A new government will take office within weeks as our State’s spending continues to outstretch levels that are safe. In parallel, its administrative systems cannot deliver what the money is intended for. Political decision making is increasingly disconnected from effective implementation. There is more than healthy tension between the elected Government and its Civil Service and agencies. The latter look askance at the improvidence of politics and are the object of increasingly abusive scorn in Oireachtas committees. The legacy of the economic crash is risk-averse administration that puts process before delivery.
Political complaints about officials slowing up delivery are legion. They are also self-serving. Responsibility for public administration is political. The Government that bemoans the inefficiency of processes oversees them but will not take responsibility for changing them. Further, as it is entitled, it rejected official advice on public spending, and then broke fiscal rules it set for itself. The “system” as it self-describes is not a blob. It is many organisations, led by a great variety of people. As best I can see, they are overwhelmingly honourable. But it is not well organised. The silos are real, and vision seldom stretches past the front door of the specific institution.
At its administrative heart is what is referred to as “DPER”, the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. Little moves without its sanction. It receives more than its share of political opprobrium and a great deal of sniping from inside the system. Its junior officers are relatively more powerful than more senior people elsewhere because they are the pen holders in the processes of sanction that keeps the system moving across the board. The begrudgery of others is a badge of pride. When your job is protecting the public purse, you are not paid to be popular.
If DPER was a praetorian guard protecting the public purse from excess, ensuring timely delivery of infrastructure, and a cutting edge for reform in the public sector all would be well. In fact, its hands are tied behind its back by a Government that overspends outrageously. Successive ministers have been disinterested or ineffective in dealing with the minutiae of the administrative processes that collectively constitute effective delivery. Public sector reform, a priority coming out of the crash, was sidelined a decade ago in an ineffective report that was only partially implemented.
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The State survived the economic crash which sent the political establishment into meltdown. But when the troika left, so did the impetus for reform. The lesson for politicians – of whom Jean-Claude Juncker said, “we all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it” – was to start spending again. A great deal of spending is provident. What matters is the refusal to prioritise. No hard choices on spending have been made since about 2017. As a result, there is a sense that we are awash with money, with the want of it, and with the waste of it.
[ Fiscal council says government spending has ‘lost its anchor’Opens in new window ]
The Government re-arrives in office after an accretion of power to the economic departments of Finance and DPER compared to the Department of the Taoiseach. That is partly a lingering consequence of the economic crash and the subsequent unwillingness of taoisigh Varadkar, Martin, and Harris to give impetus to any economic policy except more spending.
This leaves a dysfunction where, having failed to restrain government spending, DPER is responsible for largesse it believes is excessive. Its residual power is administrative and is effectively used to grit the system. By default, process has become a last line in what is the ineffective control of spending. Where there is neither control of spending nor effective delivery, it is the worst of all worlds.
Cabinet subcommittees, intended to ensure co-ordination and delivery, conspicuously underperform. They don’t do enough of either to be effective. In the administrative sense, the centre has not held. Complicating this is the rotation of taoisigh which makes it easier to wait them out. Then there is the 13-year-old split between the Department of Finance and DPER. That split worked well at first, ensuring a forensic focus on an enormous agenda in a crash. It also facilitated political partnership between Fine Gael and Labour. It still greases the wheels politically which is why it will probably remain. But the divorce between managing the economy and managing public spending is now harming the country.
It is having a negative effect culturally too. The Department of Finance is almost entirely externally focused, with little to do with the rest of the domestic public service. DPER is internally focused on the administrative system for which it acts as comptroller but does not have a bigger picture economically. Narrowing the range of activity limits the capacity of both, creating two oddities in what is still a relatively small system.
The Government needs a unified economic and spending department. It needs in the Department of the Taoiseach a central system of effective cabinet subcommittees supported by an implementation unit that polices the open space between decision making and implementation. In the crises of the economic crash and Covid-19 our public service was strong. In between crises it sags.
Administrative inadequacy and political delinquency feed off one another. The ultimate responsibility is political. In fact, a taoiseach and key ministers who engender the enthusiasm of a handful of important civil servants can set the pace. I suggest giving it a try.