Sir, – There is a distinct lack of logic to the opinion piece by Eddie Molloy arguing that encouraging public servants to take more risks is a terrible idea (“Encouraging public servants to take more risks is a terrible idea,” Opinion, August 11st).
He criticises Jack Chambers, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, for encouraging public servants to take more risks. However, the example he gives of catastrophic risk management is from the private sector, specifically “the boardroom of one of the pillar banks in the period leading up to the banking crash of 2008”.
He then welcomes the appointment of Sean O’Driscoll as chairman of the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce (AIT) whose “leadership of the AIT is so important”, and adds that O’Driscoll has an outstanding record in the private sector.
What he fails to mention is that O’Driscoll was a nonexecutive director of one of the pillar banks, AIB, from 2007 to 2009, which required a record bailout of €20.8 billion. That’s not quite the record in risk management that we are looking for.
RM Block
What Molloy also fails to mention is that both Chambers and O’Driscoll have criticised climate and environmental legislation and both have used the phrase that it has been “weaponised” to prevent development of infrastructure. It seems that the severe risk of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are not to be considered in the rush to build data centres. – Yours etc,
BRIAN GORMLEY,
Cabra,
Dublin 7
Sir, – Eddie Molloy makes an interesting point about risk taking by public servants. At the heart of the article is an argument that the public service lacks expertise and that it ”compensates for its technical shortcomings with seemingly unlimited recourse to expensive external consultants”.
However, Molloy makes no reference to the expertise that the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) provides to the public service through a cross-government network of economists and policy analysts. The OECD published a report in 2020 on IGEES in which it concluded that, “The IGEES has made a significant difference in strengthening the analytical capacity of the Civil Service in Ireland and progress is being achieved in many areas in terms of building a robust evidence base for better policy and decision-making”. – Yours, etc.
TOM FERRIS,
Carysfort Park,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin
