John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

CEO of a Department is a pretty big responsibility. I absolutely understand, and perhaps it should be communicated a little bit better, that the kind of experience, knowledge, information and expertise a Secretary General would accumulate and garner over time in running a Department, depending on the Department, but many Departments have budgets of billions, deserves to be shared and is worth sharing in academic circles. That is a good public policy position.

Second, it is unrealistic to expect a person who has served as Secretary General somehow to disappear anonymously back into the same Department and work to another Secretary General. Someone who has been CEO does not go back in, as it were. Such people are fixed term, and I am assuming that explains the Government decision in 2011 and followed up again in 2021 regarding those Secretaries General who had not attained 40 years' public service and could not qualify for their entitlements. However, it was not only for that but also so their expertise would not be lost, because Secretaries General are getting younger. It is my understanding in the case of the two Secretaries General to whom I referred that they have both gone to the university sector and their salaries and superannuation entitlements are looked after not by the Department but rather by the State through its funding of the universities to do that.