What Can We Do About the Civil Service?

Abstract

An aspect of recent revelations from Tribunals and other enquiries is how badly the Civil Service has come out of them. The Department of Agriculture has been shown up by evidence at the Beef Tribunal, Health by Lindsay and the Pensioners' Homes case, Finance by the Dail Committee on Public Accounts, the Revenue Commissioners by the same Committee and the McCracken, Moriarty and Flood tribunals, Public Enterprise by the revived Tuskar Rock air crash enquiry, education by the Cromien Report and the Synnott case, Justice by the Special Criminal Court affair, and so on. It is perfectly obvious from the enquiry reports that there were many civil servants who knew that what was going on was wrong, but who could not speak out about it because the penalty for doing so in terms of their jobs is simply too great. In terms of what might be done to remedy this sad state of affairs, this article focuses on only one issue, which is that of job independence.