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Is accountability alien to our public sector?

PhilOssophy

Firstly, it is important to say that I do not mean this as an attack on the public sector, the majority of which do a fine job in in some cases very tough environments.

But hearing Simon Harris say today that the PWC report into the childrens hospital should find nobody personally accountable for the failures on the project to date.

This follows hot on the heels of a scandal which cost people their lives in the cervical cancer scandal - public servants knew that women were terminally ill and didn't compel doctors to tell these women. 1 person retired, and swanned off with a big pension.

This follows many previous scandals involving Gardai, Tusla, and many more state agencies who have been embroiled in various scandals over the years.

This all got me thinking, what does somebody in the public sector have to do to be held accountable for incompetence, mis-management, etc.

Are the lines of accountability simply too blurred for any 1 individual to be held accountable?
I have a friend who is a QS who said if they under-estimated something of the scale of the childrens hospital, they would be clearing their desk the minute the error was noticed. Why isn't this happening?

I appreciate mistakes happen. We all make them. But this isn't a simple error on a calculator. This is a reckless careless indifferent attitude to how tax payers money is spent. It is such a poor lack of oversight that surely at some point in this country somebody has to shout enough is enough.

If we are ever to stop messes like this happening over and over again, at some point, surely people need to start paying for their mistakes with their job.

If nobody is held accountable for these sort of mistakes, then surely all that is going to happen next time is another 450k (is the cost of that even certain) into the pockets of PWC and another report to just gather dust beside the other reports gathering dust?

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Doc07

At OP

‘This follows hot on the heels of a scandal which cost people their lives in the cervical cancer scandal - public servants knew that women were terminally ill and didn't compel doctors to tell these women. ’

That’s not what happened. Maybe you mistyped but if what you typed is what you meant it’s a very innacurate accusation.

dxhound2005

suicide_circus wrote: »

that's not how generalisations work

In general it is human nature to assume that other people are less honest. Researchers asked a question something like this:

If you saw someone dropping a €50 note in the street without realising it, would you give it back to them or pocket it? Nearly 100% said they would give it back.

The next question was:

What percentage of other people do you think would give it back? The answer was around 50%.

So I think you are suffering from that syndrome. It always annoys me when people say "At least there are a few honest people left" when they get something back which was lost. Why would they assume that other people would not be equally honest to themselves?

[Deleted User]

suicide_circus wrote: »

I know it's not nice to hear but I stand by my assessment. we lack honour and discipline.

Speak for yourself. But regardless, public sector procurement is controlled by the most rigorous set of laws and regulations that build discipline and fairness into the process.

Quandary

I worked in the private sector for 12 years. Quit to become a primary school teacher in 2009. Here are just some of the things ive witnessed over the years since joining the civil service.

- school secretaries brothers company has the contract to source, install and maintain projectors, interactive whiteboards, despite being wildly more expensive than alternative options. He has held this contract for over 10 years.

- a school I worked in back in 2012 had to order 15 laptops to replace existing obsolete machines. I was responsible for ensuring the specs were adequate and was informed I had to use a particular company to source the laptops. The school board decided that this particular company were our only IT supplier and all purchases whenever possible had to go through them. We were quoted over 13k for the 15 laptops, hardware and OS only. For the craic I specced out slightly better machines on the Dell website, faster cpu, slightly more ram, and the 15 laptops came in at 10k. I called Dell sales and got the price down to circa 9k. I showed the quote to the principal but he said the school board agreed to only use company X.

- the electrical contractors in my previous school have held the contract for god knows how long, again the wife of the owner of said company is very closely related to the principal. They seemed to be in and out of the school constantly for the slightest problems.

This is just my limited first hand experience of what I would consider some very dubious and suspicipus contract tendering.

