One of the State's most powerful civil servants has said the public sector should consider recruiting managers from the private sector to ensure people with the right skills end up in top positions.
The Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy, called for a re-examination of how people were recruited into the public service.
"We . . . need to look at our system and how we get the right people with the right skills into leadership positions," he said. "Recruiting from the private sector is a clear and attractive option."
He also said the levels of change and productivity in the public sector should be benchmarked against those in the private sector, if salaries were to be benchmarked in this way. The benchmarking process justified a new approach to hiring management and rewarding staff, he said.
His comments at the weekend, at the Dublin Economics Workshop in Kenmare, come after weeks of controversy over wasteful public spending on private sector consultants. Mr McCarthy said that while the way the public sector did business had changed, this had not resulted in an equivalent improvement in "outputs" or performance.
"It's not always evident that changes in processes have produced changes in outputs. This is in part because it's very difficult to measure output, but also because we have not put enough effort into both measuring and reporting on what is to be achieved. We need to stick with the development and fine tuning of performance indicators", said Mr McCarthy, who was speaking in a private capacity.
On measuring public service performance, the chairman of the Civil Service Performance Verification Group, Mr Donal de Butleir, said complex objectives and a lack of competition were hindering change management in the public sector.
"If you have a choice, to change or go out of business then change becomes attractive. The impetus to change is absent from the public sector," he said.
Mr de Butleir said many improvements had been delivered in recent years as a result of the Sustaining Progress - agreement in areas such as paying car tax, filing taxes, receiving social welfare benefits and obtaining passports. Promotions in the public service were increasingly based on competition, while the system of dispute arbitration had been greatly improved.
But he also said the scope of Government activity should be narrowed. "Government is in the business of making briquettes, growing trees, providing health insurance, selling gas, running buses and trains; running ports and airports; providing electricity; running greyhound races, running a postal service and a broadcasting service.
"In my view, the public sector should concentrate on its key role as legislator and provider (or funder) of public goods and leave the provision of services to competitive markets as far as possible".
Further action was needed in the public sector to manage performance and reward, control pension costs and improve accounting and information systems, he said.