eolas magazine issue 38

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Informing Ireland’s decision-makers...

eolas Jan/Feb 2020 Issue 38

How connected is your organisation?

KPMG’s Cormac Deady Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development Damien English TD on meeting Irish housing needs

Managing Director of Accenture Security in Ireland Jacky Fox on building resilience in cyber security

Health Service Executive Director General Paul Reid on his plans to strengthen Ireland’s health service

issue 38 Jan/Feb 20

Health and care services • Local government • Technology and innovation • Education and skills

€4.95

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Dublin

Special reports in the next issue of eolas

S cial Media Conference 27.02.20 Croke Park, Dublin We’re back for 2020! Join us for a day of all things social… network, learn and innovate with fellow marketers.

+300 attendees • Expert Speakers • Best Practice 2020 speakers include Christopher Cox Head of Marketing Science, UK & EMEA, Snap Inc

Steven O’Riordan Communications and Social Media Officer, Ombudsman for Children

James Coltham Head of Digital & Content The Scottish Government

Darragh Doyle Social Media Strategist

Aoife McGuigan Head of Marketing Lucozade Ribena Suntory Corina Fitzsimons PR & Communications Officer Dogs Trust Ireland Kathryn O’Dwyer Digital Marketing Specialist Cork Airport

Jenny Finegan Digital Marketing Manager Fáilte Ireland Rachel Gallagher Digital Strategy Lead Amplify@DruryPN Sharon Campbell Deputy Head of Communications Trinity College Dublin

Early bird ending soon... Register online: www.socialmediadublin.eolasmagazine.ie Call us: +353 (0)1 661 3755 • Email: registration@eolasmagazine.ie

Economy • Infrastructure & construction • Tourism • Climate and the environment Each issue of eolas will cover a wide range of issues, sectors and regular features including: • • • •

Public sector Economy Public affairs Energy & environment

• • • •

Business Education Cross-border Media profile

• • • •

Third sector People Technology Politics

• • • •

Health Criminal justice Transport Talent management

Contact our advertising team to discuss profile opportunities including:

3 3

Corporate advertising and advertorial profiles Front cover feature profiles

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Roundtable discussions Sponsorship of special reports

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Contents 04

Matters arising

06

Issues 10

10

Cover Story: KPMG’s Cormac Deady on improving connection in your organisation

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18

Damien English TD discusses the housing challenge

Round table discussion: Making corporate PPAs work for business Hosted by 30

Economist David Blanchflower: Where have all the good jobs gone?

18

54

86

36

Round table discussion: Data governance for the public sector Hosted by

45

Health and care services

69

81

46

HSE Director General Paul Reid on strengthening healthcare

54

Maria O’Loughlin outlines digital transformation in HBS

62

Procurement in healthcare

Local government 70

Establishing an Electoral Commission

74

Electing a Mayor: Limerick

78

Local authority driven smart cities

Technology and innovation

Sponsored by

86

DPER’s CIO Barry Lowry on digital innovation

92

Houses of the Oireachtas CIO Finn de Brí discusses

96

An Garda Síochána’s Tim Willoughby: A smarter force

and better services

disruption

36 103

122

108

138

Education and skills 108

ESRI’s John FitzGerald on education’s economic impact

112

INTO Secretary General John Boyle discusses pay parity

116

DEIS school performance

Public affairs 122

Europe: A geopolitical Commission

126

Byelections 2019

134

TD Paul Murphy on building a broad left movement

138

Political platform: Anne Rabbitte TD

Copyright Notice: All advertisements, editorial and photographs are subject to copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without express permission from the publisher.

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Transforming Public Services 2020 Transformation • Innovation • Delivery Tuesday 31st March 2020 • Dunboyne Castle Hotel

eolas magazine is organising the 2020 Transforming Public Services Conference which will look at the progress to date and the next phase of Ireland’s public sector. The conference will provide a valuable opportunity to bring together key stakeholders to network, gain an insight into the government’s objectives for public service reform and hear directly from those responsible for driving forward this programme of reform.

Speakers include: Lucy Fallon-Byrne Assistant Secretary, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Paul Reid Director General, Health Service Executive Madeleine Gabriel Head of Inclusive Innovation, Nesta

Exhibition opportunities

Angela Denning CEO, Courts Service Madeleine Clarke Founding Director, Genio

There are a limited number of opportunities for interested

AnnMarie Farrelly

organisations to become involved with this conference as

Chief Executive, Fingal County Council

exhibitors. This is an excellent way for organisations to raise their profile with a key audience of senior decision-makers

Professor Alma McCarthy

from across Ireland’s public services. For further information

Professor of Public Sector Management

on how your organisation can benefit contact

NUI Galway

Olivia Carragher on 01 661 3755 or email olivia.carragher@eolasmagazine.ie for further information.

Shane Mohan Public Sector Lead Partner, Deloitte Andrew Brownlee

In association with

CEO, Solas

To book a place: By phone

Online

Email

+353 (0)1 661 3755

www.eolasmagazine.ie/events

registration@eolasmagazine.ie

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eolas Issue 38 Jan/Feb 20

Editorial Owen McQuade, Managing Editor

Happy New Year!

owen.mcquade@eolasmagazine.ie

2020 looks set to be another dramatic year politically. We

David Whelan

will have a general election and will continue to face

david.whelan@eolasmagazine.ie

ongoing challenges in housing, climate change and

Fiona McCarthy

health care. There have been several plans launched in

fiona.mccarthy@eolasmagazine.ie

the recent past dealing with these issues – and good plans,

Odrán Waldron

particularly the Climate Action Plan. However, as the

odran.waldron@eolasmagazine.ie

partition

of

Ireland

moves

towards

its

centenary,

government, and indeed all organisations, should be looking to the possibility, some would say probability, of the

Advertising Sam Tobin sam.tobin@eolasmagazine.ie

reunification of this island, as a consequence of Brexit and the demographic changes in the North. In eolas magazine

Design

we have always had an all-island perspective and during

Gareth Duffy, Head of Design

2020, we will be hosting a series of reports and events

gareth.duffy@eolasmagazine.ie

looking at the different policy areas for any new Ireland.

Events

This edition has a focus on public services with reports on

Lynda Millar

health and care services, education and skills, technology

lynda.millar@eolasmagazine.ie

and innovation and local government.

Our health report includes an interview with HSE Director General Paul Reid, while our education report features

Become a subscriber!

Email: subscriptions@eolasmagazine.ie Online: www.eolasmagazine.ie

INTO Secretary General John Boyle and interesting perspectives on reform and innovation within our public

eolas Magazine

system in both the technology and local government

bmf Business Services

reports.

Clifton House

As always, we have packed issues and current affairs

Lower Fitzwilliam Street Dublin, D02 XT91

sections, including interviews with Minister of State for

Tel: 01 661 3755

Housing and Urban Development, Damien English TD and

Web: www.eolasmagazine.ie

Paul Murphy TD.

Twitter: @eolasmagazine

Owen McQuade

www.eolasmagazine.ie

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matters arising

National rent average at all time high market has fallen from over 12 per cent in mid-2018 to 5.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2019.”

The Irish Rental Report for quarter three of 2019, compiled by Daft.ie, has revealed the national average rental price to be at an all-time high of €1,403 per month. Despite this, Trinity College

Dublin assistant professor Ronan Lyons writes in the report: “It looks as though Ireland's longest-ever run of increasing rental prices may soon come to an end.

