I was 21 when I joined the Civil Service. I mean, of course, when I started working in the Civil Service. Ten years ago, I formally ended my relationship with it.

Many thousands of others have done the same, in increasing numbers in recent years, and from all levels of the service. Sometimes in the world of economics, finance and business, it seems that just about everyone was, at some stage, in the Department of Finance, or Industry and Commerce (and its many successors) or the Central Bank.

I do believe that an efficient clerical assistant in a busy Civil Service section will manage any administrative challenge business can pose. An assistant principal with flair and initiative will readily adapt to business management, once an adjustment to the commercial motive is made.

The traffic is all in one direction. One might be forgiven in Civil Service circles these days for comparing it to rush hour traffic out of the public sector. While the reason for the one-way flow of personnel appears obvious - money - this is not the whole story.

The public service has just about the most inflexible and awkward entry points, with the result that even if anyone wanted to reverse commute, they couldn't. It is like a divided motorway, with no U-turns allowed, and no on-ramps except at the start.

Former colleagues from the golden days of the bankrupt 1980s in the Department of Foreign Affairs (when we calculated that the next promotion would be in 35 years) have often asked me, do I miss it, or what do I miss about it? This is all very well in a reminiscing type of way, but useless, since there is no way back in, even if I and all the others who left begged to be readmitted, and were needed.

We would have to go back to our exam entry point again, executive officer, administrative officer or whatever, and start on the bottom rung. This is as I understand it now; I have not actually enquired lately.

Evidence that little progress has been made in opening up flexible entry points - a management technique that is taken for granted in the private sector - comes from the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF).

This week, some attention has been paid to a hitherto rather quiet "Public Service Bench marking Body" under the PPF as providing some sort of possible let-off valve for the teachers' pay dispute. It's all there in the PPF document itself, but the mandate of the body is not only about pay differentials between public and private sector.

It pointedly refers to "existing roles, duties, responsibilities . . . not just the pay rates applicable in the private sector to jobs with similar titles to, and superficially similar roles as, the public sector". The benchmarking body comes in the context of public sector management reform that has scored only a "could do better" by the National Economic and Social Council.

As regards open recruitment, which should liberate the management of people within the Civil Service, the PPF says more open recruitment is a clear necessity.

In its careful language, keeping everyone on board, it says: "The parties to this programme accept that there are situations where recourse to open recruitment at various levels to, and within, the public service is necessary." Then there is the usual tipping of the cap to current practice so as not to frighten the horses: "While open recruitment at the existing levels `meaning entry grades only' will continue to be the norm, the parties accept that, in order to acquire skills and expertise which are in short supply within the sector, the need to resort to external recruitment at levels other than the norm can arise and the Public Service must be able to respond to such needs in an efficient and timely way."

Efficient and timely, I would agree with that. Behind the careful language, however, the potential exists for a necessary revolution in the way the Civil Service recruits and deploys all types of expertise. So far, it is only potential, but promising. The public service would surely benefit from a more flexible arrangement in terms of people coming and going. I do not believe there are insurmountable obstacles on permanency, pensions, official secrets and business conflicts.

The more that independent regulators and quasi-independent offices are set up, the easier these issues will be in practice. A big obstacle might seem to be pay rates at management level, but with increasing use of contracts and departments more responsible for their own budgets, the case for public service-wide limits with no regard to special circumstances grows weaker.

The citizenry needs a top-class public service if the ambitions one can entertain for this country are to be realised. That means openness, flexibility and change. The question is: is the service up for it?

Oliver O'Connor is contributing editor at Finance and Finance Dublin. E-mail: ooconnor@indigo.ie.