Glanbia - Milking the Government's Indulgence

* A story that kind of slipped under the radar in terms of public awareness.

by Seán McCárthaigh

Glanbia facilitated breaches of rules governing the allocation of milk quotas by one of the group’s own directors, according to a Department of Agriculture report.

It concluded that Glanbia – one of the country’s largest public limited companies – had taken verbal instructions a non-executive director, Bill Carroll, “to facilitate an incorrect reallocation of milk supplies between two suppliers.”

Mr Carroll, a dairy farmer from outside Clonmel, Co Tipperary, resigned as a director of Glanbia in November in the wake of the controversy.

Letter written on behalf of Simon Coveney to Glanbia on June 4, 2014

An investigation by the Department of Agriculture examined allegations that he had sold almost €300,000 of milk to Glanbia from his Co Tipperary farm using the quota attached to Clongowes Wood College, a well-known private boarding school run by the Jesuits in Co Kildare.

Milk quota rules stipulate that farmers are prohibited from supplying milk that has not been produced by their own cows on their holdings. Anyone who infringes such regulations is liable for substantial fines if they supply more than their quota.

Documents obtained by the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act show the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney was highly critical of Glanbia’s role in the controversy.

A report by his officials into milk quota irregularities found Glanbia’s recording system was not operated in accordance with milk quota regulations.

It found the group’s systems were “amenable to alteration on the basis of a verbal instruction, either from a party outside or within the company, and the necessary robust checks and balances were not in place.”

A letter written to Glanbia’s chief executive, Jim Bergin, on behalf of Mr Coveney in June 2014 stated: “It is clear the control systems employed within your company were not, in this instance, of regulatory standard and were contrary to the departmental rules in relation to the administration of milk quotas and that [Glanbia] as a result facilitated a series of non-compliant transactions.”

The department ordered Glanbia to take immediate action to reallocate the milk incorrectly allocated to Clongowes Wood College to Mr Carroll’s account and to collect the appropriate superlevy from him – an amount of €143,000.

It required the company to address control weaknesses in its quota management system and to inform the department exactly what measures it had taken.

The department also instructed Glanbia to arrange and fund independent verification that its control weaknesses had been identified.

Mr Bergin was informed that the matter had also been referred to the Chief State Solicitor to see if a criminal prosecution was warranted.

He replied: “We trust that further action will not be necessary.”

The department was forced to contact Glanbia again last October after it emerged that Mr Carroll had benefitted from the distribution of unused milk quota – known as flexi-milk – to the value of €30,000.

Follow-up letter to Glanbia on Oct 22, 2015

The department’s assistant general secretary, Brendan Gleeson, ordered Glanbia to withdraw any flexi-milk allocation to Mr Carroll and to arrange to collect any outstanding superlevy from him. The letter again expressed Mr Coveney’s “deep concern” about “the manner in which this matter has been dealt with by Glanbia.”

The department instructed Glanbia to redistribute the superlevy collected from Mr Carroll to the 290 famers who had been disadvantaged by about €112 each as a result of the allocation to the form

In a reply on November 6 last year Mr Begin said Glanbia had “at all times taken this matter very seriously and co-operated fully with the department’s investigation.”

The Glanbia chief executive acknowledged that an internal review carried out by the group on foot of the allegations against Mr Carroll had highlighted there was “insufficient documentation in place to support the manual amendments processed by Glanbia milk department.”

However, Mr Bergin also stressed that it was “an isolated incident involving a range of exceptional circumstances.”

During a Dáil debate in November, Mr Coveney said he had accepted the recommendation of his officials that a criminal prosecution of the matter should not be pursued.

The minister declined to reveal the legal advice he had received from the Chief State solicitor but said his officials had regard to the fact that corrective action was taken, there was no financial gain for any of the parties  and a superlevy had been paid.

Sinn Féin TD, Martin Ferris observed the case “stinks to high heaven.”  “This was blatant attempted fraud at the very least,” said the Kerry North TD.

He claimed he had received information that the Chief State Solicitor had recommended the issue be referred to gardaí.

M Coveney said he had been advised by the department’s secretary general, Aidan O’Driscoll, that the facts of the case were “not so clear as to provide a sufficient degree of probability that a prosecution would succeed.”

The Department refused to release documents containing a record of an interview carried out under caution with Mr Carroll.

Catching the Burglars....Or Not.

Seven out of ten of the most serious crimes against property are going unsolved, with non-detection rates in some Garda districts in excess of 80%.