Nationally, inflation in the private rental

The decrease in the rate of inflation is said to have been driven by Dublin, although it has not been limited to the city. Meath has seen its inflation rate fall to 3.6 per cent and rental inflation in Limerick city has fallen from 20 per cent at this point last year to 5.9 per cent.

Although these figures are somewhat encouraging, Dublin rents have now more than doubled since hitting their low point in late 2010. Dublin 8 has seen the largest rates increase in the country, with rents jumping by 125 per cent in that time. The smallest increase in Dublin was in South County Dublin, where rents increased by 90 per cent in nine years.

Overall Dublin rates have risen by 3.9 per cent in the last quarter, while the national average rate has now risen 27 per cent from its previous peak in late 2008.

National Broadband Plan contract signed While it is expected that 130,000 premises will be connected by the end of 2021, initial focus for the project will be on the connection of 300 community broadband hubs that will deliver a communal connection to areas covered within the Plan until their full connections have been achieved. The 300 community hubs – public libraries, GAA clubs, community halls and other communal amenities – have been identified and are their locations are available to view online.

The Cabinet has signed the contract for the National Broadband Plan, beginning the process by which 540,000 rural homes and business will have highspeed broadband delivered to them. The contract was signed at a public event held in a primary school in Laragh, County Wicklow, by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Richard

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Bruton TD and the chairman of the winning consortium National Broadband Ireland, David McCourt.

Full implementation of the Plan has been predicted to take up to seven years, although the Taoiseach did announce that he expects the eventual cost of the project to come in under the muchmaligned figure of €3 billion that has been budgeted for the project.

National Broadband Ireland have said that around 650 people will be employed both directly by the company and indirectly during the first two years of rollout for the project and that it expects to grow its staff from 60 to 225. While the original tender for the broadband scheme required a minimum download speed of 30Mbps, the consortium has promised to provide a minimum of 150Mbps rising to 1Gbps for those willing to pay for such speeds.

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matters arising

Murphy resigns amidst double-jobbing controversy Murphy had come under scrutiny in the weeks leading up to his resignation after it had been revealed that he had barely been present during Dáil affairs but had still been claiming a full salary and full expenses. His absence from the Dáil had been due to a Brussels-based job with the European People's Party, Fine Gael’s EU political grouping. Murphy has insisted that he was compliant with Leinster House rules but Fianna Fáil have lodged a complaint with the Dáil's Members Interests Committee.

Fine Gael’s Dara Murphy has resigned his seat as a Cork North Central TD in order to take up a full-time job at the European Commission. Murphy’s last action as a TD was to vote in favour of his namesake Eoghan as the Minister for

Housing faced a no confidence vote in early December. Murphy will be deputy head of staff for Bulgarian European Commissioner for Innovation Mariya Gabriel.

With Murphy no longer a sitting TD, it is now likely that the Members Interests Committee will refer the case to the Committee on Procedure and Privilege.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar defended Murphy, saying that his attendance record showed 120 days of attendance in Leinster House, the legal requirement, but added that “whether it's right or not, that's a different matter”.

Government launches consultation on flexible working

The Government has launched a consultation seeking the public’s views on flexible working as part of Future Jobs Ireland, the whole of Government plan aimed at futureproofing Ireland’s businesses and workers. This

consultation is being undertaken to seek views from employers, employees, trades unions and the wider public on the flexible working arrangements currently on offer to workers and what kind of changes all involved might like to see.

The potential impact of technological changes, the workplace, the family and society on the arrangements available to employees and the obstacles that may exist for employers that differ in size when facilitating flexible working are also said to be under consideration.

Business, Enterprise and Innovation

Flexible working options typically include starting and/or finishing work at differing times; working compressed hours; flexitime; working remotely; the right to disconnect outside work hours; and access to part-time or shared working options.

for families. It can also help businesses to

Speaking at the launch of the consultation process, Minister for

views of workers, to decide the best way

Heather Humphreys TD said: “As we approach full employment, we need to be more creative about how we look at the world of work. That’s exactly what we’re doing through Future Jobs Ireland, the whole-of-Government plan to prepare our businesses and workers for the future.

Flexible working has the potential to bring huge benefits to employers and employees alike. It can improve work / life balance and make things a bit easier attract and retain staff in an increasingly competitive labour market. Obviously, however, any new Government policy needs to have buy-in from businesses in the first instance, which is why we want to hear their views, together with the forward.”

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An unprecedented budget Minister for Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD called Budget 2020 “a budget without precedent” as he launched the overall package of €2.9 billion in front of the Dáil in October.

Donohoe told the chamber that the Budget had “been developed in the shadow of Brexit and the context for Brexit has now shifted to no deal as our central assumption”. Accordingly, a Brexit package worth €1.2 billion was announced.

Although the Minister stressed that the position and preparation “does not mean no deal is inevitable”, the following was announced in the event of a no deal Brexit:

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•

€220 million to be immediately deployed;

•

€650 million for the agriculture, enterprise and tourism sectors;

•

€85 million for beef farmers;

•

€6 million for other livestock farmers

eolas issues

and the mushroom sectors; •

€14 million for the fishing industry;

•

€5 million for the food and drink industry;

•

€365 million for extra social protection expenditure benefit; and

•

A €45 million fund in order to aid people’s transitions into new lines of work.

Donohoe said that “responsible management of the public finances means we will meet the challenge of a no deal Brexit from a position of strength”, pointing to the elimination of the country’s deficit and the projection of a surplus that would be 0.2 per cent of the country’s GDP.

Climate The Budget immediately lifted the carbon tax from €20 per tonne to the €26 per tonne, falling short of the Climate Change Advisory Council’s recommended increase of €15 to €35 per tonne, with other carbon taxes slated to come into effect in May 2020.

The 1 per cent diesel surcharge that was introduced in Budget 2019 has now been replaced by a nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions-based charge that will operate on a €/mg/km basis and will increase with the level of NOx emitted.

The new charge will apply to all passenger cars registering from 1 January 2020 onwards.

VRT relief for hybrids vehicles and the

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zero-rate placed on electric vehicles have both been extended to 2020, while €8 million has been pledged towards grants to assist people in purchasing EVs. €13 million has been pledged towards the warmer homes scheme in order to provide free energy efficiency to households who are deemed to be in or in danger of energy poverty and an extra €5 million has been committed towards the rehabilitation of peatland.

“This is an unprecedented level of investment, which will allow Government to continue to respond to the significant increase in demand for housing supports while also prioritising investment in the social housing programme… Government policies are helping but more needs to be done.” Paschal Donohoe TD, Minister for

The climate actions contained within the Budget have been criticised, with many claiming that its failure to introduce levies on single use coffee cups, a commercial air transport tax and the lack of investment in the circular economy represent a failure on the Government’s part.

Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Health Health saw its spending increased by €1 billion, up to €17.4 billion, with the headline provisions being free GP care for children under eight and free dental care for children under six from September 2020 onwards.

An additional one million hours of home care have been pledged, coupled with a 50 per cent cut in prescription charges.

These extra hours will, in part, be achieved by the slated recruitment of 1,000 new therapists, nurses and other medical professionals, although the current gap is estimated to be at two million hours needed.

The monthly threshold for the drug payment scheme has been reduced by €10 per month, while medical card income thresholds for over 70s have been raised by €50 for single persons and €150 for couples per week. €25 million has also been pledged towards the reduction of waiting lists, but this in particular has come under fire, with critics claiming that it is not nearly enough to tackle the record high number of outpatients waiting on procedures, which reached 556,411 in May 2019.

