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"Public Trust in the Civil Service - Room for Improvement" (3 March 2005) (03.03.2005)

Address by Ms Emily O'Reilly (Ombudsman and Information Commissioner) at Annual Conference of Assistant Secretaries

Introduction

Public trust in the civil service - is there room for improvement? The short answer, obviously, is "yes". And in the context of a conference entitled " Raising our Game" perhaps the only answer is "yes". As someone who was more accustomed to commenting on the political dimensions of our public service from a journalist's perspective, I very much welcome this opportunity to give you a so-called insider's view in my capacity as a recently appointed public service watchdog. I say so-called, because having spent just 21 months in office, many of my views about the civil service are still informed from the perspective of an outsider.

In addition to my roles as Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, most of you will know that I am also a member of the Standards in Public Office Commission, the Public Appointments Commission, and, when established, the Referendum Commission and the Constituency Commission. But my remarks today are informed, principally, by my Ombudsman, Information Commissioner and Standards Commissioner roles.

Public Trust - What is it?

Like most people in Ireland, I believe we have been very well served by our civil service. In particular, its impartiality and integrity have served the country well and I am aware from travelling and meeting colleagues abroad, of the high level of international respect that there is for Irish civil service, But, no more than any other section of our society, it cannot afford to stand still.

Going back to my career as a political journalist, which began in 1989, what struck me most about the civil service at that time was the sheer invisibility of its most senior figures. It rarely occurred to me to go beyond the Departmental press office in search of a story, imagining that should I stumble upon the wrong extension, the civil servant at the end would be far too terrified even to acknowledge their very existence. In those days, it took some cajoling even to persuade the Departmental press officers that it was, curiously enough, part of their job to actually talk to the press.

The one exception to this - and I know that this may sound entirely predictable - was the Department of Foreign Affairs. I always found its senior officials to be accessible and confident in their dealings with the media. In later years I realised that the position of press officer in that Department was the bureaucratic equivalent of purgatory, a place to be suffered before ascending into the heavens of some rather nice Ambassadorial postings. I further realised that in DFA, if you could charm the hacks - and believe me they did - then you could charm for Ireland, .

At this point in my address, I was about to bemoan the lack of visibility of senior civil servants within other Departments, of how it is invariably the Minister or Junior Minister who is on the airwaves explaining this or that policy, or more likely, explaining away this or that crisis when, as you in this audience are more than aware, the people who often know most about both policy and crisis are the line manager civil servants. I say I was about to, because the rug was somewhat pulled out from under me last Tuesday evening when I switched to George Hook's programme in the car and heard the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health explaining policy in relation to the anticipated influenza pandemic!

Nonetheless, after a decade plus of legislative and other initiatives, designed to promote both greater transparency and greater accountability within the civil service, I do believe that we should be able to see and hear more from the people who advise Ministers, who manage Departments and Offices, some of which are bigger and more complex than anything in the Irish private sector and which deliver social and economic benefits through a myriad of schemes and programmes.

What do I mean when I talk about greater visibility, about hearing more from senior civil servants. Well, the civil service is not called the permanent government for nothing. Ministers come and go, The vision thing can be a short term vision thing, complicated by political expediency, internal party politicking and other issues. Senior civil servants are in for the long haul, they don't have to play the short game, they can note and analyse societal problems in the round and assess those problems into the future, long after any particular Minister has gone. The public would, I believe, therefore benefit from that long term, macro vision, be it in relation to waste management, energy policy, immigration, the Boston Berlin debate, the who should pay for what debate in relation to education and other costs. Senior civil servants are, almost by definition, among the brightest, best educated and best informed people in the State; all of that should not be lost simply in fulfilling the shorter term needs of their political masters.

I realise that at the heart of this is a complex issue, that often mysterious - at least to outsiders - interface between Minister and senior civil servant. There are legal and political imperatives to be taken into account, but there is also that rather fundamental fact that senior civil servants like yourselves wield enormous power, have enormous influence within their Departments and the perhaps mutually advantageous fiction that Ministers do everything and civil servants do - well the public frequently aren't too sure about quite what civil servants do - is one that in this 21st century should be deconstructed.

