Debate contribution: Northern Ireland Civil Service: Reform

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 3 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

3 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Northern Ireland Civil Service: Reform

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5363109

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The SDLP supports the motion, and I am pleased to speak on it. I speak as someone who was a civil servant for many years of my career, not in Northern Ireland but across the water. Let me say at the outset that I have talked about this and, in a sense, campaigned on it a bit since I became a politician in the North, including while serving on the Finance Committee and the previous version of the Finance Committee with you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It has become consistently apparent that one of the fundamental structural challenges to improving public services in Northern Ireland is the difficulty in reforming and improving delivery in the Civil Service. That is not arguable any more — the point is proven. That is not an attack on the Civil Service writ large or individual civil servants. Let me say very clearly that individual civil servants, for the most part, work really hard; there will be exceptions in any workforce.

Not only are they the people who answer the unreasonable and, sometimes, petty questions and queries from us, as elected representatives, but they are the people who, as civil servants, are out ensuring that the roads are safe, bridges are tested for safety, food is safe to eat, the environment is properly regulated — although we need more of that in this part of the world — cars are properly tested, and all those things. They literally make the place run. They do it for relatively modest pay and to serve the public. However, when it comes to the leadership level, it is true to say that you would be hard-pressed to find a person who is engaged in the public policy debate who would say that the leadership of the Civil Service has confronted the kind of cultural change and improvement that was expected after the renewable heat incentive (RHI) scandal and other scandals in the past decade, because it has not, I am afraid. That culture has been allowed to fester, as it were, for far too long. That is not to say that positive work is not happening. There is a people strategy, and there are outcomes. However, as the NIAO report makes clear, progress is not quick enough. I have a couple of specific points to make. In the Finance Committee, we have been looking at specific issues. Later this year, when the PAC has processed or dealt with the NIAO report and gone through its formal processes, we will look at that in a more detailed and thematic study and review in the Finance Committee. I will pick a few specific themes. We know that there is an age profile challenge in the Civil Service. That is not to say that we do not want people who are over the age of 55 or 60. In many cases, we do: we want lots of them. The problem is that they tend to retire sooner than their counterparts in their 20s, 30s and 40s, so we need to lower the age profile. We also need to radically understand what is happening with sickness absence in the Civil Service. Frankly, it is far too high. It may be that that is related to the age profile. There may be cultural questions. It may also be that there are unfair pressures on civil servants in particular Departments. It is also the case that, as Eóin Tennyson mentioned earlier, politicians have a tendency — I am someone who believes very strongly in Civil Service reform — to focus on the machinery or tools of government and, perhaps, not reflect enough on themselves. The two main parties in the Assembly both decided to collapse these institutions. They made those decisions for political reasons; one in 2017 and the other in 2022. That meant that the 23,000 civil servants who operate the region had no political leadership in many cases. The accounting officers and people who ran the Departments were unable to set recruitment plans. They were unable to have one-year budgets, let alone the multi-year budgets that the Finance Minister is bringing forward. We need better from the Civil Service, but, as political leaders, we also need to show leadership. We cannot collapse the political institutions every five minutes. We have to get real about the leadership that we offer. There is a challenge of accountability and seriousness about public service here. Let us start, as public servants and political leaders, to offer that leadership to civil servants and incentivise them to get on board with the kind of transformation, reform and improvement that we need in our public services and society. It is not enough for us to wag our fingers and say that they need to do better without, first, doing better ourselves. I say that to civil servants who worked hard and brought us through the pandemic. Multiple things need to change in the Civil Service. The Northern Ireland Civil Service leadership has profound questions to answer. I do not have long enough to go through them all, but I am sure that we will have longer to go through them all in our inquiry later this year. For now, my party supports the motion.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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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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