An investigation by The Times has found that only four out of the country’s 96 Garda districts solved more than half of all robberies, burglaries and thefts in their area in 2015.

The figures, published for the first time today, show detection rates at Garda district level for the three main offences involving property — robbery, burglary and theft.

Overall, gardai are successful in solving only 30 per cent of these cases on average, based on official crime figures between January 2013 and the end of September 2015.

The main criteria for classifying an offence as “detected” is when criminal proceedings have been commenced against at least one suspected offender.

The figures reveal a big disparity in the performance of gardaí stationed in 96 districts across the country in catching offenders for such crimes.

In 2015, gardaí based at the five stations within the Leixlip district of Co Kildare had the worst detection rate for robbery, burglary and theft, with less than 14% of all cases solved. The district covers several large towns including Maynooth and Celbridge.

The two other districts in Co Kildare — Naas and Kildare Town — also have comparatively low detection rates, both at about 20%..

Independent TD for Kildare North, Catherine Murphy, , said that the figures were a cause for concern because burglary and theft were among the few crimes that were on the increase in recent years.

Ms Murphy said she believed that there was a clear link between detection rates and Garda manpower levels because Kildare had the lowest number of gardaí of any county in Ireland on a per capita basis.

“The annual policing plan published by An Garda Síochána is a work of fiction, as it does not take into account demographic changes by putting more gardaí into areas where there have been large increases in population, like Kildare,” she said.

Most of the districts with the lowest detection rates are located in Dublin and counties surrounding the capital. They include Clondalkin, Balbriggan and Dun Laoghaire as well as Baltinglass, Co Wicklow and Ashbourne and Trim in Co Meath. Other areas with detection rates of 20% or less include the two Galway districts of Clifden and Salthill.

Two of the four districts where more than 50% of crimes are solved are located in Kerry — Tralee and Listowel.

Gardai based at the nine stations in the Tralee district, which includes the towns of Dingle and Castleisland, had the best detection rate in the country last year, with offenders apprehended in 56% of all property-related crimes.

Detection rates in urban areas are not universally lower than rural stations because gardaí based in two city centre locations in Dublin and Cork — Store Street and Anglesea Street respectively — both made arrests for more than half of all robberies, burglaries and thefts within their districts in the first nine months of last year.

Other districts with above-average detection rates were predominantly based in Munster and included Clonmel, Dungarvan, Ennis, Bandon, Midleton and the Togher district of Cork city.

Over the past three years, gardaí based in the main district in Cork city — Anglesea Street — had the best record in Ireland, solving on average more than 56% of all robberies, burglaries and thefts in its area.

The Garda district of Ashbourne, Co Meath, has the highest rate of unsolved property crimes with an average of 86 per cent of such offences going undetected between 2013 and 2015.

Thirteen other districts have also failed to catch offenders in more than 80% of cases over the period. They include seven districts based in Dublin including Balbriggan, Clondalkin, Terenure and Dun Laoghaire as well as more rural areas such as Baltinglass, Co Wicklow; Thomastown, Co Kilkenny; Clifden, Co Galway and Bruff, Co Limerick.

A Garda spokesman said that the force was introducing a series of new measures designed to improve detection rates, including an enhanced investigator training programme, standardisation of investigative practices, and increased use of data analytics.

He said that detection rates were closely monitored by Garda management.

“In order to protect and support communities, we are implementing a range of initiatives to enhance our investigative capabilities,” he said.

Gardaí plan to increase their use of technology such as CCTV and automatic number plate recognition as well as of forensics and biometrics, including the new DNA database, to solve crime.

It's not all about free Christmas cards.....

THE perk of a free printing facility for Oireachtas members isn’t all about Christmas cards — TDs and senators are are also sending taxpayer-funded sympathy, good luck and congratulations cards.

New figures show that the free service, which is mostly used for newsletters and headed notepaper, has cost almost €1m over the past four years — printing 45 million items for 236 elected representatives.

While much of the media’s focus is on Christmas cards, a total of 31 TDs and senators have ordered 21,260 personalised sympathy cards since the start of the current Dail.

Michael Healy-Rae, an independent TD for Kerry South, was the biggest user of this facility, ordering 2,500 sympathy cards in 2014. On average, about 1,140 people die in Kerry each year.

Asked about the large order, Healy-Rae said he was using a service which was available and there was “absolutely nothing wrong with that”.

“It’s easier to place an order for a large amount rather than be coming back repeatedly for smaller print runs. I was being prudent and they won’t go to waste,” said Healy-Rae.

Personalised calendars have also proven highly popular in Leinster House, with almost 728,000 being ordered by 43 TDs and senators since 2011. Niall Collins, Fianna Fail’s justice spokesman, tops the list with orders for 127,000 calendars at a cost of €3,900. However, Alan Kelly, the environment minister, ordered 94,000 calendars at a cost of €4,640, the highest recorded.

Other less commonplace orders were placed by John Perry, a former junior minister, for 300 “good luck” cards, while Fine Gael TD Tony McLoughlin requested 500 “congratulations” cards.

A breakdown of the use of the service shows that 236 elected representatives have had more than 45m items printed during the current Dail term at a cost of €978,877.

The single biggest user is independent TD Terence Flanagan, who has had almost 1.2m items printed at a cost of €22,573. The average value of print orders by all deputies and senators is just under €4,150.

Flanagan, who represents the Dublin North-East constituency, which had an electorate of 58,542 in the 2011 general election, has ordered print runs of 75,000 on two occasions for newsletters. He explained the size of the order was due to the fact that boundary changes meant his new, enlarged constituency of Dublin Bay North had a population of 147,000.

“I try to issue at least four or five news bulletins to each house every year outlining my Dail work on national and local issues of concern and other general information,” said Flanagan. “When I first stood for election I promised my constituents that I would always be available and keep in touch with them.”

The second biggest user of the printing facility is Frances Fitzgerald, the justice minister, who ordered almost 800,000 items costing €16,229.

Other big users of the service include Labour TD Seán Kenny (€15,890), Labour junior minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (€15,172) and Fine Gael deputy Derek Keating (€14,877).

An Oireachtas spokesman said the use of the facility was governed by rules which stipulate it as for use “solely in connection with their parliamentary duties”.

It allows material for communicating with constituents on local or general public interest issues, government policies and legislation, including newsletters, flyers, business and Christmas cards.

TDs and senators cannot use the service for corporate material such as fundraising, overt electioneering material, content which promotes a private enterprise, or material which is designed to influence how to vote in a referendum.

The Thin Blue Line

One in five of all gardaí have been injured in the line of duty over the last five years.

Figures provided by the Department of Justice show 2,218 members of the force have suffered injuries in the course of their work between January 2011 and October 2015.

More than 580 officers were injured last year alone – the highest annual total for 

several years. Up to October 2 this year, 383 gardaí have reported work injuries.

The annual cost of compensation for gardai who are maliciously injured in the course of duty averages around €15m.

Fine Gael TD, Bernard Durkan, who received the information in response to a parliamentary question, has described the frequency of how often gardaí are attacked at work as “quite shocking.”

The Kildare deputy said questions needed to be asked about the attitude of some parts of Irish society to the force, especially as two gardaí, Adrian Donohoe and Tony Golden, were killed on duty in Co Louth in the past three years.

“It is extremely worrying that there are consistent levels of violence towards gardaí,” said Mr Durkan.

An analysis of the figures shows that gardaí in Louth are among the most at risk of being injured at work.

However, Waterford is the most dangerous Garda division to be stationed with more than a third of all gardaí in the county experiencing some injury since 2011.

Garda figures show 99 out of 275 officers – 36% of the total based in Waterford - have suffered injuries at work in the past five years.  The national average is just under 20%.

More than 30% of gardaí in Donegal, Louth and the Dublin West region which covers Blanchardstown, Ballyfermot and Finglas, have also been injured in the line of duty over the same period.

The safest part of the country to be stationed is the Garda division of Roscommon/Longford where just under 12% of officers have sustained a work-related injury.

Other areas with relatively low rates of injury among gardaí are Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo and Dublin North Central which includes one of the country’s busiest Garda stations, Store Street.

The figures only provide information on injuries sustained by gardaí attached to Garda stations. It does not indicate data on members attached to specialist Garda units or those stationed at Garda headquarters. (For calculating injury rates, staffing levels in December 2013 were used.)

Commenting on the figures Mr Durkan observed: “They show that gardaí are taking a serious risk when they report for duty each day. It is an appalling disregard for law enforcement officers.”

 “It is a serious challenge to the security of the state that the life and well-being of gardaí should be taken so lightly by people of that disposition. It’s no harm for society to reflect on the direction in which we are heading,” he added.

Mr Durkan said it was distressing that there were some Garda stations and divisions where there was a worrying level of disrespect for gardaí.

For example, 69 gardaí based in Tallaght have been injured at work in the past five years – almost 40% of all gardaí at the station.

In Waterford, 64 gardaí based at the city’s main station on Patrick Street suffered injuries over the same period, including 27 alone last year.

Mr Durkan said he was uncertain whether the high levels of injury were due to the problem of criminal gangs or a more general disregard for the law.

The scale of the injuries to gardaí also has an impact on the number of officers available for frontline policing as well as on the cost of compensation claims.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald revealed last week that her department was currently assessing 317 claims from gardaí who were maliciously injured in the course of their duty. Information is awaited from the Garda authorities in relation to another 550 cases.

To make a claim under the scheme, the injury must not be minor in nature and confirmation, must have occurred on duty and must not be caused as the result of wilful default or negligence on the part of the garda.

The Department of Justice paid out compensation totaling €17.6m in 2013 and €13.6m last year to gardaí injured on duty.

A recent report by the Garda Inspectorate noted that there were 258 gardaí on limited duty or restricted hours, usually as a result of injury or sickness, in March 2014 – the manpower of a small Garda division.

Full statistics on Garda injuries are available at this link.

Anyone seeking information on an individual station can contact me via the blog.

(Unfortunately the data provided by the Department of Justice was not in an easily convertible format to enable me provide statistics for each Garda station).

Garda spending

An Garda Síochána, prompted by coming under freedom of information legislation, has begun publishing details routinely about all payments in excess of €25,000.

And for that the decision  should be rightly welcomed.

By accident or design, the information published on the Garda website is not made available in a consistent format, i.e excel, PDF and other styles not readily convertible.

However, we plough on through the data minefield to ensure such info is more accessible and capable of being analysed.

If you find anything interesting in the info, please let us know.

Here's a piece based on the above data published recently in the Ireland edition of The Times.

More than €38.5 million has been paid to the private company which runs the country’s speed cameras since 2013.

New figures published by An Garda Siochana show that the GoSafe consortium receives monthly payments of about €1.4 million for operating a nationwide fleet of speed check vans.

The expenditure is included in a breakdown of €168.3 million spent by gardai on all goods and services with a value in excess of €20,000 between January 2013 and March this year.

The records show that other big clients of the force are Accenture, the management and technology consultancy, as well as Tetra Ireland Communications, Hyundai and Ford.

A garda spokesman said the figures were being proactively published by the force since it became subject to freedom of information legislation on October 14. Gardai are only required to disclose records relating to human resource management, finance and procurement.

Responsibility for the day-to-day management of expenditure is overseen by the finance directorate based in garda headquarters in the Phoenix Park, which has a budget of €1.35 billion this year.

GoSafe, which is based in Listowel, Co Kerry, is contracted to provide 6,000 hours of monitoring a month, using a fleet of 45 vans in 727 zones identified as accident blackspots. The payments it receives are not linked to the number of detections it makes.

Frances Fitzgerald, the justice minister, has said that the income from speeding fines, “is retained and offset against the cost of the safety camera contract”.

On average, the speed cameras detect about 70,000 offences by motorists each year, raising about €5.6 million in fines.

Accenture has received the second biggest share of garda business. The consultancy’s Irish division has been paid almost €28.7 million for IT support and maintenance since 2013. Overall spending by gardai on IT equipment and services is more than €60 million over the same period.

Tetra Ireland Communications, which provides a secure national communications network to gardai and emergency services, has received just under €23 million.

Ms Fitzgerald recently confirmed that more than €34 million had been spent on new garda vehicles since 2012, including the purchase of 640 cars this year.

The latest records reveal that Hyundai has secured business worth €13.4 million from gardai since 2013, while Ford has won contracts to the value of just under €5.3 million. The figures for the first quarter of this year only list payments for vehicles worth €112,600. They were bought from Brady’s of Castleknock in Dublin — a Mercedes-Benz car dealer.

The size of the garda fleet is now at its highest level since 2011, with 2,653 vehicles in service at the end of June, including 1,962 cars, of which 788 are unmarked. The number of garda motorcycles has halved since 2009, with just 121 in operation last year.

Expenditure on the garda fleet has been falling steadily since 2010, when it was €24.8 million, of which €11.75 million was spent on fuel. Last year, fleet maintenance and running costs decreased to €20.5 million, of which €9.4 million went on fuel.

