Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy will not be surprised that I do not agree with him that the Civil Service renewal programme was over-hyped when it was launched in 2014. It was well presented and it was an important initiative for a number of reasons. We were in the middle of a crisis at the time. As I have said publicly, the day before the troika left this country the head of its team told me that the civil servants he had dealt with during the crisis were the best he had dealt with anywhere. That is an incredible tribute to the people who worked all hours of the day and all days of the week to address an existential threat to the country at that time.

I have two questions for the Taoiseach about ongoing issues. Constant renewal is very important in public administration and one of the objectives we were anxious to achieve was the recruitment of specialists. In general in the Civil Service, generalists were given jobs in, for example, human resource management or in carrying out economic evaluations. We created the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, in the public service to ensure we would have economists doing economic work and we recruited human resource specialists to manage human resources. Is that continuing?

My second question is about senior management assessment, which is probably be the most difficult nut to crack. Has it been cracked? Is there a proper evaluation of the conduct and output of the most senior public servants and is that available for public scrutiny?

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