The lack of accountability is also quite astounding. A principal is literally unable to hold a teacher to account for not doing their job properly. There are teachers in my school who don't bother keeping notes, despite it being a requirement. We have a teacher in our school who, despite being asked multiple times, refuses to place her classroom bin outside the door for the cleaners to collect it because she believes "it is not my job to be carting around rubbish bins". the principal has no power whatsoever to compel the staff to do anything because there are no consequences for laziness or incompetence.

[Deleted User]

Quandary wrote: »

I worked in the private sector for 12 years. Quit to become a primary school teacher in 2009. Here are just some of the things ive witnessed over the years since joining the civil service.

You're not a civil servant. You're a public servant.

But regardless, what have you done to address these problems? Have you reported them to the Board of Management? Or to the Patron? Or to the Department? Or to the Gardai, if you're alleging fraud?

If you have specific information, and you're not doing anything about it, you're part of the problem.

I've seen many people trip over the 'well I got a price from Dell' idea over the years. If the other tender includes associated services like installation or on site support, then you're comparing apples and oranges.

EdgeCase

Watch an episode of Yes Minister!

The public / civil service do things and the minister is expected to take the fall for them no matter how unaware he/she is of the complex layers of mess they were created by someone else.

It's a great system where an elected public representative with limited real power and very limited access to full knowledge has to take political responsibility for decisions they likely didn't make.

The health portfolio here has destroyed minister after minister from several parties.

They go in all enthusiastic and the ones who try to reform anything usually end up aging 30 years in the space of 5 and have their careers wrecked.

The clever ones focus on a side issue like smoking bans etc and get the hell out of the department and onto another portfolio as quickly as possible.

Until we tackle health without just using one person, who clearly doesn't have sufficient control, as whipping boy, it's going to repeat the same failure over and over and over.

Health here is in crisis and it needs a powerful cross party committee to deal with it as a national crisis and one with teeth equivalent to the PAC.

I don't think a single minister can actually tackle it and it's going to end up that nobody wants the portfolio.

I mean why would anyone do it? You can't reform the system as you've insufficient power and it will just keep using you as the political fall guy.

conorhal

Remember that time the Dept. of Finance made a 3.6 BILLION euro accounting error .....and then promoted the head of the Dept. to a cushy EU job in the COURT OF AUDITORS which assesses the sound management of the public funds of EU citizens.?
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-what-really-happened-to-that-missing-e3-6b/
https://www.thejournal.ie/eu-official-hits-out-at-kevin-cardiff-over-e3-6bn-accounting-blunder-273360-Nov2011/
Talk about failing upwards in the most ironic of manners!

Yeah, accountability, don't be expecting it to arrive in Irish politics any time soon....

Quandary

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You're not a civil servant. You're a public servant.

But regardless, what have you done to address these problems? Have you reported them to the Board of Management? Or to the Patron? Or to the Department? Or to the Gardai, if you're alleging fraud?

If you have specific information, and you're not doing anything about it, you're part of the problem.

I've seen many people trip over the 'well I got a price from Dell' idea over the years. If the other tender includes associated services like installation or on site support, then you're comparing apples and oranges.

Teachers are considered to be civil servants.

How do you think it would affect my teaching career if I actually went on a crusade to shine a light on these problems? I would have to be a complete idiot to do it. Independent audits into these areas need to be conducted by professionals.

Installation and configuration of the aforementioned laptops was done by me also.

You may not like what I posted but I can most certainly assure you that it is 100% true. Of course, I'm just an anonymous coward behind a keyboard so no need to take what I say as fact.

trashcan

Quandary wrote: »

Teachers are considered to be civil servants.
.

Eh, no they're not. Civil Servants are those who work directly in Govt Departments, Public Servants are everyone else, i.e Gardai, teachers, Nurses, Local Govt employees etc. There are way more public servants than civil servants.

[Deleted User]

Quandary wrote: »

Teachers are considered to be civil servants.

How do you think it would affect my teaching career if I actually went on a crusade to shine a light on these problems? I would have to be a complete idiot to do it. Independent audits into these areas need to be conducted by professionals.