The only detailed breakdown on fuel expenses relates to 2013, when €482,000 was paid to Topaz — the petrol retail group owned by Denis O’Brien. About €1.3 million is spent on average each year on tyres for garda vehicles.

The figures also show that €942,860 has been spent on garda uniforms since 2013.

The Sunday Times revealed yesterday that gardai had spent more than €150,000 on Tasers over the same period as the weapons become a key part of the force’s arsenal. The stun guns are now a standard issue for members of various armed response units around the country.

Gardai are exempt from having to provide any information under freedom of information legislation relating to operational matters including the emergency response unit, the criminal assets bureau and the special detective unit, as well as the use of covert intelligence and the witness protection programme.

Finally here's a link to the data in spreadsheet format http://tinyurl.com/jg5mzoh

Suicide in Ireland - update

Suicide rates in Ireland have continued to fall in 2013 and 2014, according to new provisional figures published by the National Office for Suicide Prevention.

The NOSP’s latest annual report shows there were 541 deaths by suicide in 2012, falling to 475 in 2013 and 459 last year.

The latest official figures show the suicide rate in 2012 was 11.8 deaths per 100,000 population. Provisional data suggests the rate fell to 10.3 deaths in 2013 and 10 deaths per 100,000 last year.

However, the NOSP said the pattern should be interpreted with some caution as data for the last two years is still provisional.

Nevertheless, it suggests a reverse of trend which had been particularly evident since the onset of the economic recession in Ireland in 2008 of a rising number of suicide deaths.

According to the NOSP, the increase over the period can be wholly attributed to an increase in the male suicide rate.

The annual number of deaths by suicide in the Republic peaked in 2011 with 554. On average males account for 4 out of 5 deaths by suicide.

“Ireland’s suicide rate is not high by European comparison. However, suicide rates among young males and females are high,” said NOSP director, Gerry Raleigh.

He said the suicide rate among both males and females aged 15-19 years was 10.5 per 100,000 population – the 4^th highest of 31 European countries.

“The methods by which people choose to end their lives in Ireland continue to be challenging,” remarked Mr Raleigh.

He pointed out that while there has been a 12% decrease in the overall rate of self-harm presentations in hospital emergency departments since 2010, the level was still 6% above the 2007 rate before the economic recession.

Mr Raleigh said he believed Ireland could achieve the World Health Organisation’s global target of reducing the suicide rate by 10% by 2020.

“Historically as a nation we have struggled to talk openly about suicide and how it impacts on us. However, our national conversation is growing and we are becoming better at discussing and addressing issues relating to our mental health,” said Mr Raleigh.

On a county basis, the most recent data shows the highest suicide rates are found in Limerick City, Cork City, Kerry and Wexford.

The highest rate in the state is found in Limerick city where there were 21.1 deaths per 100,000 over the period 2011-2013 – almost twice the national average of 11.4 deaths per 100,000.

Kerry has the second highest rate at 19.7  deaths followed by Wexford (19.4) and Cork City (16).

At the other end of the scale the lowest suicide rate in the 2011-2013 period is in Fingal at 5.4 deaths per 100,000 population – more than half the national average.

Other areas with below-average suicide rates include Donegal, Tipperary North, Dun Laoghaire, South Dublin, Meath, Wicklow and Waterford City.

At 15.4 deaths per 100,000 population, the suicide rate in the area of Dublin City Council is considerably higher that other local authority areas in the capital.

Rates are calculated on a three-year moving average to smooth out short-term fluctuations and highlight longer-term trends or cycles.

The latest figures indicate that the male suicide rate has declined from a peak of 20.2 in 2011 to 16.1 last year – the lowest rate since the start of the millennium.

The age group with the highest rate of male suicides almost consistently over the period has been those aged 45-54 years.

However, the female suicide rate increased slightly last year – up to 3.9 deaths per 100,000 from 3.4 in 2013 which was the lowest rate in the past 15 years.

According to experts, it is likely that a proportion of deaths classified as undetermined are also deaths by suicide. The latest provisional figures show there were 65 undetermined deaths in 2013 and 62 in 2014.

The NOSP also published details of self-harm statistics gathered by the National Self-Harm Registry Ireland from presentations to hospital emergency departments.

An increased risk of suicidal behaviour is associated with all episodes of self-harm.

According to the registry, an overdose of drugs was the most common method of self-harm in last year, accounting for two-thirds of all cases.

