Sir, – As a retired civil servant, it is disappointing to observe how standards in the Civil Service have fallen in recent years, particularly in relation to the basic principle that the primary role of a senior civil servant is to advise Ministers and to implement Government policy, while always acting responsibly in the public interest.
The perfectly rational policy that heads of government departments should only serve for an absolute maximum of seven years in order to facilitate the introduction of fresh thinking and to avoid political infection has been virtually abandoned. It now seems almost the norm that the people involved either stay in post, move at the same level, sometimes with a much higher salary, to other departments, or they take up ambassadorial posts abroad. There was a time when there was an important vocational element attached to the role of the civil servant but that seems to have disappeared in the unsavoury debate over extravagant salary levels. One is loath to suggest that the ethos of our independent Civil Service has been fatally undermined but I am afraid that it has now become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the politicians and the the civil servants. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Dublin 12.