Housing In the sector for which the Government has received the most criticism, Minister Donohoe announced an extra €80 million for the Housing Assistance Payment, that that the Help-to-Buy scheme had been extended in its

current form to the end of 2021 and that an extra €20 million had been allocated for homeless services, bringing that figure to €166 million for the year 2020.

Donohoe called the €2.5 billion budget given to housing “an unprecedented level of investment” and the Government will surely hope that these levels can go some way towards solving the housing and homelessness crisis that has scarred the country for years now, although the level of investment has still come under attack. €1.1 billion of capital funding has been invested in the deliverance of social housing, but this funding is slated to deliver 11,000 social homes in 2020 and 12,000 in 2021 at a time when there are 71,858 households on the social housing waitlists.

An extra €2 million in support for the Residential Tenancies Board was also announced in order to “support their increased powers to investigate and sanction non-compliance with Rent Pressure Zone measures”.

Agriculture and the rural economy At a time when agriculture is so central to both of Ireland’s most pressing political issues, climate disaster and Brexit, additional funding of €51 million and €17 million were pledged to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Rural and Community Development respectively. €3 million has been pledged toward the piloting of new agri-environmental schemes as a means of tackling the sector’s emissions, which account for 33 per cent of Ireland’s total emissions, while the farm restructuring relief programme has been extended in its

current form until the end of 2022.

In terms of the broader rural communities, the €384 million increase in funding for the Department of Transport, up to €2.7 billion, will include investment in the provision of more comprehensive rural transport. The agricultural and rural aspects of the Budget have been some of the more well received measures, although it has been noted that much of the plans depend on the successful and smooth implementation of the National Broadband Plan.

Social welfare The Department of Economic Affairs and Social Protection received a €690 million funding boost in the Budget.

Minister Donohoe said that this rise was “more moderate and targeted” to enable the Government to: “Maintain the increases in welfare rates from previous years; support the elderly and children and families at risk of poverty; and protect the most vulnerable from the impact of the carbon tax.”

There were increases to the living alone allowance, qualified child payments and the fuel allowance; they saw rises of €5, €3 for over-12s and €2 for under-12s and €2 per week respectively. Along with a €15 increase for the One Parent Family Payment income disregard and a €10 increase for the Working Family Payment disregard, Minister Donohoe also announced that all social welfare recipients in 2019 would be on the receiving end of a 100 per cent Christmas bonus.

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PACE Celebrating 50 years of working with people with convictions

PACE (Prisoner Aid through Community Effort) was founded in 1969 when a group of volunteers who had been visiting men in Mountjoy Prison came together to provide a solution to the problem of men being released into homelessness. 50 years later, there is a greater need for PACE than ever, writes CEO Lisa Cuthbert.

Advertorial

From this very simple idea, a larger and more multifaceted response to the needs of people with a criminal conviction has emerged. PACE now provides a range of services for people with convictions under the following headings: • PACE Accommodation Services — multi-level supported, transitional accommodation for homeless men leaving prison; • PACE Training & Social Enterprise Services — restorative focussed training, education and employment; and • PACE Prevention Services — for people with convictions for harmful sexual behaviour.

PACE has evolved into a client centred service provider that works with people with a wide range of criminal convictions to prevent them re-offending and to help make society safer. We work from a strengths-based approach to build on the protective factors that will help prevent further offending. PACE is funded primarily by the Probation Service.

What we do Having reached our 50th anniversary, it is timely for us to reflect on our work and why we do what we do.

As a voluntary sector organisation, PACE has chosen to work with people who present with a wide range of complex

issues, including addiction and mental health problems, all of which are compounded by their offending behaviour and convictions. We work with people who have caused serious and, at times, irreparable harm to others and nothing that we do can undo that. This knowledge is accompanied by the awareness that a large cohort of the people we work with have also been harmed sexually, physically, psychologically and emotionally. The work that we choose to do is complex and we follow a winding path as we seek to provide the conditions for change and to work with people so they won’t cause harm again. The theme that presents in our work continuously is one of

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balancing the needs of the people that we work with, with the risks that they pose and the need to move beyond a sole focus on their offending behaviour to assist with their safe integration into society. Our ultimate aim in all of the work that we do is to prevent further offending and help to make society safer.

The role of PACE PACE plays an important role in intervening in lives that have been marked by chaos and disorder. Our role is to provide support for the individual in managing the factors that led to their offending behaviour. We work from a strengths based approach to help our participants to develop their protective factors and to learn to make better choices in managing their behaviour and in not reoffending.

We work in partnership with the Probation Service, An Garda Siochána, the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, addiction services and others to address the complex needs of our participants. By looking for the strengths of the individual, we are changing their narratives and creating hope about the possibility of change. We work to develop social, personal and human capital with each participant. While we provide accommodation, the focus of the accommodation service is much more than being a bed for the night. Through our trained staff and a comprehensive keyworking system, we can build on the protective factors that the participants may have and support them to address their addiction and other issues that may have resulted in them offending in the first place.

Our Social Enterprise service is responsible for the development of The Mug Shot, our coffee cart. This was designed, built and is now operated by our participants, all of whom have criminal convictions. The Mug Shot is a good example of the innovation and

While our Training and Social Enterprise Services and Accommodation Services, are open to people with a wide range of convictions, we do not work with people with sexual convictions in those services.

Prevention Services As PACE CEO, it was important for me to be able to ensure that we didn’t exclude people based on their offence.

This meant developing a suite of new, specialist services for people with convictions for harmful sexual behaviour.

PACE runs three separate programmes for this cohort. These are the:

Prevention Services is a unique suite of services for people who are classified as being at medium to high/very high risk of reoffending sexually.

The development of these services over the past eight years has represented the biggest expansion within PACE. By designing new programmes for this cohort we make a substantial contribution to the post-release management of people with sexual convictions.

Looking back on my own 20 years as PACE CEO, I am proud to see how much we have developed and changed in that time. We have developed our prevention services, expanded the range of accommodation we offer, further developed our training and started our social enterprise programme.

We have taken risks to grow as an organisation and to ensure that our work is meaningful. We continue to learn, to grow and to strive to offer the best services that we can. All of our work is underpinned by restorative principles, is evidence based and informed by best practice.

The aim of all of our services in PACE is to work with our participants to prevent further harm and help to make society safer.

• Safer Lives Treatment Programme; • Foothold Floating Support Service; and • Circles of Support and Accountability.

What we offer through our PACE

T: +353 (0)1 823 1000 E: lisa.cuthbert@paceorganisation.ie W: www.paceorganisation.ie

Advertorial

PACE Training and Social Enterprise Services provides an opportunity for the participants to address any literacy and/or numeracy issues they may have and to participate in training and education programmes, often receiving certification for their first time in their lives. In addition to that, we now provide full-time employment for participants in our Social Enterprise services. This employment has been made possible with the support of Pobal.

creativity that PACE has brought to the social enterprise sector. It is a source of employment for our professionally trained baristas and provides work experience for our baristas in-training. In addition to The Mug Shot, we manufacture a wide range of flower planters and other garden products including an innovative bee hotel. In addition, the participants annually find the time to create a garden for the Bloom Postcard garden section, work with artists on creating sculptures and other pieces of art for exhibitions. By providing opportunities for creativity, we can facilitate the therapeutic aspects of art and provide a positive outlet for the participants.

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cover story

How connected is your organisation?

