Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 December 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Matters relating to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Discussion

Mr. Robert Watt:

The reality of it has not improved and it is a challenge for us to encourage people to go for positions and to get them to go for high-profile positions. When we have conversations, people say that the potential reputational risk is not worth it because of the potential for something to go wrong. Things always go wrong. Mistakes will be made but it is a question of the way those mistakes are dealt with it. It is more a "gotcha" culture as opposed to what we call a learning culture. We focus on trying to learn from mistakes and encourage people to do better to try to be innovative. A gotcha culture does not encourage that. It encourages all the wrong habits. Unfortunately we do have a gotcha culture when it should be a learning culture. That is not to say that people should not be accountable and there should be sanctions for people who make mistakes. If they make several mistakes there are sanctions of course but we do need to look at things in a different way. I do not think it has improved.

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