Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Taoiseach referred to the OECD report. Is it true that senior civil servants felt inhibited in putting forward their views on areas of the Civil Service and Departments where an over-deployment of staff — possibly as many as 8,000 — occurred? Is it also true the Government nobbled or interfered with the OECD report to make it less trenchant in the context of being an honest and open evaluation?

Very detailed reports were carried in the Irish Independent around the time of the summer recess. The Taoiseach's Department is responsible for that report, so could he say what interaction there was? Was there discussion about overdeployment in some areas, particularly arising from the mess caused to Departments by decentralisation, the general uncertainty about where people were going and from where they were coming and the duplication of offices arising from decentralisation? A number of senior civil servants were very disturbed and conveyed this quietly.

Is it true that in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, there was an open discussion at a management meeting that there was excessive deployment and confusion about what people were doing in the context of all the moves in the Civil Service again arising from decentralisation?

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