Today’s digital world is vastly different than it was just a few short years ago. Advances in disruptive technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning are dramatically changing the way we do business – and the way customers make decisions, says KPMG’s Cormac Deady.

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Omnichannel is one of the biggest management buzzwords of the digital age. But while multiple cross-channel interactions are important for customer engagement, they alone are not enough for organisations to thrive in today’s environment.

Fragmented digital infrastructure and lack of alignment between front, middle and back office functions – from customer service, to operations and HR and IT – can impact the ability of organisations to deliver true seamless customer experience and drive efficiencies.

At a time when poor customer experience can go viral in a matter of minutes, organisations are perceived by the way they deliver services, respond to issues and manage customer expectations. Almost 50 per cent of business leaders believe they need to align their front, middle and back office functions to be able to deliver customer centricity and ultimately achieve growth.

There is a realisation of the need to become a more connected enterprise.

The need to connect Today’s organisations know that in order to thrive they must be built around customers, with an ability to continuously respond and adapt to ever-changing needs.

To create a truly customer-centric organisation requires an approach that is founded on three key attributes: •

•

•

Organisations need to think ‘outside in’ and consider everything they do from the customer perspective and understand the economic implications. This means connecting what is happening externally with changes that need to be driven internally.

Organisations must use these insights to satisfy customer wants in order to create engaging experiences throughout the customer lifecycle. This also means aligning these experiences across third parties and suppliers to create seamless customer interactions.

Every organisation must ensure that the front, middle and back are

“Becoming a connected enterprise is a transformation – but that doesn’t mean the organisation needs to revolutionise itself overnight. It’s about a series of small changes that together add up to a significant and impactful transformation journey.” aligned to deliver on the organisation’s promise and customer expectations. This means breaking down silos to become a customercentric, digitally-enabled enterprise truly engineered for success.

A focus on these three attributes distinguishes winning organisations. It makes them connected to their customers, to their partners, and between teams and functions within.

A KPMG-commissioned 2019 global study of 2,252 decision makers conducted by Forrester Consulting shows that developing a customercentric strategy is a high, or top, priority

for 71 per cent of organisations – and yet 40 per cent rate their customer-centric capabilities as only average.

Twice as likely to succeed Becoming a more connected organisation is easier said than done.

However, our research demonstrates that organisations who invest in the below eight capabilities of the KPMG Connected Enterprise are twice as likely to meet customer expectations, and achieve their objectives. So, what are the eight capabilities?

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Eight key capabilities Insight-driven strategies and actions

1

Harness data, advanced analytics and actionable insights with a real-time understanding of the customer and the business, to shape integrated business decisions.

Innovation services

2

Develop compelling and innovative policies and services to deliver outcomes and drive a positive customer experience.

Experience-centricity by design

3

Design seamless experiences for customers, employees and partners, supporting the customer value propositions and delivering business objectives.

Seamless interactions

4

Interact and transact with customers, partners and stakeholders across policy, services and communication channels and achieve measurable results.

Responsive operations

5

Operate the enterprise with efficiency and agility to fulfill the customer promise in an efficient and effective way.

Aligned and empowered workforce

6

Build a customer-centric organisation and culture that inspires people to deliver on customer outcomes.

Digitally enabled technology architecture

7

Create intelligent and agile services, technologies and platforms, enabling the customer agenda with solutions that are secure, scalable and cost-effective.

Integrated partner and alliance ecosystem

8

Engage, integrate and manage partners to increase speed, reduce costs, mitigate risk and close capability gaps to deliver customer outcomes.

“Leadership in the workplace is something that has been necessary long before the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it has never been more important as a more diverse staff with varying degrees of digital fluency will all need to buy into their organisations strategies.”

Progress faster on the journey

in and outside of the organisation to ensure this mission is consistently at the fore.

In our experience, there are a number of key considerations that can help organisations make faster progress on their journey to become a connected enterprise:

Do things in an agile way

Keep close to what your customers want As we have seen, the ability to take an ‘outside-in’ view is key in building a customer-centric organisation. Ensure that you are not deviating from your original goal of delivering on what your customers want; keep continually looking 12

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Becoming a connected enterprise is a transformation – but that doesn’t mean the organisation needs to revolutionise itself overnight. Break changes down into specific steps, sequence them and implement. Keep taking a step back to assess whether the change has been successful in a ‘test and learn’ approach.

It’s about a series of small changes that together add up to a significant and impactful transformation journey.

Build in resilience In a recent KPMG CEO survey, 71 per cent of CEOs say their company’s growth relies on their ability to challenge and disrupt the business norm.

Organisations must be ready to take on today’s challenges with resilience and determination and be prepared to fail fast and learn along the way.

Keep it human Whilst embedding new technologies such as AI and automation are likely to be critical in developing more seamless interactions for customers, remember that you also need to keep the experience ‘real’. Don’t lose the human touch; make sure that your customers are still being served by your staff at the key moments. Ultimately, any great organisation remains defined by the quality and passion of its people and its sense of purpose.

Where automation is being used, it should be used to design seamless experiences for customers, employees and partners, supporting the customer value propositions and delivering business objectives. Intelligent automation is an enabler for transformation. Most organisations are trying to do more with less and have been doing so for quite a while now.

There is a challenge in getting and

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retaining great people. Intelligent automation is taking away some of the manual repetitive tasks that take up staff time and automates them in a fashion that makes it easier and allows staff to work on more interesting and meaningful activities that will ultimately provide greater benefit to the customer.

Make use of new technologies Make sure that you are continually looking at what new technologies are becoming available that could help you serve customers better or connect your organisation up more seamlessly. Are you utilising cloud effectively? Are you building in appropriate automation and AI? Are staff empowered with collaborative tools so that they can better work together and share key information and data easily?

The age of the customer is here At KPMG, we see the age of the customer continuing to emerge over the next period. There’s a lot of talk about customer centricity and customer journey mapping and we see that continuing.

Taking that ‘outside-in’ approach is a really good way of understanding how your organisation is serving its customers and where the most important place for us to focus on is to make a difference to our customers if we’re making an investment. Whilst at the same time making sure that you’ve got great alignment within the organisation, that you’re looking at processes and activities on an end to end basis that ultimately help to serve your customers better and more efficiently.

Cultural change Moving towards a more connected enterprise will have an impact on the culture within the organisation. Most organisations are encouraging greater collaboration and seamless touchpoints amongst all parties playing a role in the end to end delivery of a service.

Successful cultural change depends on having a clear unified vision, and on engaging and inspiring staff. In my experience, a succession of quick wins is one of the most effective ways of achieving the required buy in and support Deady says. However, of all the

interventions that move culture in the right direction, the most important is leadership.

centric your organisation is. It

Leadership in the workplace is something that has been necessary long before the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it has never been more important as a more diverse staff with varying degrees of digital fluency will all need to buy into their company’s strategies. Clear and concise instructions, the ability to analyse what is going right and to adjust what is going wrong have perhaps never been more important.

the opportunities and challenges that

delivers an assessment against industry best practice and highlights may affect your ability to become a connected enterprise.

•

Identify the necessary requirements for delivering the appropriate customer experience using the eight capabilities of a connected enterprise and understand where there are gaps in your company’s ability to execute today.