A total of 11,126 presentations to hospital of self-harm involving 8,708 individuals was recorded in 2014. It equates to around 200 incidents of self-harm per 100,000 population.

The NOSP said self-harm rates in Ireland had now levelled off after three successive years of a decrease. However, the 2014 rate of self-harm is still significantly higher than the pre-recession rate in 2007 when it stood at 188.

Self-harm is more prevalent among younger age groups.

The highest rate last year was found among teenage girls aged 15-19 years at 678 incidents of self-harm per 100,000 population.

It translates as one in every 147 girls in that age group needing hospital treatment last year as a consequence of self-harm.

Repeated self-harm is a significant risk factor for suicide. More than one in five cases of self-harm recorded in Irish hospitals last year were repeat acts of self-harm.

A total of 1,264 individuals made at least one repeat presentation to hospital with self-harm during 2014.

A recent study concluded that the recession had an impact on suicide and self-harm rates in Ireland.

It found the rate of male suicide was 57% higher than it would have been had the economic downturn not occurred.

The rate of male and female self-harm was respectively 37% and 26% higher.

“In absolute numbers there were an additional 476 male suicides during 2008-2012 than we would have expected to see had the recession not occurred,” said Mr Raleigh.

Similarly there were over 5,000 more males and more than 3,800 extra females engaged in acts of self-harm than might others have been expected due to the economic crisis.

Top Marks for Civil Servants!!!

They might be the focus of much public cynicism but Ireland’s civil servants have a pretty high estimation of their own value.

The results of the latest annual review of their own work performance shows almost 60% of staff across all Government departments and other State bodies achieved above-average ratings in 2014 with just under 7% being classified as “exceptional.”

A ranking of “fully achieved expectations” is the minimum required by all civil servants in order to receive annual increments to their salary – a target achieved by more than 99% of them last year.

Just 0.6 % were rated as either “unsatisfactory” or “needs to improve” – in other words “below-average” under the Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) overseen by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The figure in 2013 was 0.8%.

In normal distributions, up to 30% of all staff in any organisation could be expected to receive a below-average rating.

Despite promised reform of the system in 2013, the latest results reinforce the findings of a 2010 evaluation of the PMDS which concluded the civil service is out of line with normal distribution of results. It concluded that “the award of too many high ratings and too few low ratings is the established practice.”

Across the entire civil service, 59% of workers obtained an above-average rating – up from 56.2% in 2013, with the figure rising to almost 82% in the Department of Health.

The Department of Foreign Affairs reported that 22.2% of its staff – more than three times the civil service average – obtained an “exceptional performance” rating.

A total of 21% of employees in the Department of Health achieved the same classification, while almost 18% of staff at the Department of the Taoiseach scored the top mark.

The Department of the Environment, which has been widely criticised over its role in establishing Irish Water, gave an “exceptional performance” rating to over 13% of its staff.

No member of staff was recorded having a below-average performance last year in the Departments of  Children and Youth Affairs, Defence, Health and the Taoiseach.

Other State bodies to achieve the same high standards were Met Éireann, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the National Council for Special Education, the Public Appointments Service, the Law Reform Commisson, the State Laboratory, the National Share Services Office, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Office of Government Procurement and staff attached to the President, Michael D Higgins.

The highest proportion of staff to receive below-average ratings in the civil service last year was found in the Property Registration Authority where the work of 5.2% of civil servants was categorised as either unsatisfactory or needing to improve. The next highest was the Valuation Office (2.7%) and the National Library (2.5%)

The latest figures on the PMDS also show the number of civil servants completing the performance assessment fell last year with a compliance rate of 82.1% - down from 86.4% in 2013.

The PMDS applies to approximately 30,000 civil servants.

The Department of Finance was the only one out of 41 departments and State bodies to conduct a PMDS on all its staff last year. The lowest compliance rates were in the Departments of Health and Children and Youth Affairs where just less than half of civil servants had their performance assessed in 2014.

In July the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, said the current ratings scheme would be replaced in 2016 with a new model of performance assessment.

Mr Howlin said the new scheme would be focussed on “identifying excellent performance, leadership potential and underperformance and that encourages regular and constructive feedback.”

He said PMDS would also be integrated with learning and development through focused training for managers on the effective management of performance.

“PMDS places a strong emphasis on individual performance and accountability through the setting of goals and the monitoring of performance,” said Mr Howlin.

The Minister acknowledged that a key challenge across the civil service was the delivery of high performance and to fully engage staff and managers in the management and improvement of performance.