# 335,000 civil and public servants



## Brendan Burgess (8 Oct 2019)

However demographic changes will place new demands on our staff. 

A longer term vision required 

Further workforce and office requirements. 

Location of  supports offices


----------



## Protocol (8 Oct 2019)

I'd say you mean 335,000 public servants?


----------



## Brendan Burgess (8 Oct 2019)

I thought that the minister said "civil" but I might have misheard. The number did seem to be high to me.

Brendan


----------



## Brendan Burgess (8 Oct 2019)

Hi Protocol 
You are correct 


CIVIL SERVICE OF THE FUTURE
Finally, I am proud to be Minister for the Civil Service and want to pay tribute to all our civil
and public servants who do great work on behalf of our country and its citizens. The number
of public servants now stands at 335,594, an increase of 42,248 since 2014. Civil service 
numbers have also increased during that period.

Demographic changes and the next wave of technological change will place new demands on
our key offices and Departments.  The Civil Service of the future will be different in terms of
its skills mix, use of technology and geographical footprint.  We are therefore developing a
longer term vision and strategy for the Civil Service.

As part of this future strategy I have asked my officials to review future workforce and office
requirements for our Civil Service and to report to me next year. This review will consider the
location of support offices and services to ensure consistency with the goals of Ireland 2040
and balanced regional development.


----------



## NoRegretsCoyote (8 Oct 2019)

Number of actual civil servants is not much over a tenth of the total public service number.


----------



## tallpaul (9 Oct 2019)

And there are roughly the same amount again in Northern Ireland which is absolutely bonkers!


----------



## mathepac (9 Oct 2019)

and *we* still have 2,250 public servants in the HSE with no jobs all drawing more than 100k per annum each.


----------



## NoRegretsCoyote (9 Oct 2019)

mathepac said:


> and *we* still have 2,250 public servants in the HSE with no jobs all drawing more than 100k per annum each.


What is the source for this?


----------



## Peanuts20 (9 Oct 2019)

to put this in context, there are 5.36m public servants in the UK so the overall % per head of population is similar.


----------



## Deiseblue (9 Oct 2019)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> What is the source for this?


Waterford whispers news would be my first guess followed closely by the Dandy or the Beano.


----------



## Delboy (9 Oct 2019)

Deiseblue said:


> Waterford whispers news would be my first guess followed closely by the Dandy or the Beano.


Your like Candyman or Beetlejuice....except instead of the trigger being your name, if a poster says a bad word about the CS/PS, you magically appear


----------



## jpd (9 Oct 2019)

mathepac said:


> and *we* still have 2,250 public servants in the HSE with no jobs all drawing more than 100k per annum each.


when making statements such as this, it would be useful to include a link to the source of the information

Otherwise, it could be construed as an uninformed rant


----------



## Sophrosyne (9 Oct 2019)

“As part of this future strategy I have asked my officials to review future workforce and office requirements for our *Civil Service* and to report to me next year. This review will consider the location of support offices and services to ensure consistency with the goals of Ireland 2040 and balanced regional development.”

This appears to refer to the civil service rather than the wider public service.

It is about savings in office accommodation.

Due to technological advances some civil servants, perhaps those with long commutes, could work from lower cost office accommodation near where they live or could perhaps work from home.


----------



## Freelance (10 Oct 2019)

Brendan Burgess said:


> an increase of 42,248 since 2014
> an increase of 42,248 since 2014
> an increase of 42,248 since 2014
> AND Civil service numbers have also increased during that period



almost beyond comprehension. Say the 2,248 is an approximation of the headcount increase in an Garda Siochana. Does anybody have any idea exactlly what productive work the other 40,000 are doing on our behalf ?


----------



## mathepac (11 Oct 2019)

None, because lead-times for services have lengthened, services levels have dropped and a heap of services once provided directly are now the responsibility of private-sector contractors. Technology mis-deployed has increased costs while failing to improve services and adding more people to support the technology. In most LAs technology deployment and IT implementation means adding Microsoft Word to a PC.


----------



## Protocol (11 Oct 2019)

Freelance said:


> almost beyond comprehension. Say the 2,248 is an approximation of the headcount increase in an Garda Siochana. Does anybody have any idea exactlly what productive work the other 40,000 are doing on our behalf ?



More teachers and SNA due to growing pupil numbers.

Many more in health, I'd say if you check you'll see at least 10,000 more since the low point.


----------



## PMU (11 Oct 2019)

Protocol said:


> I'd say you mean 335,000 public servants?


To be fair, according to the OECD's always excellent 'Government at a Glance' series, government employment as a percentage of total employment in Ireland is 15%, while the OECD average is 18.1%.  http://www.oecd.org/gov/gov-at-a-glance-2017-ireland.pdf


----------



## Early Riser (11 Oct 2019)

PMU said:


> To be fair, according to the OECD's always excellent 'Government at a Glance' series, government employment as a percentage of total employment in Ireland is 15%, while the OECD average is 18.1%.  http://www.oecd.org/gov/gov-at-a-glance-2017-ireland.pdf



Yeah, but what did the public service ever do for us?


----------



## Threadser (11 Oct 2019)

Early Riser said:


> what did the public service ever do for us?


 Stopped your house from burning down, kept you alive in intensive care, operated on your invasive cancer tumour, saved your life by resusitating you when you had a heart attack, provided care to your vunerable elderly parents,  educated your children...etc etc. Take your pick of whatever applies. Public service workers are the back bone of any society and no society would function without them.


----------



## Early Riser (11 Oct 2019)

Threadser said:


> Stopped your house from burning down, kept you alive in intensive care, operated on your invasive cancer tumour, saved your life by resusitating you when you had a heart attack, provided care to your vunerable elderly parents, educated your children...etc etc.



Yeah - but apart from that ?


----------



## PMU (11 Oct 2019)

Early Riser said:


> Yeah, but what did the public service ever do for us?


Had their numbers and pay cut as part of the National Recovery Plan for Ireland 2011 – 2014. http://www.budget.gov.ie/The National Recovery Plan 2011-2014.pdf. This was achieved ahead of target.  By any standard that was an achievement, but this being Ireland, we've let things slip.



Brendan Burgess said:


> CIVIL SERVICE OF THE FUTURE



But is the number of civil servants a cause for concern?  There are now over 330,000 public servants and the pay bill is EUR 18.7 billion. https://www.gov.ie/en/policy-inform...e-pay-policy/?referrer=/en/public-sector-pay/. That is to say, we now employ over 10,000 more public servants than we did in in the Year of the Crash, i.e. 2008 and spend EUR 5 billion more on their pay than we did in 2008.  But the number of civil servants, i.e. 39 thousand, is about the same today as it was in 2008. http://databank.per.gov.ie/Databank.aspx. (And they had their pay reduced.)  So it's the sustainability of numbers and pay in the wider public service should be a primary concern, not necessarily the “office requirements” of the civil service.


----------



## Sophrosyne (11 Oct 2019)

PMU said:


> So it's the sustainability of numbers and pay in the wider public service should be a primary concern, not necessarily the “office requirements” of the civil service.



Maybe so, but in that case a new thread should be started.

The budget statement was about the civil service.


----------