•

Develop a road map for closing the connected enterprise gaps. Create a

How to move forward?

detailed business case for each How can you get into action? Keep in mind that becoming a connected enterprise is an ongoing journey — not an end state. Here are some key steps for developing your strategy: •

Understand how you are performing today. Consider several dimensions: What are your customers telling you about the services and products you are delivering to them — are they promoters or satisfied? If not, where is the breakdown occurring? How is your organisation performing on each of the eight capabilities of a connected enterprise? To what extent is the business ensuring the eight capabilities are working together to provide a seamless experience for the customer?

initiative, with clear linkages to desired value and required capabilities.

•

Execute the plan and continually monitor your progress from your customers’ perspective and the economics of the experiences and changes delivered.

For further information on this free diagnostic tool or if there are any topics you’d like to discuss, please feel free to contact us.

Contact Details: Cormac Deady, Partner KPMG Public Sector Consulting

The KPMG Connected Enterprise Maturity Assessment Diagnostic tool can help you assess how customer-

E: Cormac.Deady@kpmg.ie

Cormac Deady Meath native Cormac Deady is a Partner in the Consulting practice at KPMG, where he leads the public sector consulting team. He has a BSc in Computing Science and over 18 years’ experience of providing advice and support across IT, business operations, digital transformation and data. Throughout his career, Cormac has supported clients achieve their ambitions through the design, delivery and leadership of business and technology enabled transformation programmes.

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eolas issues

Housing priorities With homelessness figures rising and Rebuilding Ireland now in its third year, eolas speaks with Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development, Damien English TD about replenishing Ireland’s housing supply, short-term lets and Rent Pressure Zones.

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“The big focus was to restart construction but to do so in a sustainable way. When we came into Government, there was very little activity in terms of construction other than one-off private houses; there was probably less than 5,000 houses being built per year in the country and that had been the case for a number of years,” English says from his departmental office in Customs House.

“We had to put in place something that would deliver housing over 20 or 30 years to ensure that we wouldn’t ever have a housing shortage again. It wasn’t just a quick fix to find homes for people who hadn’t got them, it was to put in place a sector that companies could invest in and that enables local authorities to build up their teams and portfolios to become a permanent force in social housing.”

Ireland recorded 10,338 homeless people in August 2019, the second highest figure ever recorded in Ireland and the seventh consecutive recording of figures above 10,000, a previously unthinkable number.

Such figures facing into the winter, the worst time of year for homeless deaths, are especially worrying. However, the record high homelessness numbers don’t even tell the full story of Ireland’s housing situation; in the same month, 31,196 households were on the social housing waiting lists in County Dublin alone, a figure made all the more perplexing by the constant presence of over 100 cranes in the Dublin skies. An almost complete collapse in Ireland’s construction industry meant that construction numbers bottomed out after experiencing extreme peaks and troughs as the Celtic Tiger era crashed to an end. Rebuilding Ireland’s goals, as such, could only be achieved through an overhaul of the industry and a commitment to the rebuild of Ireland’s near empty social housing stock.

“It’s not sustainable to build 80,000 houses in one year and 10,000 the next; all the jobs disappear and that’s what happened when the construction sector fell during the recession,” English says.

“Through Project Ireland 2040 and Rebuilding Ireland, we worked out that we need to be delivering in and around 30,000-35,000 houses every year to deal with population increases. Rebuilding Ireland was the start, to get to 28,000 houses per year by 2021. We were hoping that by year three (2019), we wouldn’t be far off the 20,000 target and it

looks like we are on track. June 2019 showed about 21,000 built in a 12-month period. We hope that the 12 months of 2019 will show close to 23,000 based on the data out there at the minute.

“A major part of Rebuilding Ireland was putting in place a social housing build programme. Local authorities had merely stopped building social housing and boom years policy changes shifted the reliance to the private sector. We were very clear that we wanted the local authorities front and centre in driving a social housing build programme. The aim is that as a state we should deliver at least 10,000 social houses per year. We knew that we couldn’t go from zero to 10,000 in one year, so our aim was to get there by year three. When I look across all our sites, we will reach that mark this year. That’s a combination across all the schemes: new build, Part V, the voids programme, long term leasing and acquisition. We’ll do the same next year and probably more. The funding has

been set aside under Project Ireland 2040 to take us beyond 10,000 per year and up to 12,000 as we move on from 2021.”

Construction numbers have seen an uptick. 18,072 new dwellings were completed in the 12 months of 2018, a 25 per cent rise on the previous year.

However, with the homeless numbers and the fact that 16 counties have at least 1,000 households on the social housing waitlist, these rises are not enough and are not happening fast enough. English admits as much: “For too long this country didn’t build and invest in social housing. I believe that’s corrected now; it’s on the right track, but not happening quick enough for every family immediately.

“We know that if we keep up that 10,000 per year that we won’t have families waiting for housing in family hubs or hotels. Building on the success of last year, we will have a situation where every family has a home. If we can continue

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these kinds of numbers, there won’t be housing difficulties in Ireland again and I would ask whatever government comes into power – because governments come and go – to stick to a housing strategy that delivers those numbers every year.”

While progress has been slow, English takes a little consolation in the reduction of time that a family can expect to be homeless should they become homeless, English says. “There are about 1,700 families in emergency accommodation.

The only positive you could say to them is that if you look back at 2018, over 5,000 adults left homelessness and went into a house. In the first six months of this year, about 3,000 adults and all their children left homelessness. So, for that 1,700, there’s no reason why we can’t

Despite English’s positivity, a three-day snapshot study of Daft.ie housing stock

by Simon Communities found that only 8 per cent of housing was available within the HAP scheme's levels in November 2018. This figure was 6 per cent and 8.5 per cent in August 2018 and November 2017 respectively.

Announced in April as part of the rebuild of the social housing stock was the first bundle of Ireland’s first ever social housing private-public partnership (PPP).

The PPP deal will see 1,500 new homes delivered across three bundles at a cost of €260 million. The housing will be managed by Choice Housing, part of the Comhar consortium, under a 25-year financing agreement and construction managed by a private company. The

“We knew that we couldn’t go from zero to 10,000 in one year, so our aim was to get there by year three.” move most of them into a home over the next six to eight months. Before we started Rebuilding Ireland, it wasn’t unusual for someone to spend over two years as homeless, now the majority have found a solution within six months,” he says.

In the meantime, as Ireland waits for its housing supply to catch up with its demand, English is keen to draw attention to the other government schemes that families have availed of to access housing: “Naturally, you want to find homes for homeless people, but that might not always be a council house, it can also be done through the HAP scheme for example. We work with the private sector through a range of schemes and that gets some criticism out there but at this moment in time over 40,000 families avail of the HAP scheme.

What else can you do when waiting to build social houses? Families have to be housed and I think it’s wrong of anyone to say these schemes shouldn’t be used.

By the end of 2019, over 90,000 families will have availed of a scheme to find a home.”

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consortium will build and maintain the housing for 25 years before it is returned “in prime condition” to the State.

“We’ll get good value from that,” English says of the model. “The PPP model has worked brilliantly for schools, which I saw while working in the Department of Education. If it’s well managed and well controlled, it’s a model that works well.

Why we like it for housing is that the financing of it is off balance sheet. When you’re trying to spend taxpayers’ money and stretch the budget as far as you can while recognising that we need to keep things within certain limits under EU rules, financing housing projects off balance sheet is very worthwhile. All the models of delivery are working quite well; long-term leasing, turnkey projects, acquisitions etc. The aim of Rebuilding Ireland was that you wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, to have a lot of different ways to deliver housing. I’m happy with how it’s going.”

