Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 12 October 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform
Mr. David Moloney:
We talk these days about increased transparency. Obviously media is more fluid than it was and there is greater attention paid to various public conversations. Freedom of information has supported a huge increase in the amount of information that is available to a broader variety of people and that has given rise to discussions that are possible now that would not have been possible 20 years ago. Those discussions have, increasingly, involved what advice that civil servants have or have not offered. So that has become part of the general discussion and, in many ways, that is a sign of increased openness and transparency. It is probably a risk that needs to be managed about confusing the roles of civil servants, who are there to implement policy, and Governments, which are there to make it. In the main, we are aware of and seek to manage that risk.
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