After all, the job description of a Secretary General, the position immediately ahead of your own, as set down in the Public Service Management Act of 1997, is almost breathtaking in its scope. Subject to the determination of policy matters by the Minister in charge, the Secretary General has the authority, responsibility and accountability for, inter alia, managing the Department, implementing Government policies, delivering outputs, preparing statement of strategy, ensuring financial accountability, and a myriad other tasks, which, were a lay person to read them all, he or she might wonder why the Minister bothers to turn up at all!

The principal task of the civil service is to advise and support the Government of the day in delivering its programme - something which, as I have said, it scores well on in Ireland. But although it is not something we hear said very often, the civil service has an important role to play in serving civil society. At present, it carries out this role very much, as I have said, in a behind-the-scenes capacity and it is difficult to gauge its effectiveness and, consequently, the levels of public trust it engenders in this regard. Within the legal constraints that exist would it not be refreshing to hear civil society interests defended and promoted by civil servants? And not, I hasten to add, in a manner which would contradict the political debate surrounding the implementation of a Government's Programme but rather in a manner which would set out the public interest rather than that of any particular group in society.

This issue was also touched on by the Information Commissioner for Canada in his Annual Report for 1998-1999. He was commenting on the fact that while the Canadian Freedom of Information Act of 1983 had been successful in forcing public servants to disclose more information, it had not changed the closed culture. He remarked that Canadian public servants continued to stress their "servant" role (being unseen, unheard, obedient, unaccountable) rather than their "public" role (being accountable, professional, obedient to the law and to the public interest). The notion of ministerial accountability, he said, is, too often, taken to mean that the public should not know what public servants do or advise their ministers to do. And he wondered whether public servants were really concerned about preserving a relationship of candour with ministers or whether they were concerned that the quality and nature of their advice would come under critical scrutiny.

I make these points because although the Ministers of the Government are the public faces of their respective departments, the public are acutely aware that Ministers, in running their Departments, are assisted by team of advisers and senior civil servants yet at the same time, as I said earlier, the public's grasp of their exact role, level of influence, and more importantly, levels of competence is a lot more fragile. As things stand, it is almost impossible for members of the public to form a considered view of the levels of trust they have in the SENIOR civil service. On what do they base their opinions after all when most one on one contact is at a more junior level.

A recent survey by MORI Ireland "Trust in Public Institutions - a preliminary report" (September 2004) - about which I will say more later - found that senior public sector managers are twice as trustworthy as national politicians. However the level of trust in politicians was only 15% and 33% for senior public sector managers. Clearly neither group can have any grounds of complacency.

Measuring Trust

So what is trust and how do we measure it? Many Governments throughout the world are engaged in public service modernisation programmes. At the risk of oversimplification, there are two main aims underpinning these programmes. The first is to make public services more responsive to the needs of the people; the second is to improve international competitiveness.

The link between the second objective and public service modernisation is fairly obvious - the public service should facilitate economic growth and it should be easy for the competitive sector to do business with it.

The purpose of the first objective is, perhaps, somewhat more esoteric but, nevertheless, equally compelling. In a modern democratic state, people expect to be treated fairly and equitably in relation to their dealings with the public service. If they are not so treated, their trust and confidence in the system of government, or more specifically, the government of the day, can be easily undermined. Governments across the world have not been slow to recognise the political imperative which underpins this public demand and the advantages to be gained from modernisation programmes.

And, indeed, these sentiments are echoed in the MORI Ireland survey to which I have already referred:

"The issue of trust goes to the heart of contemporary public service modernisation strategies throughout Europe and beyond. These strategies are largely informed by the belief that increasing the quality of public services will lead to increasing trust in public administration".

And thus in every aspect, the fostering of trust is truly a whole-of-government issue. It is not just about treating clients courteously in front offices, it is also about formulating high quality policy advice, adopting a professional approach to long-term planning and above all, ensuring that Ministers act with propriety and take their decisions on the basis of what best serves the public interest. It is in the latter area that those of you at Assistant Secretary level have the key role to play and, indeed, this area will be the main focus of my presentation.

