THE RECENTLY retired Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell, has said that public servants’ pay should be linked closely to how well they do their jobs and a system should be put in place to monitor it.
Speaking on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics last night he said that people often forgot that public service pay was a huge element of Government expenditure and it was only right to insist on a good performance in return.
“Individual staff members at every level should be told precisely what is expected of them, and to be told this is the criteria by which your performance will be judged. And to have a system in place that monitors that.
“I think you need to link obtaining your annual increment much more closely to performance rather than to be a ritualistic annual exercise,” he said.
Mr Purcell also warned of an over reliance on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the changed economic climate.
“With the current downturn in the public finances, capital programmes will have to be met to a greater extent by borrowing, and obviously as a surrogate for borrowing, public private partnerships can act in that way.
“But I think it is wrong to see them as the panacea for all our ills and the absolutely number one solution to all the difficulties we might encounter,” he said.
