Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Well, I would think that the evaluation is quite good but the nature of the Irish civil servants ... Civil Service is that it's generalist and if you had to gear-up and have specialists for every eventuality, you'd have a lot of specialists who wouldn't be doing anything for a lot of the year who would be waiting for the specialist event to occur. So, if something requires specialisation, it has been the practice for a long time to engage consultants, and it probably ... it's probably more cost effective. But that's not to say that the generalists at senior level don't have a lot of technical competence but there are times when you need either expert legal advice about areas or expert economic analysis about areas, and, you know, the Department goes for that.