But before I delve more deeply into this area, let us remember that trust means different things to different people. The public at large have views on the matter, clients of public bodies will have perceptions which may largely be informed by their interactions with front-line staff, politicians at both national and local levels will have opinions, and Government Ministers also. And finally, watchdogs such as my Office and that of the Comptroller and Auditor General are uniquely placed to assess and speak about trust levels.

We do not have the time this morning to analyse the perceptions of trust among each of these groups of stakeholders. For the sake of simplicity I am going to limit myself to "front office" and "back office" perceptions. First, I will talk about public perception of front-office levels of trust and second, I will draw on my Office's experience to talk about my perceptions of back-office levels of trust - the area which, as I have said, I feel is of most interest to you.

Public Perceptions of the Public Sector

Here again I want to draw on the MORI Ireland survey. The survey examined three areas of local public services: An Garda Síochána, the health services and county councils.

The conclusion of the report was that overall ratings of these organisations were positive and levels of trust in these organisations were comparable. Nevertheless, the public were critical of these organisations on several counts; most notably openness and honesty in handling mistakes, the quality of management and the level of information provided. The report also concluded that increasing the quality of service leads to increasing levels of trust.

The survey found that there were six core factors that influenced trust across the organisations.

These are

• keeping promises
• learning from mistakes
• what friends and family say about the service
• staff treating people well
• being interested in people's views
• quality of public leaders and managers

We can immediately see that initiatives such as quality customer service action plans, customer charters, the Ombudsman's Guide to Standards of Best Practice for Public Service and the Civil Service Code of Standards and Behaviour all address these six core factors. The question is whether these initiatives will be effective in the longer term but I do know that MORI Ireland intends to carry out further surveys and this will present the opportunity to benchmark progress in relation to these indicators.

In relation to perceptions of public leaders and managers only 32% of senior public service managers were rated as competent (as against a figure of 28% for national politicians). In terms of trustworthiness the comparable figures, to which I referred earlier, were 33% and 15%, respectively.

I suppose there might be some comfort in the fact that these figures refer to senior officials in the Gardaí, the health services and the local authorities rather than to senior civil servants. I have not seen comparable data for the senior civil service although a survey commissioned by the Department of the Taoiseach and published in January 2003 entitled "Business and Public Attitudes towards the Irish Civil Service" contained results which were

"......encouraging for the Irish civil service, revealing high levels of overall satisfaction as well as largely positive perceptions of the civil service as an organisation."

Customer satisfaction levels were high with 79% being either satisfied or fairly satisfied. The helpfulness of staff on the telephone and the speed and efficiency with which face-to-face enquiries were handled are areas for improvement which will have the most impact on satisfaction levels. The civil service is recognised as trustworthy by 53% of respondents. Among the business community, the issue that attracted the lowest level of agreement is whether the civil service has good procedures for making complaints about service levels.

As will be seen, both of these surveys deal principally with front line staff. I now deal with my second point: the role of senior civil servants in developing trust.

Senior Civil Servants and Trust

I am not aware of any published survey relating to the levels of trust in the senior civil service. But I would like to share with you my own impressions and to this extent this part of my presentation is very much a personal view of how I perceive trust in the higher levels of the civil service.

I would like to begin by posing a few questions.

• Why are there so many cost overruns on major public sector projects - infrastructure, for example?

• Why is the health service in the state it is in?

• Why did my predecessor, Kevin Murphy, characterise the planning system a few years ago as being "in a state of collapse"

• Why did the debacle on the charging of pensioners with medical cards in nursing homes happen?

• Why did the first Disability Bill collapse and why is there so much apparent distrust surrounding the amended Bill?

And two that are close to my own heart

• Why was the Freedom of Information Act restricted in scope and why were fees introduced?

• And despite the Quigley Report and the recent statement from the Standards Commission, why is there still residual public unease about the Martin Cullen/Monica Leech public relations contract?

