The Government is to be congratulated for the despatch and determination with which it has pursued the objective of civil service reform. Publication of the Public Service Management Bill yesterday brings the process a crucial stage further, following the publication last May of the document, Delivering Better Government A Programme of Change for the Irish Civil Service, on the philosophy of which the Bill is based. Separating out ministerial from departmental executive responsibilities and the introduction of strategic multi-annual planning, along with the other changes proposed, are an indispensable - if belated - recognition that the public service must be prepared for a much more active and focussed role in Ireland's development.
These new arrangements will make it easier to achieve this objective, but other changes will be needed if it is to be fully accomplished. The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, has identified several of them, including the Freedom of Information Act and the need to devolve decision-making within the civil service so that it results in better and more courteous service for the citizen as the ultimate consumer. In addition it must be asked whether the changes now under discussion will be sufficient to counter continuing pressures on Ministers to deliver on the clientelist expectations built into the Irish political system by our inherited political culture and the single transferable vote method of proportional representation.
But this is a good start, all the more effective because it is generally supported across the political parties and by the public service trade unions. Separating ministerial responsibility for political direction and public accountability from executive responsibilities for implementing policy and managing departmental - human resources, makes sense in principle. It may be more difficult in practice, given the propensity of Ministers to assume responsibility for favourable developments and to distance themselves from adverse ones. That said, it is undoubtedly an improvement to associate multi-annual budgeting with policy planning and to give the new departmental Secretaries General responsibility for placing particular services on particular shoulders, as Mr Bruton put it yesterday. Along with this, goes a new and welcome structure of performance-related pay and disciplinary procedures, including the right to dismiss.
A more adaptable and flexible civil service is likely to be a more productive one, more capable of directing and implementing public policy in an environment which will put a much greater premium on quick responses to a rapidly changing world. Preparing the public service for it is an important task, to be tackled at a number of different levels. The main focus of this Bill is on the role of ministerial and senior executive responsibilities. It will take some time for these changes to work themselves through, even if they are rapidly implemented The new Secretaries General would need to be given real powers to change the inherited organisational culture, if the transformation of the civil service is to result in a qualitatively new relationship with citizens who have to deal with it in every day life. But this Bill is a good and a necessary start.