Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I am totally in agreement with the sentiment and motivation of Senator Barrett's amendments and, although I will not accept them, I will explain why. There is statutory provision for the appointment of a Secretary General under the Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924. It prescribes that every Department should have a chief executive, which is now defined as a Secretary General, and the question is how those Secretaries General are appointed. Until now, they have been appointed by what is know as TLAC - the Top Level Appointments Commission. One of the first things I did in the Department was to reform TLAC, whereby there will now be a majority of external members and the chair will be an external member - that is, from outside the Civil Service. The membership of TLAC has been increased to nine, of which there are five external members. All final interviews will be conducted by a sub-panel of the committee, each comprising two civil servants and three external members, and chaired by one of the external members, so the external members will have the determining majority. In addition, the people whom I have nominated to Government and intend to appoint - I hope the decision will be signed off on this week, probably in the next day or two - all have great experience in human resource management externally in the business community.

This is a better approach than bluntly asking people to present before a committee of the House. We need expertise and, bluntly, in the determination I made, I needed a new Secretary General fairly sharply to begin the work. It was a lonely first day in the Department when trying to create a new Department.

On the specifics, amendment No. 22 refers to two officers, the Secretary General of the department of public expenditure and reform and the Second Secretary General of the public service management division. This second title existed in the old Department of Finance and will not exist in my Department. Therefore, I cannot accept the amendment because that role is being abolished entirely. Nonetheless, there will be a Secretary General in my Department. In a subsequent debate, perhaps an Adjournment Debate or in committee, we can go through the new structure of the Department, as I envisage it, with a reformed unit and external people running reform. The intention of the Senator's amendments will be mirrored in the reality of the structure I intend to put into place. I hope there will be considerable interaction between me and this House in explaining what we are doing and how we will do it.

With regard to the nationality of appointees, posts in the Irish Civil Service are open to all European Economic Area nationals, as the House knows. We will see who applies for posts into the future. The Senator might be aware that several Secretary General posts across all Departments will be becoming vacant in a relatively short period. It will be interesting to see how the new TLAC will operate to select those.