Mr. David Moloney:

I will take the last point first. The Government decision in 2011 was a clear one. It said that when a retiring Secretary General reaches the end of their term and has not yet reached preserved pension age, the minimum pension age, the Government may offer them an alternative position. In the case of the two Secretaries General we are talking about, the Government made the decision late last year to do that. It is a term and condition of the appointment of Secretaries General since 2011. It is detailed in the Public Appointments Service, PAS, booklets on those competitions that at the end of their term, if they have not reached full retirement age, the Government can choose to offer them a post in the Civil Service, the public service or an international institution. That is the policy that has been in place since 2011.

The Deputy said that concerns have been raised about the similarity of the roles and there is a similarity. Having decided to offer these two people a post, the Government took the opportunity to further one of the Civil Service renewal actions in public policy and improving public policy and particularly in terms of developing communities of practice that link in the academic sector with our work in the Civil Service and with Enterprise Ireland and other researchers. We do part of that through IGEES but we want to do more of it under the banner of Civil Service and public service reform. This was an opportunity to place them in universities and develop those networks. Within my Department they are both involved in public service reform and there are slightly different public service reform aspects to this work. One of the retired Secretaries General is involved in the organisational capability reviews and is chairing the group of Secretaries General who drive and oversee the organisational capability reviews. For example one such review has been done in the Department of Defence and one has been done in the Office of Public Works, OPW. The other retired Secretary General is more involved in a specific OECD project on strategic foresight, evidence-based policies and the structure and hierarchy of the Civil Service. Both jobs are a mixture of a role within the university, networking and an attempt to build a greater community partnership within academia and the Civil Service and public service. The elements of reform involved in each post are slightly different, as I have described.