One obstacle that has stood firmly in the way of housing families and individuals in need has been the proliferation of a

worldwide short-term let market as seen on websites such as AirBnB. In October 2019, there were 9,512 listings on AirBnB for County Dublin, 50.4 per cent of those being entire houses or apartments, with Dublin 1, 2, 7 and 8 particularly popular.

The presence of such short-term markets has been known to keep rents at a premium and its negative effects on cities in need of housing stock has seen AirBnB be cracked down upon in places such as Los Angeles, Paris and Barcelona. Ireland’s intense focus on tourism as an economic stimulant and the need to house those in need of housing has led to a clash that the Fine Gael Government attempted to address this summer. Homeowners now looking to operate short-term lets in Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) must abide by an annual cap of 90 days, which includes the provision that they can rent out their homes for 14 days or less at a time.

“These buildings weren’t designed or planned for short-term lets,” English says of Dublin’s short-term lease market. “We are short of housing supply and those houses would be better off in the longterm market. The main change, which came in July this year, restricts the usage of those properties like that to bring them back into the system. It’s not a blanket rule in every county; each local authority will take their own approach. Some authorities, where there are no RPZs, probably won’t need to use this legislation, or they’ll have a more relaxed approach to it, and that’s fine. Counties like Leitrim have an average rent of less than €600, it won’t be an issue there, but it’s in places like Galway and Dublin where it’s a problem. Authorities need to work to find the balance between having a tourism offering and having a full housing supply.”

This is all part of a more significant shift, English says, a shift towards a more professional renting market in the model of Germany or Austria: “In Ireland, up to the mid-2000s, we were very much a home ownership country. That’s changing, some don’t want a mortgage over their heads and others aren’t in a position to get one, which means we need a proper rental sector.

“Most of the landlords, 70-80 per cent, at this moment in time are people who own one or two homes. We’re trying to put in place a sector with more professional

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“If you’re in Dublin, Cork or Galway, we wanted to bring some predictability into the market while we increase the supply, hence the rent rise cap of 4 per cent.”

increase every year at budget time. Once that’s spent, it’s about €2.5 billion every year; if that’s spent correctly, delivering 10,000 houses this year, that will give us the homes we need.

“For 10 years, this country didn’t build any houses because we got walloped in 2008 and it was mainly in the construction sector. The difficulty now is that almost the exact same number of those finding homes are becoming homeless every month and it’s only once

landlords, which means more rules and regulations for both tenants and landlords. Recent legislation in the Dáil has been to protect tenants and give them more rights. We recognise that we have made it more difficult for landlords, but we’ll bring more legislation through the Dáil to balance the relationship and over time, develop a professional market.

“If you’re in Dublin, Cork or Galway, we wanted to bring some predictability into the market while we increase the supply, hence the rent rise cap of 4 per cent. The RPZs have been in place since 2017 and we believe they’re beginning to have an impact. Rents are still rising in Dublin and the overall price is still far too high, but

the rate of increase has begun to come down. You can’t overextend and interfere too much in the rental market because you’ll scare off landlords. We’re trying to put in place a system that still encourages investment.”

we increase the supply of housing that we’ll be able to combat that. The majority of the 10,000 social houses coming in this year will come in during the second half of the year, so we should be really well equipped to bring those numbers

Concluding, English circles back around to one short-term goal that should be immediately achievable and would relieve some of the pressure on the Government: “Getting back under 10,000 homeless people is about supply of housing, specifically council and social houses being built. We secured a fiveyear housing budget to go with Rebuilding Ireland and every year, Minister Eoghan Murphy has secured an

down by the end of the year. When the crash happened, the State wasn’t equipped to intervene as quickly as it should have been able to, whereas now if a family realise that they’re not going to be able to pay next month’s rent, they can contact their local authority and we can help them early doors. People suffered for far too long but we’re able to step in now far quicker.”

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round table discussion

Making corporate PPAs work for business Philip Lee hosted a round table discussion with key energy-focussed stakeholders about the development of corporate PPAs to meet the target of 15 per cent of Ireland’s 2030 electricity demand from renewable sources as set out in the Climate Action Plan and how best to harness their potential.

What are the key drivers/motivations behind corporate PPAs in Ireland?

William Walsh First, we have to step back slightly and talk about the concept of climate change, through to our Climate Action Plan and the target to deliver 70 per cent of generated electricity from renewables. 15 per cent of that 70 per cent is going to have to come from corporate PPAs. The motivation starts with the burning agenda of climate change and flows right down to the specific action of that 15 per cent mandated by our Government. It goes right down from the philosophical level to the action on the ground level.

Darragh Crowley From the corporate perspective, what drives us first off is the fit with our sustainability agenda. It’s best practice in renewable power procurement if you can point to a specific asset and say that you are getting your energy directly from one of those. Where the rubber is really beginning to hit the road from the corporate perspective is the economics of renewables are beginning to make a lot more sense. We’ve seen a reduction in costs. In fact, in some proposals we have received, we’re beginning to see discounts on the commodity price of electricity when compared to what you might see on the open market for wholesale electricity costs. Finally, as a

Round table discussion hosted by

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financial hedge, we can use a PPA to control costs. Signing up to a long-term power purchase agreement allows us to hedge a portion of risk and give us certainty.

Peter Lefroy From a supplier’s perspective, corporate PPAs have been around for a considerable period. They haven’t taken off on a great scale here but the immediate driver at the minute is the Climate Action Plan. That has set that mandate of 15 per cent of 70 per cent renewables to be sourced through corporate PPAs. That equates to somewhere in the region of between four and six terawatt hours on the system.

The nature of industrial users and the expectation that data centres will play a role means that the load profiles can be stable and predictable. Looking from a supplier’s perspective and trying to balance the intermittency of wind generation, for example, and trying to

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The Participants Siobhan McCabe Siobhan is a partner at Philip Lee and heads up the firm’s Energy Team. Siobhan specialises in renewables, energy and natural resources law and has an in-depth knowledge of the complex regulatory and legislative frameworks applicable to the Irish energy market. Siobhan has extensive experience advising energy clients on acquisitions, project development and regulatory matters.

Darragh Crowley Darragh is a Regional Category Manager for Kerry Group since 2018. Darragh is responsible for negotiating energy supply and investment projects for Kerry Group in the region, including development of business cases for energy efficiency projects and corporate PPAs. Prior to joining Kerry Group, Darragh worked in financial markets with Bord Gáis Energy, Mediolanum, Geneva Trading and AIB Capital Markets. Darragh holds a degree in corporate law and an LLB in civil law from National University of Ireland, Galway.

“Now is the time for Government to look at policy levers and to try to figure out how to incentivise generators and corporates. In the national energy and climate plans and progress reports, member states are required to set out the polices and measures that they have put in place to facilitate the uptake of corporate PPAs.” Siobhan McCabe

Siobhan McCabe An interesting development is the recast Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). It places an obligation on member states to assess unjustified regulatory or administrative barriers to corporate PPAs and to remove them and to facilitate the uptake of corporate PPAs. RED II has to be transposed into Irish law by 2021, so now is the time for Government to look at policy levers and to try to figure out how to incentivise generators and corporates. In the national energy and climate plans and progress reports, member states are required to set out the policies and measures that they have put in place to facilitate the uptake of corporate PPAs. Another driver is price certainty.

The idea is for corporates and generators to enter into a contract with a fixed price or a cap and floor pricing structure, to allow some flexibility, yet price certainty. They act as a hedge against fluctuating energy costs in the wholesale market.

