THE former minister for justice, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, said demonising that Department's public servants was unfair.

Before she became minister she was told the Department had "a culture of secrecy" and a staff of "old and grey men" who would be resistant to change. In fact, she found the staff open to change, willing to work all hours and long hours to implement Government decisions. Like other civil servants, however, they were not "mind readers" - they needed clear instructions.

The Minister must be seen to be on top of the job. She found it astonishing that Mrs Owen left for a trip to Eastern Europe immediately after the Government cancelled plans for the building of Castlerea prison.

"The Minister should have cancelled her trip and prepared battle lines for the next Cabinet meeting."

It was astonishing also that she did not have regular discussion with the Attorney General and, when the problem arose about Judge Lynch, the only communication was by letter. "I find it unbelievable that, during that time, this experienced lawyer (Mr Dermot Gleeson) did not mention the situation. Why did he not mention it to the Taoiseach? It beggars belief that all the Attorney did was write two letters."

The Department was staffed by excellent people and she did not believe it had undergone such a "sea change" in the past two years.

Mr Brian Cowen (FF, Laois Offaly) said it was a myth to suggest that the Minister had never seen the Judge Lynch correspondence. That was clearly brought out in the report of the inquiry.

Mr David Andrews (FF, Dun Laoghaire) said the Minister should have demanded more funds from her cabinet colleagues for the running of her Department. She failed to appreciate the crisis that was ahead.

Mr Breadan McGahon (FG, Louth) said the crisis had "opened a Pandora's box and shone a light on the inefficiencies within the Department of Justice".

The whole Civil Service needed to be overhauled and young recruits should be sent into the private sector for at least two years to show them how to deal with business problems. The inquiry report had shown the service to be inept in many ways.

The career break system should be abolished. People leaving sheltered employment for up to three years must have a question mark over their commitment to the job. He questioned their effectiveness when they returned to the jobs that were kept omen for them.

The Minister of State to the Government, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said that, generally speaking, the Irish Civil Service served the State conscientiously and well, but there was no escaping the picture painted by this report.

"Even allowing for the undisputed huge increase in the work load of the Department of Justice - arising from Northern Ireland matters and the EU presidency, the picture the Cromien/Molloy report paints in regard to this matter is one of mismanagement, failure of authority, evasion of responsibility, paper shuffling and buck passing.

"The major systems failures identified by the report are almost certainly not confined to the Department of Justice but, because of the particularly important and sensitive work undertaken by that Department in regard to crime and security matters, the consequences of a systems failure could be particularly serious."

The package of measures announced by the Government would provide for action that would ensure, so far as it was possible, that such a systems failure did not recur.

He found Mrs Geoghegan Quinn's "romanticising of the Civil Service" disingenuous and opportunistic. The people in the service were "like a cross section of Irish people in any other walk of life - good, middling and indifferent".

The issue was not the calibre of the people but the need for public service reform, to which every Government had paid lip service but no Government had acted on since the Devlin report was published in 1969. The report of this inquiry would make a major contribution if it succeeded in raising public service reform back on to the political agenda.

The Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, said the picture presented in the report was of a "ramshackle Department, with no evidence of the Minister at any stage taking any action to improve efficiency and accountability".

He continued: "We have 31,000 civil servants in this State. The number has risen by over 1,000 since this Government took office in December 1994.

"I believe there is an ample number of public servants, if they are properly deployed, managed and instructed, to carry out and implement Government policies and instructions. But for the system to work, it requires clear direction from the top, from the political head of the Department as well as from senior civil servants."

What the report showed, above all, was the complete failure of the Minister to manage her Department competently. "It is no surprise that this debacle has happened under this accident prone Minister."

There were many key questions relating to ministerial responsibility that the inquiry did not answer, Mr Ahern added. There was no evidence that the Minister was personally involved in any follow up after the Government meeting of August last.

"It is not clear that she briefed any official on return from Government, or gave any instructions for follow through of the decision taken. Doing that is part of the basic job of a minister. She must have believed that would happen automatically, a very unwise assumption, particularly given the time of year and holidays coming up, as any experienced Minister would know."

On the role of the Attorney General, the Fianna Fail leader said it was not clear whether he realised that the continued sitting of Judge Lynch ran the danger of invalidating the detention of 16 or 7 subversive prisoners, when he wrote to the Minister on October 21st.

"If the AG did not realise the full implications at the time of writing the letter, then it was a serious lapse on his part. If he did realise the implications, then he should have done more than write a letter. He should have spoken to the Minister either in person or by telephone by way of follow up.

Mr Ahern warned the Taoiseach and his colleagues that if they were still tempted to come looking for heads, they could not skirt around those of the Minister for Justice and the Attorney General.