PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has said the Government should rigorously address any form of persistent underperformance by staff in the public service.
She said everybody knew that, whether in private business or the public service, it only took one careless or nasty person or someone “in a strop” to get the whole service a bad name.
Speaking at a conference organised by the Institute of Public Administration yesterday, she said that in the current climate any tolerance of underperformance was very damaging to the public service in reputational terms.
She also said it was corrosive of staff morale among those who were doing the job well.
Mrs McAleese said one area that merited real priority was the system of performance management and development in the public service.
“It really ought to be possible to devise and implement a robust structure or a framework at least that recognises good performance and at the same time tackles under-performance where it arises.”
She said schemes such as the Taoiseach’s excellence awards did not get a lot of public coverage in the media but they were an important way of recognising projects of exceptional merit or innovation in the public service.
“We all know from our own experience as service users – and it does not matter whether it is the public or private service, whether it is a restaurant, a hotel or one of the public services – it only takes one careless person, one nasty person, one person who is in a strop to give the entire team a bad name.
“It is very important, therefore, where there is persistent under-performance – where someone thinks they can be in a permanent strop – that that is just unacceptable and has to be rigorously addressed. It is those interfaces, those personal interfaces, that really are about the business of building up trust and confidence.”
She said at a time when the public was rightly demanding greater accountability for its tax euros “any tolerance of under-performance is really very damaging to the public service in reputational terms”.
Also speaking at the conference, the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Kieran Mulvey, said if the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform did not work out, no other agreement of its type would be negotiated.
Mr Mulvey, who was one of the main brokers of the agreement, said: “If the Croke Park agreement does not succeed, the citizens of this country, the taxpayers, those who are dependent on the services, and the political establishment will never champion, support or agree to a similar type of agreement ever in the future.
“If we do not have the capacity to deliver that change, and see that change delivered, then I would not, for one, be returning to the well trying to convince people as I did last January to take the leap forward. This must transform, it must change, it must deliver, and it is for two to tango in this particular area.”
Mr Mulvey said there was a major obligation on public service management to lead change. Change was not going to come from the ground.
“You have already seen over the last couple of months the resistance in HSE West and other areas where you almost had to implement elements of this agreement – be it the budgetary problem or change – hospital by hospital, respite centre by respite centre, primary care centre by primary care centre. That is not what the Croke Park agreement is about. It is about making major strategic steps forward and public service delivery.
“Unless public service management is able to bring out what these reforms will achieve in terms of future public service delivery, at what price, at what staffing level, and at what cost, we are not going to see the vision that is enshrined in this agreement throughout all of the public services.”
The secretary general of the Department of Finance, Kevin Cardiff, said staff in Government departments and agencies should start at once on implementing reforms and cost-saving measures.
“If you are waiting for some bloke in the Department of Finance to tell you how to address value for money, cost reductions, service improvements, real reforms to protect services in that environment, then you are wasting time. Start now.”