Installation and configuration of the aforementioned laptops was done by me also.

You may not like what I posted but I can most certainly assure you that it is 100% true. Of course, I'm just an anonymous coward behind a keyboard so no need to take what I say as fact.

Considered by who? They're not civil servants. They're public servants.

And both civil and public servants have extensive protections under Protected Disclosure legislation. And if you don't fancy that, it is still remarkably easy to get information anonymously to a journalist or Garda. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Quandary

trashcan wrote: »

Eh, no they're not. Civil Servants are those who work directly in Govt Departments, Public Servants are everyone else, i.e Gardai, teachers, Nurses, Local Govt employees etc. There are way more public servants than civil servants.

Fair enough, public. My mistake.

EdgeCase

Civil servants would be defined as being directly responsible to a minister.

There's local government and there are many other public bodies and state agencies where you're a public servant but your boss is the head of the agency.

Teachers are unusual in so far as they're paid by a government department, but their employer is defined as the school which is a throwback to the idea of schools being private bodies, despite being almost entirely state funded. It's a mess of accountability, given that a trade dispute between teachers and employers over pay would be against the Dept of education, not some order of nuns who would claim to be their employer.

Wheety

The worst thing is, when something wrong is found to have happened, they hold a tribunal. They get the report from the tribunal and say "Right, we know what happened now" and just file the report away. With no proper outcome or punishment.

Just have a criminal trial instead.

EdgeCase

Wheety wrote: »

The worst thing is, when something wrong is found to have happened, they hold a tribunal. They get the report from the tribunal and say "Right, we know what happened now" and just file the report away. With no proper outcome or punishment.

Just have a criminal trial instead.

We the people for some reason voted down the idea of giving the Dail the power to hold investigations and come to conclusions that would have led to criminal trials.

We could do with a permanent court of administration like in the French system.

As it stands the constitution doesn't allow a Dáil instigated tribunal to do anything other than find fact and to do so in the most expensive way possible and also probably prejudice future criminal trials by so doing due to the way our court system seems to think that nobody can get a fair trial if there's been any pretrial publicity.

The whole tribunal system seems pointless in terms of holding anyone to account other than by public exposure of the facts.

It has been somewhat useful in exposing systemic failures. Court cases would only go after an individual but it's insanely expensive and slow.

A court of auditors on a permanent basis like the EU system would make a lot more sense.

suicide_circus

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

public sector procurement is controlled by the most rigorous set of laws and regulations that build discipline and fairness into the process.

bollox

dxhound2005

EdgeCase wrote: »

Health here is in crisis and it needs a powerful cross party committee to deal with it as a national crisis and one with teeth equivalent to the PAC.

I don't think a single minister can actually tackle it and it's going to end up that nobody wants the portfolio.

As a service user I have some experience. And I know about the experience of some family members and friends. It is mostly very ordinary, with no hint of crisis.

What have other people here found? How many here were left stranded on a trolley for days in some hellhole? That is what people who pay attention to the media would expect.

trellheim

In many of the government departments i have worked with both Capex and opex budgets are rigorously set and monitored. The thought of breaking either as routine would terrify the Sec Gens and Asst Secs as its verging close to stuff that gets you sent to the Joy as the C&AG process is not funny

Sure - if there was something like Shannon flooding -i.e. an emergency , or a hard Brexit and you needed a supplementary budget you go to the Minister and get the Dail to vote the extra taxes or whatever . But thats emergencies *NOT* routine.

The HSE ( and the Dept of Health beforehand) routinely blow Cap and Op and its awful

So Tom Costello is gone. The board charged with directing this project seem to from the private and public sector.

http://www.newchildrenshospital.ie/the-project/national-paediatric-hospital-development-board/

spurious

Wondering why absolutely everything has to be receipted for any claim to the SEC, if the public service has such a culture of unaccountability.
Perhaps I have been doing it wrong.

