Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 October 2011
51 Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform when the Top Level Appointments Committee process for the appointment of Secretaries General will be disbanded; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28513/11]
View answerI have no plans to disband the top level appointments committee, TLAC. In April of this year the Government decided the membership of TLAC would be changed to include a majority of outside members. Heretofore the majority of the membership comprised serving civil servants. I was of the view this should be changed immediately and it was included in the programme for Government. The new TLAC comprises a majority of outside members, one of whom is the chairperson. The new committee is charged with identifying and selecting candidates for the most senior positions throughout the Civil Service. The interview panels also include a majority of, and are chaired by, external members.
Will the Minister indicate the identity of the new external members of TLAC and how they came to be appointed? Does the committee have the power to set the terms and conditions of candidates' appointments? We have heard recently of extraordinary exit packages awarded to senior members of the public service. There is a suggestion that a Secretary General who recently announced he will be moving on may not have had that arrangement, although I understood it was standard procedure under the TLAC process.
On the senior Government position that is exempt from the TLAC procedure — the Secretary General to the Government and the Taoiseach — and I presume the Secretary General to the Minister for Finance and perhaps the Minister's Department, the Secretary General in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, will the terms of reference not consider bringing them all under the one arrangement? Like everything, we introduce a cap but the first thing we do is clear the exceptions and the exemptions. I suggest the Minister bring those exemptions under a streamlined arrangement rather than have a different approach.
I am intrigued at the Deputy's embracing of reform after spending the past 11 years in government.
I never sat in government.
I do not disagree with what the Deputy has suggested. There is merit, and I availed of it, in being able to headhunt somebody to lead my own Department that I thought would be good at the job. I should not make personal mention of that person but the Government made a wise choice. The TLAC process will have to be looked at very carefully. I would be willing to discuss it with anybody who has ideas. By way of explanation the new chair of the TLAC is Ms Maureen Lynott. The other members include Dr. Dorothy Scally, a HR consultant, Mr. Martin Murphy, managing director of Hewlett Packard Ireland, Mr. Clive Brownlee, Praesta Ireland, and Mr. Kevin Empey, head of HR at Tower Watson. Those are the five external members. The internal members are the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Secretary General to the Government, and two ex officio members, the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills.
I thank the Minister for that information. Apropos a previous discussion, was Mr. Dermot McCarthy at any stage a member of TLAC?
The Secretary General to the Government is ex officio a member.
So he was an ex officio member of the body who made the contractual arrangement which the Minister could not challenge even with the pensions legislation.
The TLAC arrangement to which I referred was done in 1987.
I am aware of that.
It would be disingenuous to suggest——
I did not suggest.
——that Mr. Dermot McCarthy or anybody else currently had anything to do with the terms determined in 1987.
