Una Mullally: It's time to challenge the institutionally stagnant Civil Service

Why did politicians from various parties round on Mary Lou McDonald for criticising a lack of efficiency in the public and Civil Service systems? Is this not an obvious issue with how the State functions? Everyone knows that there are systemic problems across the public service and Civil Service, so why is McDonald being attacked for pointing this out?

Let’s separate the two broad entities McDonald was speaking about in an interview with the Irish Examiner. First we have the public service, where people work in public jobs often on the frontline, but in the case of the Health Service Executive, for example, that means a culture of bloated and inefficient administration under the stewardship of a chief executive on a massive salary. At a time when more healthcare workers are urgently needed, the HSE hired five times more senior managers than doctors or dentists in the second quarter of 2021.

Then we have the Civil Service, also public servants, but specific to government departments and State agencies. The Civil Service is sometimes referred to as the permanent government, with officials wielding huge power and influence. The Civil Service is often privately characterised by politicians themselves as an obstructionist, bureaucratic force, with deeply embedded individual department cultures and mindsets. Averse to change, experts in process, fluent in the coded language of Civil Serviceland – these are the cliches of the Civil Service. Of course, none of that is categorically true. It’s a generalisation. Plenty of politicians have excellent working relationships with officials. There is, as McDonald pointed out, “immense talent in our Civil Service, our public service, and our public administration, that’s the first thing that needs to be said”.

Hierarchical institutions

But we also know the Civil Service is institutionally stagnant. You get people treading water everywhere, especially in large hierarchical institutions, but the civil and public services are much more immune from consequence. According to a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform spending review in 2020 on job churn in the public service, for example, the public service and the Civil Service were shown to be the sectors least affected by the economic cycle. Even those who leave a particular job tend to remain within the wider public and civil services.

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It  takes something extraordinary to get fired. Between 2007 and 2017, just 55 civil servants lost their jobs through dismissal

It also takes something extraordinary to get fired. Between 2007 and 2017, just 55 civil servants out of 37,146 lost their jobs through dismissal. Out of that 55, 30 resigned before they were told they were being dismissed. So, 25 people were asked to leave from a workforce of almost 40,000 in a decade. Truly, the standards of performance, efficiency and excellence in the Irish Civil Service must be incomparable to any other sector in the country. Do we know how many civil servants lost their jobs having been involved in the disastrous decision-making around the bank guarantee? Do we know how many civil servants lost their jobs due to backfiring decisions made around the housing crisis? Do we know how many people in the HSE lost their jobs for spending €81 million on 2,200 ventilators from 10 suppliers previously unknown to the HSE, of which only 465 were delivered? The lack of accountability within the civil and public services is not the fault or the responsibility of individuals doing their best within it.

Gender diversity

A 2020 Economic and Social Research Institute research report on gender diversity, which focused on the Department of Agriculture, stated that, while women made up the majority of workers in the Civil Service, men were twice as likely to be in senior-grade positions. In that report, they found that, in 2016, 63 per cent of Civil Service employees were female, but 75 per cent of those were in entry-level “clerical officer” positions, and just 21 per cent at secretary general level. Like many aspects of Irish society, the Civil Service has a strong legacy of institutional sexism – not surprising for a country that barred married women from working in the public and civil services well into the 1970s. Things are getting better, but not fast enough.

While women make up the majority of workers in the Civil Service, men are twice as likely to be in senior grades

Nobody wants negative aspects of the private sector replicated across the public sector for the sake of it. But we also need to get real. Everyone knows that the Civil Service is viewed as “a job for life”. A Civil Service job is shorthand for stability, security, longevity, with lower workloads and shorter hours than the private sector, and where opportunities for promotion often appear linked to how long you’ve been there, not how good you are. This wastes talent.

The politicians who criticised McDonald aren’t showing up for public and civil servants, they’re merely demonstrating they will shirk from the systemic change needed within the infrastructure of the State to do things better, bolder, faster, with more creativity and innovation and less waste. The biggest critics of the way the Civil Service operates are the good people working within it, just as you’ll find those with the sharpest words for the Department of Education will be teachers, and those who have the strongest things to say about the HSE are frontline healthcare workers.

While the reflex to criticise everything Sinn Féin says is practically on par with Sinn Féin’s reflex to criticise everything the Government does, the manufactured outrage from politicians across Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil regarding McDonald’s remarks also speaks to a much deeper desire for the maintenance of “sure it’s grand” culture. But the public, as the polls show, are looking for a political solution that challenges and changes, not reinforces, the status quo.