippled by these payments, that some allowance needs to be built into the system, difficult and all as that is.”