Debate contribution: Northern Ireland Civil Service: Reform

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 3 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Eóin Tennyson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

3 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Northern Ireland Civil Service: Reform

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5363103

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like others, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion about the recently published Audit Office report on the Civil Service and how it is led, structured and resourced. The Alliance Party will support the motion, because we recognise the need for Civil Service reform. At the outset, I commend the commitment and dedication of civil servants at all levels of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. They serve our society and public services daily, often behind the scenes and without thanks. Doing so is a particularly large challenge in Northern Ireland in the context of the shocks that we have endured from Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and, indeed, these institutions being in abeyance a number of times. Their work and their role therefore cannot be overstated. It is also true, however, that, since the previous report, 'Capacity and Capability in the Northern Ireland Civil Service', was published in 2020, only five of its 23 recommendations have been fully achieved, with 13 partially achieved and five remaining unachieved.

It is clear that this report must not gather dust in the same way. We need to go much further in implementing the recommendations that it sets out. The report is damning about the lack of progress in strategic workforce planning and about improvements to operational resourcing and vacancy management. It notes that there is:

"an inability to deliver the scale and pace of workforce reform required across the NICS."

Members have known for some time of the need for reform, and I agree with other Members who have said that it is an issue of collective leadership across parties and Departments. I recognise some of the big structural issues facing the Civil Service, the most obvious of which is its ageing workforce. That is contributing, through sickness and other things, to the high number of vacancies, which, in turn, contributes to more stress among remaining civil servants. Not only do we have a significant vacancy problem in the service, but it takes an average of seven months for recruitment in the service to complete from initiation stage to appointment. That is a stark statistic and much slower than in the private sector. The long-standing gaps caused by vacancies are further exacerbated by slow recruitment and put pressure on existing civil servants elsewhere in the system. There are also very obvious skills gaps in the service. While programmes such as the graduate management scheme have been welcome in helping with succession planning, we need to go much further. The report notes a particular challenge in the Civil Service's recruitment to generalist roles when there is an increasing need for specialist skills. I do not doubt the challenge in competing with private-sector employers for specialist skills in accountancy, economics or other professionalisms, but we need to look very closely at how we can compete more strongly for those professionals in order to protect the sustainability of the service. It is not possible to entirely divorce this debate about reform of the Civil Service from the need for broader political reform. One of our challenges is a silo mentality in Departments, which we have all acknowledged at various points in the Chamber. We have seen that even in the lack of collegiality in the Executive around the Budget and management of the Budget in-year. Those are political failures that cannot be laid just at the door of civil servants. If we are to reform significantly how the Civil Service is structured, I believe strongly that that has to be accompanied and supported by significant political reform. While I am supportive of reform of the Civil Service in principle, I am of the view that that reform must be used to strengthen the service to improve public services and be done with the resources that we have available to us. It is often easy for parties and politicians in the Chamber — I am not innocent in this regard — to point to the machinery and the civil servants behind the political operation for the pace of change and things that have gone wrong. Part of the leadership issue is about us taking much greater political accountability for failings. I caution that no reform of the Civil Service should be an attempt to shirk our responsibility in the Chamber for decision-making. I absolutely support the motion. I want to see us work collegiately together to bring about that reform in the interests of our public services and people in Northern Ireland.

746 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:30 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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