Watchdog for civil service top guns asleep since 2016
Group quietly disbanded after just four meetings and one report
ONE of the architects of a powerful watchdog set up to impose greater accountability on senior civil servants that was quietly disbanded has called for the body to be restored.
Former Labour leader and Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin played a key role in the establishment of the Civil Service Accountability Board (CSAB) in 2015.
The CSAB was set up in response to public anger over the role of top civil servants in the 2008 bailout and huge pay-outs to departing mandarins such as former financial regulator Patrick Neary in the aftermath of the economic crash.
Mr Howlin told the MoS: ‘Part of the reform agenda of that government was that accountability would occur from the top, that it wouldn’t always be a systems failure when something went wrong, that there would be a report card for secretary generals.’
Chaired by then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the watchdog was supposed to spearhead a new culture of accountability for top civil servants. Instead, the CSAB simply disappeared after just four meetings and one report over two years.
One of the key figures on the high-powered team was Robert Watt, the country’s top-paid civil servant who has been the subject of prolonged controversy over a massive €81,000 pay hike following his move from the Department of Public Enterprise to head up the Department of Health.
News of the CSAB’s quiet disappearance follows a series of highprofile controversies involving some of the country’s most senior civil servants. Aside from the fallout over Mr Watt’s pay hike and his recent heated pub encounter with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, the former secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs and now Ambassador to France, Niall Burgess, came under fire over his central role in the ‘champagnegate’ controversy after he tweeted a picture of staff socialising while the country was under strict lockdown rules.
Mr Howlin warned good governance ‘must include mechanisms for accountability from the top to the bottom’ of the civil service.
Commenting on the fate of the CSAB, he told the MoS: ‘If that [watchdog] is not happening, which I suspect it is not, then it needs to be restored. If we don’t implement reforms necessitated by a crisis we are going to make the same mistakes again.’
At its first meeting in July 2015, the uniquely high-powered membership of the CSAB included then taoiseach, Enda Kenny (Chair), tánaiste Joan Burton, finance minister Michael Noonan, Mr Howlin and the country’s two most powerful civil servants, Mr Watt and Martin Fraser, secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach. The chair of the Revenue Commissioners, Niall Cody, was also a member of the board.
At its first meeting, Mr Watt and Mr Fraser, said the unit would prioritise ‘reforms to improve governance, performance management, leadership capacity and accountability for delivery (and) a new performance management system for secretaries general’.
Intriguingly, although the existence of the CSAB is referred to in government documentation from 2019, after four meetings across 2015 and 2016 and the production of a short 12-page report in 2016, the watchdog ceased to operate.
Its 2016 report said the CSAB prioritised the creation of a ‘performance management system for secretaries general’. And five years ahead of the cyberattack that crippled the health services, the report also referenced the importance of a ‘National Cyber Security Strategy which focuses on the security of the country’s computer networks’.
However, despite its references to the importance of a ‘performance management system’ for top civil servants, the body never met again.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin came under fire in the Dáil recently when he admitted he did not know if the CSAB had been shut down, or if it even still exists.
When asked about its status by Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald, Mr Martin confirmed the watchdog ‘has not met since 2016’, but did not initially confirm if it had been stood down.
But when pressed about the body’s non-existence, the Taoiseach replied: ‘It does not exist and has not met since 2016, so the de facto answer is “Yes”.’
Mr Martin also gave a vague response when asked if the CSAB’s disbandment had been announced, saying: ‘No, I do not think it was. It just happened around 2016. I will have to check that out again and come back to the deputy on it.’
The strange fate of the CSAB has now caught the attention of the chairman of the powerful Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
‘It needs to be restored to avoid same mistakes’
‘We need an explanation into why it disappeared’
Committee, John McGuinness, who also called on Mr Martin to ‘revive’ the dormant watchdog.
The Fianna Fáil TD told the MoS: ‘We need an explanation as to how and why such an important body was “disappeared”, without comment or notice, whether it still exists and a plan of action if so to reconstitute it.
‘Obviously, the personnel will have to change since its last meeting since Mr Kenny is no longer the Taoiseach and Mr Howlin is no longer minister for public expenditure, while it would be more appropriate for Mr Watt to be the subject of, rather than lead, inquiries into the public sector.
‘There is a pressing urgency to revisit the issue of accountability at the top and it would be a matter of grave concern were temerity allowed to delay this.’
Mr McGuinness said it is ‘a matter of some interest as to how this board disappeared’.
And he added: ‘Serious questions have to be answered over how a board responsible for imposing accountability on top mandarins just vanished like Topsy.
‘We are reaping the consequences of the disappearance of this toplevel group.’
One Government source commented: ‘This was as high-level as the Economic Management Council and then it just disappeared.’