In posing these questions I am not seeking to apportion blame and I do recognise the different but complementary roles played by the political system, the administration the Oireachtas and the courts in relation to the present outcomes on these issues. But can anyone honestly say that the public interest is best served by the present state of affairs on each of these issues? And is there anything that the senior civil service might have done differently to improve on these outcomes? And have the various pieces of legislation to improve accountability which have been introduced over the past twenty years had any real effect on these outcomes? And, in particular, has the Public Service Management Act, 1997 made any difference at all?

Before dealing with these questions, I want to say a few words about accountability because it seems to me that this is the key to improving trust, not only in the senior civil service but in all aspects of our system of government. I also wish to acknowledge, that despite the litany of problems cited above, clearly excellent decisions have been made by both politicians and civil servants particularly over the last two decades which have transformed much of Irish life for the better, creating an economy that is the envy even of some of our richer neighbours. Nonetheless the public still remains not just concerned, but also puzzled by the system's continuing inability to get to grips with major issues which have a huge impact on our quality of life, notably health, transport planning and related infrastructural issues. The old excuse that the country couldn't afford such and such a scheme or policy no longer washes.

Accountability of Civil Servants

The role of the civil service is not per se set out in legislation. The 1956 Civil Service Regulation Act defines a civil servant as a person holding a position in the civil service while the term civil service simply means the civil service of the government or the civil service of the State, the latter covering staff in offices such as mine or the staff of the Courts or of the Houses of the Oireachtas which are independent of Government. Yet, as I said earlier, there is general public acceptance that the role of the civil service should involve ensuring that Ministers act with propriety and take their decisions on the basis of what best serves the public interest.

To a large extent this derives from the role of statutory Accounting Officer to which the civil service head of a Department or Office is appointed by the Minister for Finance under legislation which dates back to 1866. An Accounting Officer has responsibility for the expenditure of the Department or Office and for ensuring, not only that spending is within the limits and for the purposes approved by the Dáil when it votes the money, but is efficiently and effectively managed. Spending is, of course, scrutinised by the Comptroller and Auditor General who reports to the Public Accounts Committee of the Dáil and Accounting Officers are examined by that Committee on an annual basis. However, in their dealings with the Committee, Accounting Officers may "not question, or express an opinion on the merits of any policy of the Government or a Minister of the Government, or on the merits of the objectives of such a policy".

The Committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Compellability, Privileges, and Immunities of Witnesses) Act, 1997 is not concerned with accountability per se, but with access by duly authorised Oireachtas Committees to official records. Like the Comptroller and Auditor General Act, the Compellability Act prevents witnesses from questioning or commenting on Government policy or from furnishing to the Committee records in which a civil servant, member of the Permanent Defence Forces or an Garda Síochána questions or comments on Government policy.

Of course, very many decisions made by Ministers and, indeed, by civil servants may not raise questions of an accounting nature. However, if they appear to be contrary to fair or sound administration, for example, if they are improperly discriminatory or taken without proper authority, they may be subject to scrutiny by the Ombudsman on behalf of the many complainants who approach my office every year. While my Office is largely complaint driven and I do not, and could not, monitor the enormous number of decisions made by Government Departments everyday, I can investigate on my own initiative. I can use this power to examine unfair or unsound decisions of which I become aware and to issue special reports. I think that, as a result, there is an increasing awareness in public bodies of the need to ensure that their decisions conform to the principles of good administration which my Office has elaborated on over recent years.

Equally, when people have access to information about the activities of government, particularly about activities affecting themselves, it supports and strengthens the accountability process. It also strengthens the democratic process. Better informed people can more clearly articulate their concerns and views about important issues and more effectively challenge decisions which affect them. The Freedom of Information Act (about which I will say more later) has the potential greatly to improve the decision making process in public bodies not just in relation to decisions affecting individuals or classes of individuals but in relation to policy decisions as well.