Patrick Mohr We come from a neutral perspective. We are neither a generator nor a corporate but we try to understand the needs of both as we play the role of enabler sitting in the middle. I have to bring us back to a few years ago when EirGrid published its report about the growth of data centres in Ireland. Hyperscale data centres increase demand massively. They are equivalent to small cities. When you have large data centre players coming into Ireland, paired with their corporate sustainability desires, which are driven from HQ, they make a very large investment in the structure that sits in Ireland and their team have to deliver over time. As they have approached the Irish market they have found it difficult. There hasn’t been the availability of renewable credits for these data centre operators to assign to themselves.

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marry it with unpredictable demand, can create difficulties. Large industrial users and their predictable profiles allow you to know what’s needed and give you something to tether your operations to. The expectation, as we see increasing levels of intermittent sources on the system, will lead to price cannibalisation of the market. When wind blows, the price will drop significantly.

There’s a motivation there for suppliers and generators to try and flatten out that revenue profile and have more certainty; corporate PPAs are a potential way to do that.

Donal Flavin Donal is Head of Strategic Policy – Energy, Telecommunications, Digital & Data for IDA Ireland, with responsibility for public policy in energy (including climate action) and technology.

He is a member of the Government’s (Department of the Taoiseach’s) Data Forum and prior to 2018, was Vice President, Technology Group, IDA Ireland. Donal was Regional Executive, West/Mid West, IDA Ireland from 2003 to 2006.

Donal has agricultural science and MBA degrees from University College Dublin (UCD).

Peter Lefroy Peter is a Director of innogy Renewables Ireland, a subsidiary of innogy SE which is a leading German energy company. Peter is leading the development of Dublin Array, a >600MW project on the east coast of Ireland. He has extensive experience in the energy industry in Ireland having worked in both engineering consultancy and project development and construction. Peter holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Limerick and an MBA from Trinity College Dublin. He is chair of the IWEA Offshore Wind Committee.

Patrick Mohr Patrick is a Senior Investment Manager in Ireland Strategic Investment Fund focused on the Fund’s climate investment pillar. He helped develop ISIF’s climate investment strategy which targets opportunities that position Ireland for a Net Zero Carbon economy. He has been a member of ISIF since the Fund’s inception in 2014 and brings 10 years of transaction and market advisory experience to the Fund. Patrick is a graduate of Cambridge University and UCD where he studied sustainable development and engineering.

William Walsh William is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operations Officer in SEAI. He initially held the position of Chief Financial Officer when he joined the organisation in 2013. Prior to joining SEAI he worked for IFI. Prior to that he held senior management positions in several roles in the private sector. William is a Chartered Accountant, holds a Bachelor of Business Studies from Dublin City University and a Graduate Diploma in Strategy, Innovation and Change from UCD.

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What are the main barriers to growth in corporate PPAs in Ireland?

Patrick Mohr We have had no Corporate PPA market in Ireland to date because REFIT has proved too attractive and corporates can’t compete with that.

Siobhan McCabe

“There is a requirement within RESS to engage the

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community and it’s important to understand what motivates people to accept renewable energy projects, both onshore and offshore. Understanding how to allay community concerns is very important.”

Now they have to find specific assets and that’s the driver that resulted in the Government policy. It puts Ireland in a somewhat unique space as a country, to have a target on what corporates will deliver.

Donal Flavin We’re seeing increasing interest from our clients, not alone technology companies, but life sciences companies are also looking at corporate PPAs in a bigger way. One of the reasons for that is that the big global corporations have sustainability agendas. It’s interesting looking at the RE100, a body where

William Walsh

members commit to the use of 100 per cent renewable energy. Over half the members are companies in our portfolio with strategic operations in Ireland. These companies are looking at how to procure renewable energy, hence the interest in corporate PPAs. Some of these companies have familiarity with PPAs, particularly those from the US. That’s the primary motivator but companies are also keen to have predictability. The data centres need predictability in their energy supply, and they want it renewable at a determined price. Corporate PPAs provide the means to achieve that.

I see RESS as a major barrier right now.

Generators are not going to sign up to a corporate PPA when RESS is around the corner. Generators expect to be able to get prices similar to RESS, which could be between €55-70 per MWh, while corporates are looking for a discount on the wholesale price. RESS is definitely causing a delay in the development of corporate PPAs right now and it will be interesting to see what happens after the RESS-1 Auction next year when we will have more clarity on the price. That then could spur on the Corporate PPA market when people have more information and less options.

Donal Flavin The REFIT was very supportive of generators and was a good scheme for them. It provided stability and because of that corporate PPAs were not as attractive in the same way. What you have now are companies waiting to see how RESS starts and works and then they will make decisions. Some generators will not succeed with RESS and may look at doing a Corporate PPA with, for example, a data centre.

Corporate PPAs can be quite complex, they’re big legal documents and I think that, until there’s more familiarity and comfort, there will be a material impact on uptake.

Peter Lefroy What’s driving that is that there is a

“There has been a step change in the capacity of renewable generation that’s coming out to the market along with a rise in the importance of sustainability and that’s married up with lower prices. It makes for an attractive environment for corporate PPAs to get concluded.”

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Darragh Crowley To bridge that value gap, there are practical issues for corporates that need to be addressed. For example, the tenure of PPAs is one issue. For an industrial or FMCG company, 10, 15 or 20 years is considerably longer than your typical two to three-year deal, with a lot of flexibility and get out clauses. Kerry Group, or any other large corporate, need to be comfortable with the length of a commitment such as that and need to be rewarded for that with a lower price.

You need to be able to provide a compelling sustainability, business and risk management case to your board to get it over the line. There is also the complexity of the contracting, there is no standard template. That is changing and gathering pace, we’re starting to see slimmer contract terms and documentation become standardised.

Once it’s easier for a corporate to analyse documentation, I think agreements will move along quicker.

William Walsh In terms of the actual infrastructure,

“We are lucky that we have many corporates who have their European headquarters here, but if you’re looking for large tech companies to credibly say that they are powering their data centre infrastructure from renewable energy produced in Ireland, not being able to trade that energy into Europe undermines that.” Peter Lefroy specifically the barriers, we come back to the participation in the community in terms of objections to the roll out of infrastructure in the longer term. There is a requirement within RESS to engage the community and it’s important to understand what motivates people to accept renewable energy projects, both onshore and offshore. Understanding how to allay community concerns is very important. Also, from a political perspective, things can slow up very quickly if the political system isn’t satisfied or the populace are not supportive so it’s important to get that right.

