Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will recall that the Toland group was set up by a Government of which we were both members to deal with fundamental issues of concern in the Department of Justice and Equality. I listened with some dismay to the initial response from the Minister. The five issues the independent review group first identified were a closed, secretive, silo-driven culture; significant leadership and management problems; ineffective management processes and structures; a management advisory committee which was not sufficiently focused on key strategic priorities and their impact on the Department or its key agencies; and that relationships with key agencies tended to be informal, unstructured and without strong management. In terms of findings, they are damning.

The notion that since 2014 80% of the Toland recommendations have been implemented, given what we have gone through in the past couple of weeks, beggars belief. We have had an acting Secretary General in the Department, who is a very fine person and whom I know, for much of the period since the Toland report. As the Minister knows, the person who took on the position on a full-time basis could, one could say, be described as being less than enthusiastic about applying for the job. In real terms, what can we do to bring about the fundamental structural changes set out by Toland? If we have any notion of complacency, we will fall back into our old practices.

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