The initial Ethics legislation in 1995 sought to bring greater transparency into public life by requiring the disclosure of the interests of politicians and senior public servants with a view to avoiding potential conflicts of interests. This was extended in 2001 to enable standards of desirable conduct by those in public life to be specified in Codes of Conduct published under the legislation and to require production of evidence of tax compliance by parliamentarians and senior public servants. The Electoral Acts of 1997 to 2004 are designed to bring transparency to the relationship between, on the one hand, political parties and individual politicians and, on the other, their supporters, whether individual or corporate, where that support takes the form of donations of money, property, goods or services. The Acts also will help to obviate the need for further Tribunals such as Moriarity and Flood (now Mahon) to inquire into future matters along the lines of those that are currently before these Tribunals. Also included in that legislation are provisions which limit spending at elections, cap the values of donations which may be accepted and ban foreign donations. Direct State financing of political parties, now standing at nearly �11 m per annum, is, unlike in the past, strictly regulated.

Despite some greater clarity as a result of the Public Service Management Act, 1997 the interaction between Ministers and senior civil servants still remains a largely grey and undefined area. The Irish model continues to be based on the principle enshrined in the Constitution that Ministers are collectively accountable for the performance of the functions assigned to their Departments and that, as provided for in the Public Service Management Act 1997, Secretaries General are accountable to their Ministers.

Section 4 of the Act, specifies in some detail the duties of Secretaries General and other Heads of Offices. However, section 3 makes it clear that Ministers remain responsible for the performance of all the functions assigned to their Departments. Presumably, this is a constitutional imperative. Subject to that and also subject to the determination of matters of policy by Ministers, Secretaries General are statutorily assigned a range of duties spanning the provision of advice, the general management of the Department including financial and personnel management, the formal delegation of responsibilities to other designated officers and the preparation and submission to Ministers of strategy statements for approval and laying before the House of the Oireachtas, as well as progress reports on their implementation. And just as an aside, and wearing my Ombudsman hat, I do feel the Act could have been strengthened if the duties of Secretaries General had been extended to include responsibility for good and sound administration in their Departments.

The Act further provides that Ministers may give directions to Secretaries General in relation to all of their duties with the exception of one, relating to the appointment, performance, discipline or dismissal of staff below a certain grade level.

Section 6 of the Act emphasises that Secretaries General are accountable to their Ministers for the performance of their duties although, of course, as Accounting Officers, they continue to be answerable as well to the Public Accounts Committee for financial management which would include in the case of the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners, the raising of revenue. They may, however, be required to appear before an Oireachtas Committee in relation to any strategy statement which has been laid before the Houses. While potentially, this might have developed in a way which would have involved de facto accountability to the Oireachtas on their part even though their statutory accountability is to the Minister, I am not aware of any significant trends in this direction.

It is interesting in that regard that section 5(3) of the Act specifically excludes from the scope of the FOI Act, for a period of five years, draft strategy statements or versions not approved by the Minister or amended by the Minister as well as records relating to any direction issued by the Minister to the Secretary General in relation to strategy statements.

Civil servants see their role as being to serve the Government and the Minister of the day on an anonymous and confidential basis and to avoid exposing them to criticism even when they are under pressure from the Public Accounts Committee. In return the Government and Ministers accept the "traditional values" of the public service i.e. propriety, political neutrality, impartiality and concern for the longer term. Such a relationship requires mutual trust and mutual loyalty for success but also a degree of distance and independence between the parties. To operate successfully there needs to be adherence by both sides to unspecified but mutually understood "rules of the game."

The relationship seems to me to be under pressure for a number of reasons. First of all, it is subject to increased scrutiny from a variety of sources - tribunals, Oireachtas Committees, the media and members of the public through use of the Freedom of Information Act and, indeed, the Ombudsman Act. There are also increasing demands, despite the constitutional and legal position, to make civil servants publicly accountable for their decisions.

Some of you will remember that my Office dealt with an appeal under FOI for the release of the performance assessments of Assistant Secretaries in a number of Departments. The requester argued cogently that this personal information should be released in the public interest to facilitate the general public in holding senior civil servants accountable. In affirming the decision to refuse access, my Office drew a distinction between the desirability on the one hand, of there being greater scrutiny of public decision making and, on the other, access to records which are created as part of the formal accountability process. In other words, my Office recognised the constitutional and legal position that it is Ministers and not civil servants who have public accountability.

