Mr. John Moran:

Okay. I had mentioned I was just on the point of identifying a number of observations about the way I saw the system working, perhaps coming from a unique perspective as a so-called reputed outsider holder of a Secretary General position. And as I said, a lot of these are laid put in more detail in my written statement, but, first, I suppose I found it surprising, in joining the Department, how little debate on strategic issues for Ireland was, or could be, led publicly by civil servants. It seems other Ministers often have discouraged this practice in the past; I was lucky not to have one of those. Officials are criticised for not engaging more outside their own Departments but when they do venture out into the public debate, are they supported by the public? Are they supported by the public representatives? My own experience was to suffer what I consider still to be unacceptable interference into my personal life by the media, and, indeed, inaccurate public criticism by serving public representatives when I dared to stimulate discussion on key choices in housing policy and stated facts in a neutral but truthful way about repossession statistics. Unless our system robustly defends, not attacks, civil servants acting in good faith, is it fair to expect them to be more vocal and point out alternative, however unpopular, political choices or to protest loudly when perhaps a wrong decision is being contemplated?

Secondly, I was surprised at how little proactive - and I stress that word "proactive" - debate about strategic longer-term choices for Ireland was taking place, even in private, within the corridors of power in ways that involved the full broader leadership team of all of the Government Departments. I had imagined I would be stepping into a cauldron of debate about all sorts of important issues about the long-term future direction of the country and whether we were on the right track. Perhaps the crisis had crowded out this debate, if it was happening before, but, should our political system not also encourage this more and not allow or demand that time to be crowded out by an agenda dictated on short termism?

Next, elected representatives have a nature and role different to those employed on a long-term basis in the public administration, but both must work together. I observed from both sides what I would say are unhelpful perceptions on the lack of equilibrium in relative status given to political decision makers and to the public service, especially the Civil Service. Have we really achieved an unqualified environment of mutual respect to encourage true free debate across the system? The Cabinet, which I know you've looked at quite a lot, is a primary hub of decision-making in Ireland, where not just the decision making about the bank guarantee took place but, indeed, all major Government decisions. How does advice get to this forum? Is it the right choice, in 2015, that civil servants with the background technical details from relevant Departments are excluded from the debates at Cabinet? What if, during the debate, someone raises a novel technical point not addressed in the supporting papers? Does one just defer? When I came to the Department in 2011, I had no reason to believe it would be that way; in fact, I thought it was the opposite. Is it right in 2015 that traditions developed when the world was less complicated, vast and interconnected, continue to form the basis of our most fundamental decision-making forum?

Another interesting aspect of the operation of Cabinet sub-committees is how often status updates on the deteriorating, or improving, economic and banking system helped come to those issues ... to those forum. What happens annual reviews and plans of Departments which are not ... which are debated not in the presence of the Secretary General? Another surprise was to discover that former Governments seemed at least, so the story goes, to have discouraged, maybe even banned, the idea of Secretary Generals as a group meeting together to discuss policy unless their Ministers were present. I had expected to find much more robust debate among the senior Civil Service team as a leadership group on the issues facing the country. I had expected to see fora for the Civil Service leadership to debate the same issues that I mentioned in my written statement. I would have expected to have seen before Cabinet ideas about the State's financial priorities for spending and the rest. The troika process actually meant I didn't notice this vacuum for quite some time as we were, in fact, doing that in part of the troika process. But if Secretaries General can't meet to discuss policy without Government Ministers, I'm left to wonder when was the last time the Taoiseach of Ireland, all of the key Ministers and their Secretaries General, perhaps their advisers stepped out together for a senior management one or two-day off-site to discuss the priorities they see facing the country?

I arrived at the Department when the Department was being restructured into two separate Departments and maybe that accentuated the vacuum. It leaves me wondering if putting spending and taxation in different Departments is the right way forward to facilitate holistic thought process about priorities. Oireachtas committees might also help by acting as a forum in which technical civil servant experts, together with public representatives, may discuss matters freely and publicly, but some committees prefer interrogation styles rather than debating among equals. Debates are often done Department by Department rather than involving officials from across the system to a relevant subject matter. Does the adversarial nature of Oireachtas committees encourage the type of informed cross-party political debate which might serve the country well into the future? Why, for example, would those posing the questions not simply always provide at least their preliminary question or areas of inquiry in advance with precision? We all know how much better our answers were at school when the lecturers gave us significant hints about the questions coming up on the exams. This should not be an exam to catch out civil servants or a Department with surprise questions but should rather be a public debate on the issues to inform.

We've been asked to talk about the Department’s relationships with the NTMA, and I would assume from the papers I received that there would be some significant questions on that, so I won't necessarily go in to those. I laid out some of the changes we made on the banking policy governance side in 2011, which, I think, were important, to allow us to move decisively and cohesively on the bank restructuring. I've explained the changes we made to the NTMA to change very much the governance structure there and I think I've also pointed out the key role that the so-called principals' group could make and the challenges of making that a more strategic, rather than an operational, forum.

I want to just finally deal, as a last point, with this important issue of the management of contrarian views. As I mentioned in my statement, I set out in detail for the PAC measures we had taken to reform the operation of the Department just before, or in fact just after I had resigned as Secretary General and that speech is included in the documents I know you have before you. I can't improve on the description by restating it in new words here. I would just repeat for you one paragraph of my speech last year, for those who haven't, and the public, had time to read it:

For [this job] further embedding of a culture of openness, of internal and external challenge and peer review, of risk management and robust and innovative policy formulation is key. This is not easy stuff though. It requires ensuring adequate investment to have access to the best talent and information. It means learning to listen. It means embracing an environment often lacking in organisations across the world of open, free and honest debate and mutual trust where everyone’s views are well received and cheap shots avoided. It requires the nurturing of talent so as to create the leaders of tomorrow who need to be instilled with a sense of creativity to develop policies for a changing world but also a sense of conviction and courage to be able to identify the next problem and shout stop, when it is needed.

It is hard to change tradition. In my written statement, I have laid out all of the various changes that we went through in the Department and I know Derek is coming on afterwards so I can perhaps just stop there now, Chairman, and let us go to questions and we can go on to the details of any of those changes, if we need to. Thank you very much.