Flyingsnowball

Are there people on this website who work in shifts defending government employees?

I know for definite that somebody is paying over a thousand quid for a special needs buggy you can buy for 300-400 euro off a separate supplier.

The supplier will actually tell you on the phone that they supply the hse and to try another supplier which is a lot cheaper.

BrianBoru00

beauf wrote: »

Because there is a tendering process and if Tesco doesn't apply you can't use them. If in 4 yes another supplier wants to know why they didn't get the contract then you'll be able to show them that process.

Why the tenders are much more expensive than just going into a shop you'd have to ask the private companies submitting the tenders.

What about the fact that very often one of the requirements is a minimum turnover from the company over the past x years which makes it extremely difficult for small companies to tender and increase competition.
Now they'll tell you its to ensure "expertise" but again as we've seen from the childrens hospital the "expertise" is in taking advantage of the inept civil service and a minister for health who has practically zero real world experience in terms of employment or life experience

dxhound2005

Flyingsnowball wrote: »

Are there people on this website who work in shifts defending government employees?

I know for definite that somebody is paying over a thousand quid for a special needs buggy you can buy for 300-400 euro off a separate supplier.

The supplier will actually tell you on the phone that they supply the hse and to try another supplier which is a lot cheaper.

That's a rip off. You can get them for €80.

[Deleted User]

Flyingsnowball wrote: »

I know for definite that somebody is paying over a thousand quid for a special needs buggy you can buy for 300-400 euro off a separate supplier.

The supplier will actually tell you on the phone that they supply the hse and to try another supplier which is a lot cheaper.

It's mad though how the other supplier didn't tender for a price at about €900, cheaper than the current supplier? He be shipping piles of them at €500 more than his current price.

Perhaps it's because he can't meet the HSE requirements for shipping to regional centres? Or perhaps he doesn't have enough public liability insurance to sell to the HSE, hence the lower price. Or perhaps the HSE tender was for a bundle of products, so while there may be ups and downs on individual items, that supplier still provides the best value on an overall contract?

And please don't forget to answer my questions about your other claims. It would be great to get more details on those.

[Deleted User]

dxhound2005 wrote: »

That's a rip off. You can get them for €80.

Really? You know what particular model he is referring to, and what needs it supports?

[Deleted User]

jd wrote: »

So Tom Costello is gone. The board charged with directing this project seem to from the private and public sector.

http://www.newchildrenshospital.ie/the-project/national-paediatric-hospital-development-board/

Would you blame him? Why would you bother your arse doing everything by the book, with the Department informed every step of the way, only to be hung out to dry?

[Deleted User]

suicide_circus wrote: »

bollox

Feel free to give any specific details to support your view.

The Tetrarch

Any resignations or firings?

Flyingsnowball

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

It's mad though how the other supplier didn't tender for a price at about €900, cheaper than the current supplier? He be shipping piles of them at €500 more than his current price.

Perhaps it's because he can't meet the HSE requirements for shipping to regional centres? Or perhaps he doesn't have enough public liability insurance to sell to the HSE, hence the lower price. Or perhaps the HSE tender was for a bundle of products, so while there may be ups and downs on individual items, that supplier still provides the best value on an overall contract?

And please don't forget to answer my questions about your other claims. It would be great to get more details on those.

I’d say he went in at around the average bid then upped his price after being rewarded the contract.

dxhound2005

Flyingsnowball wrote: »

I’d say he went in at around the average bid then upped his price after being rewarded the contract.

It's pretty obvious what happened there. All the suppliers got together and agreed to let him be the only applicant at around the €900 mark. He then shared the profits with the rest of them.

bleary

EdgeCase wrote: »

Watch an episode of Yes Minister!

The public / civil service do things and the minister is expected to take the fall for them no matter how unaware he/she is of the complex layers of mess they were created by someone else.

In my experience its more like the thick of it with politicians whose skillset is getting elected dropping random personal and local agendas onto their departments.