It seems to me, however, that pressure for change will not go away and that there is something to be said for greater clarity in and greater formalisation of the so called "rules of the game". Codes of conduct are now in place for Ministers, other office holders and for civil servants and these have been useful in bringing some degree of clarity to the respective roles of Ministers and civil servants. For example, office holders (which includes Ministers and Ministers of State) should

"respect at all times the role of the Accounting Officers of their Departments and the obligations of staff under the Civil Service Code of Conduct"

And civil servants in the performance of their duties,

"(a)must conscientiously serve the duly elected Government of the day, the other institutions of the State and the public,

(b)must advise and implement policy impartially and, in particular, be conscious of the need to maintain the independence necessary to give any future Minister or Government confidence in their integrity and

(c)should not display partiality whether as a result of personal or family ties or otherwise".

While these provisions are useful, to my mind, of crucial importance is the need for all to recognise that the public interest should override the interest of any individual group.

Where are we now?

So, has anything really changed? I accept that civil servants and public servants now frequently appear before Oireachtas committees and are to be seen on RTE's Oireachtas Report at around the midnight hour. A programme which, in the words of Pat Rabbitte, is a guaranteed cure for insomnia! But it is still rare to see or hear a civil servant outside of that forum.

There has been some political debate about the difference between social and economic rights and civil and political rights. Some people believe that price should be used as a mechanism to ration public services, including health services. My predecessor expressed the view that rationing, say in relation to health services, should be on the basis of medical need rather than price - price in his view being more appropriate to the private sector.

The price mechanism has informed the Government's approach to the nursing homes crisis and to the Disability Bill. Fair enough, I acknowledge the Government's prerogative to formulate policy along these lines. But the Supreme Court did not agree with the Government's approach to correcting past actions in relation to the nursing homes issue and the Disability Bill is fraught with difficulties. No doubt, these developments are damaging to overall trust levels. But why did they happen and how do we guard against a recurrence?

And in relation to the nursing homes crisis, why did this happen in the first place? My predecessor's report of his investigation of Nursing Homes Subventions dealt with this matter in some detail. And as we await the publication of Mr Travers' report on the background to these issues, I do not intend to go into detail here today. But the crucial questions are:

• what motivated the Department's officials' approach to the issues?
• what was the role of their political masters in the matter?
• was there collective action between both the political and administrative systems and
• is there a documented administrative audit trail?

I realise that there are many rumours circulating about the Travers report, and I read in newspapers that civil servants are concerned that fingers will be pointed too starkly in their direction, that the politicians may slide out from under the cosh. I also read that there is a belief in some quarters that the Tanaiste's accusation of "systemic maladministration" was intended to point the fingers at civil servants although, clearly, maladministration can encompass political or civil service failure or both.

I have no idea what is going to be in the report, but I could envisage this becoming a seminal document, a document which could forensically detail and analyse much of what I have been talking about today, that grey area where elected politicians and public officials interact and which remains to this day one of the darkest secrets of Irish public administration. And we have been over this course before. First with the Beef Tribunal, which, in itself, created an impetus for an FOI Act. Then came the Moriarty and Flood (now Mahon) Tribunals and the Dáil Public Accounts Committee Enquiry into the evasion of payment of DIRT.

The hope was that the FOI Act, which came into effect in 1998 and in response to past failures to shed light on the workings of Government, would, at last, shed greater light on this grey area. And so it did for five years until in 2003 the Government's proposals to restrict the scope of the Act in relation to access to Government Memoranda and the deliberative process and other aspects of Government work were passed by the Oireachtas. In addition, fees for requests and appeals to my Office were introduced which are unparalleled in any other country that has an Information Commissioner. Whose interests does this serve? It seems to suggest that the people are seen as adversaries and nothing more than lip-service is being paid to the principles of open, fair and accountable government.

