Civil Service

5. Deputy Grace Boland asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation if he has assessed the gaps in specialist expertise across the civil service and wider public service, including in policy development and evaluation, economics, engineering, procurement, digital and data, and major project delivery; and the steps he will take to recruit, develop and retain those skills. [75026/26]

Over the coming decade we are going to invest billions in housing, water, transport, energy and digital transformation. That funding really matters but the capability to deliver also matters. Has the Department assessed whether we have the specialist skill sets? What gaps exist to deliver on the Government's ambition? Do we have sufficient career paths to encourage value and retain specialists in the civil and public service?

In line with the Better Public Services transformation strategy 2030, the Department recognises that access to specialist expertise is essential to a high-performing civil and public service, particularly as we respond to increasingly complex challenges in areas such as policy development and evaluation, economics, infrastructure, procurement, digital and data, and major project delivery. Our focus is on ensuring that the civil and public service has the right mix of professional, technical and specialist expertise to meet current and emerging needs, and that we can attract, develop and retain those skills in a competitive labour market. A range of work is under way across the system to strengthen capability. This includes specialist recruitment, investment in learning and development, and strengthening professional expertise in key areas. An important element of this is our work to establish the Institute of Public Administration, IPA, as the centre of excellence for learning and development in the public service. It supports a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to building capability across the system, ensuring public servants have access to high-quality development opportunities throughout their careers. Alongside this, we are continuing to strengthen capability in priority areas such as policy and evaluation, through the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service; digital and data, with the establishment of a new digital academy for the public service in the IPA; human resource management; procurement; and the delivery of major infrastructure projects. My Department will continue to work across government to identify priority capability requirements and ensure our recruitment, learning and development, and professionalisation arrangements respond to those needs.

I very much recognise the value of the IPA. My mother is a graduate of it, so I have been very aware of it since a young age. The digital academy is welcome. First, does the Minister's Department track the uptake of the courses offered by the IPA? Second, as we know, consultants are engaged right across the public service and the Civil Service. In some cases that is right, but do we assess whether we should be insourcing some of those skills that we have been outsourcing for many years now?

I will give a tangible example. There is a lot of tracking going on. There has been significant uptake of digital and AI training. We have a lot of data, which I can send to the Deputy. I am particularly monitoring the digital and AI piece, where we know the numbers going through the IPA because it is a priority to upskill and reskill within the public service. I agree that we need to better utilise our internal workforce with respect to our reliance on consultants in some areas. That is why we are using the National Development Finance Agency, for example, in terms of infrastructure development. The work the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, has done in the context of procurement expertise and specialisation has been a priority in our new procurement plan in order that we develop better procurement specialties within the public service. Deputy Boland has seen what we have done with respect to economic evaluation, with a significant staff across the system in economic evaluation, again evaluating the outputs across the system. On digital and ICT, there has been significant growth in specialist expertise and capability across the public service over recent years, again to mirror our digitalisation plans.

I very much welcome all those reforms. When I look at our generalist model, and our Civil Service has been built around such a model, I wonder whether it is still fit for purpose in particular policy areas. For example, you could be a civil servant who has developed a huge expertise in the area of transport - and we know major transport projects that we really want to deliver - yet, in terms of promotion, your only option, really, is to move outside of that Department. Are we losing too much corporate expertise? Do we have sufficient specialist models within key policy areas to retain that corporate knowledge that is very much needed to deliver projects like the metro, DART+ North and the various other DART+ projects that we need to deliver as well as BusConnects? We have the issue of the huge congestion within Dublin city, the traffic in and out of Dublin city coming from all the commuter areas, and we really need a focus on areas such as transport.

That is a fair question. I was previously a Minister of State in the Department of Transport. When you see the organisational structure of both Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the National Transport Authority, there is a significant bank of expertise and specialisation in those agencies, which were stood up at the time not only to provide that specialist expertise to advise the Government but also to provide that delivery capacity and capability in many public infrastructure projects. There are also within the Department of Transport various sectoral experts in transport. With respect to each Government Department, there is a need to assess capability, as I have said, and as the Deputy has said, and to ensure, as they see it, that their sectoral investment plan is being delivered and that they align their skills needs with that so they can manage those, whether it is on financial oversight and governance or on specialist expertise. They should be using the significant increase of whole-time equivalents in the public service to ensure that there is a specialist component to that in order that we reduce our reliance on consultants. The use of the National Development Finance Agency, in the context of infrastructure, has been a priority there as well.