This is not to suggest that some of the concerns expressed by the administration about the FOI Act may not have been valid. But, as I have said before, could we please have an adult, grown up debate, about these matters so that rational, consensus-led decisions can be made on an issue which is supposed to be at the heart of the public service's modernisation programme.

In relation to Martin Cullen's recent difficulties, what lessons are there for you in the Quigley Report and in the decision of the Standards in Public Office Commission not to investigate that matter and which in the wake of that decision was described in a recent Irish Times editorial as "something of a tortoise." As a member of that Commission, I am precluded from revealing anything about our deliberations, but anyone who has read the Quigley report will see that the Minister did not make the decisions he did in a vacuum, he sought advice and support from his civil servants at every step of the way, and there is no evidence to suggest that anyone demurred from what he proposed.

Do we have a Government or a civil service which is sufficiently sensitive to the concepts of human rights and their relevance to their day to day work - particularly in relation to protecting the vulnerable and the marginalised in our society? For example, in the Sinnott case, the High Court Judgment of Mr Justice Barr (October 2000), was critical of the officials in the Department of Finance for being insufficiently informed about the constitutional obligations of the State to the weak and deprived in society. And as we move towards greater harmonisation of social security and healthcare at EU level is there sufficient awareness of our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights Act, 2003?

Let me return to the hard question I asked earlier - has the Public Service Management Act worked? Has it delivered on its main purpose of increasing accountability. Secretaries General and their officials are more accountable "on paper" but is there real evidence of what this means in practice. There are still lots of poor outcomes - as evidenced by the questions I posed earlier and I am not suggesting that these outcomes are the sole responsibility of any one part of our public administration system but my main focus today is on your responsibilities. Ministers too, and members of the Oireachtas also have responsibilities. There is lots of "muddling through" which, in fairness, and surprisingly, has often delivered good outcomes. But should we continue to take pride in this part of the Irish psyche or should we focus on more systematic ways of achieving results?

We still do not have accurate assessments of the effectiveness or value for money of the services we deliver and I'm talking about micro level here, ongoing measurement of value for money within department sections. Devolution of budgets is minimal and we have yet to link departmental performance to budget allocations. This, to my mind, has been the missing link in the PSMA to date. It has strong accountability structures but we do not yet have the wherewithal to measure them effectively. Devolved budgetary processes are essential to delivering real accountability. I know we are promised that the Management Information Framework will deliver stronger accountability and to my mind it will be crucial in giving real teeth to the PSMA.

Conclusion

In conclusion I want to make three brief points:

• The Assistant Secretary Group is potentially the most influential agent of charge in the civil service - far more so that Secretaries General. But I wonder if, for whatever reason, senior civil servants have become more diffident in recent years in their advice to Ministers. Is there a greater tendency to take an each-way bet on the basis that if a difficulty arises, it will be the Minister's head that will roll? But as events have shown in the past, when this does not happen, there is a risk of serious damage to civil service public trust. I urge you therefore, not to lose sight of the public interest when advising your Ministers while acknowledging the real life practicalities, burdens and sensitivities of serving a political master.

• Some Government Ministers may favour a compliant civil service that implements their programmes efficiently but without demur and it may be tempting at times to "go with the flow". And unlike you, politicians have close links to their constituents and a constant source of feedback on the quality of service delivery. You must ensure that you are not perceived as irrelevant in the area of policy advice and out of touch in the area of service delivery. Only you know how best to address these issues. One commentator recently described that tension that exists between Minister and civil servant claming that Ministers believe that his or her genius and creativity are constantly being thwarted by life-sapping bureaucrats, while civil servants believe that their role is to safeguard to public from the ego and spendthrift tendencies of their Ministers.

• Finally, I have tried to be forthright and honest in my comments today. I have done so in order to assist the debate and I hope my contribution will be seen in that light. But on a truly positive note, this is the first time I have met the Assistant Secretary group and I want to thank you and your Departments and Offices for the whole-hearted co-operation I receive from you in my capacity as Ombudsman and Information Commissioner. I inherited an Office which has developed a professional, co-operative, fair and objective relationship with Departments and Offices and I look forward to continuing that positive relationship during my term of office.

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