Peter Lefroy It’s worth balancing that with the CSR obligations from corporates. They will have obligations that feed down through their supply chain. They cannot have the situation where they are resourcing their energy from a generator or supplier who does not have a good relationship with their local community. It’s a risk and one that the industry needs to tackle and make sure that, even if they’re not engaging with the RESS, they’re still engaging in the spirit that is contained within the RESS. The Irish market is almost entirely decoupled from the rest of the European market and while that situation remains, a large corporate that has operations in other parts of Europe will find it very difficult to focus their

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relatively small pool of generators in the Irish market in comparison with others. In the past it’s been dominated by smaller developers and entities with smaller portfolios. That’s changing, we’re seeing consolidation and larger players like ourselves coming into the market, who have a greater ability to manage the complexity of the transactions we’re talking about. They have a greater ability to manage the consequent risks that come with arrangements like this and the supply and trading capability that you need. That is certainly an issue that will diminish over time. The price expectation is the largest piece for me, and it’s not only driven by the historical REFIT context. There are several obstacles emerging in the Irish market to developing new assets. The onshore planning guidelines, the revision of the rates regime, continuing uncertainty in terms of offshore policy, all of this is driving up the cost of developing assets in Ireland, where the objective of RES and corporate PPAs should be to drive down the cost. It doesn’t make sense to introduce structures that drive down cost and then simultaneously introduce a whole new set of barriers. What you’re seeing with corporates is that the wholesale price is largely driven by the wholesale price of gas, which is probably lower than it should be but is expected to rise. While that continues to be low, the development price for new renewable assets will not drop as quickly as it should and there will be a valuation gap between what a developer needs and what a corporate needs.

resources on such a small, isolated market. We are lucky that we have many corporates who have their European headquarters here, but if you’re looking for large tech companies to credibly say that they are powering their data centre infrastructure from renewable energy produced in Ireland, not being able to trade that energy into Europe undermines that.

What changes are required by industry and government to deliver the 15 per cent RES-E target from PPAs by 2030?

Siobhan McCabe One area that would help achieve the target is ensuring ‘direct lines’, or ‘private wires’ can be built. Currently, in Ireland you can only have a direct line if your grid connection application has been refused on the basis of lack of capacity and CRU believes it is in the public interest. As far as I am aware there are no direct lines in Ireland. This is not the case in other countries. For example, in Germany direct lines are prevalent. Many corporate PPAs are physical PPAs and lifting such restrictions on direct lines in Ireland would help the growth of corporate PPAs. Darragh Crowley I would certainly support that. In Kerry Group the priority for us is energy

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Patrick Mohr The cost issue is now much broader. The cost of energy is only one element and with carbon taxes and other sustainability measures climate change will only push costs in one direction.

Looking at the overall costs from climate change, any addition cost for renewables today may be a good deal. That pressure is coming.

Siobhan McCabe

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“Corporate PPAs can be quite complex, they’re big legal documents and I think that, until there’s more familiarity and comfort, there will be a material impact on uptake.” Donal Flavin efficiency; we refer to it as the ‘silent renewable’. The second measure would be a PPA. In the UK there are very few barriers to a private wire PPA. For example, for solar projects on your roof or on land adjacent to your site there are few restrictions to private wire installations. Their main benefit to the corporate is you can avoid all network charges and the power is 100 per cent renewable. We would welcome that model in Ireland.

Patrick Mohr If the regulations restricting direct lines were changed at the stroke of a pen, PPAs would flourish in Ireland – leading to much more renewables development.

There’s a huge opportunity particularly in the food and agriculture sector, where they have a real challenge to demonstrate their sustainability credentials. There is a lot of attention on that sector in particular – some would say unfairly as we are one of the most efficient countries at producing agri-food.

However, that doesn’t take away from the challenge of absolute carbon emissions. Enabling that sector to use energy sustainably is something we need to do as a country.

Peter Lefroy It’s not just energy efficiency onsite but also offsite. The practical trading for offsite would, from a corporate buyer’s perspective, the most favourable structure in terms of ease of understanding would be a base-load

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slice PPA for 20 to 30 per cent of their demand. This would remove the current mismatch in terms of the shaping and balancing risk aspects of most PPAs. At present it’s difficult to get certainty for 10 to 15 years and that type of approach would help corporates.

Donal Flavin It’s critical to get the balance right between the regulations and the commercial reality. How RESS will operate and how it is viewed by the commercial parties will be very important. Where you have a traditional energy regime you don’t have many PPAs. We need to look at policy levers to make PPAs more favourable and maybe some incentives to encourage companies to take them up.

Peter Lefroy From a generator’s perspective, it comes back to price differential. We need to see RESS and corporate PPAs co-exist.

RESS is the best way to drive down the cost of generation but while the wholesale price of electricity is linked to relatively cheap fossil fuels you are always going to see the corporates favouring the wholesale price rather than a more expensive PPA. Donal Flavin The sustainability agenda of companies will come more into play, rather than the cost of energy. Particularly for companies whose customers demand it.

Yes, that pressure is coming but we need some policy levers now to drive corporate PPAs. Corporate PPAs have been extremely successful in the US because of the tax incentives for both generators and corporates. We should also look at options such as government guarantees to overcome counter-party creditworthiness risk, particularly for smaller companies. Tax incentives or reduced commercial rates would help get some momentum in the market. RED II also calls for the simplification of authorisation processes. A one-stopshop approach to authorise these projects could be useful in achieving that.

William Walsh As part of the implementation of the Climate Action Plan we have engaged consultants to look at the policy levers.

From a policy implementation perspective, we need to get RESS working, together with corporate PPAs and guarantees of origin – we need to pull all that together. We are getting the best advice internationally. We are looking at how things are working elsewhere and how that can be transposed into the Irish setting. DCCAE is keen to get this implemented quickly and the governance around the Climate Action Plan is fantastic with actions being held to account by the Climate Action Board – which is made up of Secretary Generals from right across government. The grid is going to play a central role in the delivery of the 70 per cent target. We are currently world-class at facilitating renewables on the grid and we have to keep working at that.

What is the future of the Irish Corporate PPA market and what are the opportunities for all industry sectors and smaller corporates to participate in this market?

Donal Flavin The future is bright for corporate PPAs when you look at the potential demand

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that is going to be out there. Data centres want renewable energy and they will be the big drivers behind PPAs. You see the life sciences sector increasingly looking in that space too. It’s important, in order to ensure that the potential is maximised, that the balance between what happens on the wholesale market and what could happen with corporate PPAs is good. Things can’t be more favourable on the RESS side. It’s important that PPAs have a standard legal template to give comfort to companies and reduce fear. There has to be flexibility too, maybe with regard to the timeline in case companies aren’t comfortable. It will be down to realistic expectations between both the supplier and the procurer.

Patrick Mohr

Siobhan McCabe We need to attract more players in the market and for smaller corporates to realise that corporate PPAs are something that they could benefit from.

We need to look abroad at other models that have been successful. Aggregation and consortium structures have worked in other countries, where several smaller corporates come together and agree a Corporate PPA. There was a good example of the Dutch consortium between Google, AkzoNobel, Phillips and DSM where they each took one quarter of the project on similar terms. Another potential model is using an anchor tenant where a large corporate commits to offtake a large portion of a project and a smaller corporate tags along and secures a smaller amount of the project which may be for a shorter term.

Aggregation of generators for large-scale PPAs is also an option. There is real potential out there for all sizes of corporate and generators.

“We have an incredibly ambitious policy, we are operating in a global business environment where sustainability has never been higher on the agenda and those are strong drivers to make corporate PPAs work in the Irish market.”

round table discussion

At a macro level, I would say the future is very positive. We have an incredibly ambitious policy, we are operating in a global business environment where sustainability has never been higher on the agenda and those are strong drivers to make corporate PPAs work in the Irish market. However, those operating on the ground today have a lot of challenges.

The question is how do you develop those projects with all those challenges to deliver the lowest levelised cost of energy projects? It remains to be seen how smaller corporates can be comfortable with 10/15-year contracts, but I would hope that the macro vision drives down to create structures in the market to enable that.

Patrick Mohr Peter Lefroy The future is bright for generators and suppliers. Corporate PPAs offer flexibility and the ability to choose how long they want to fix their price for, and who they want to fix it with. We need to be careful and recognise that there will probably always be a need for a RESS type arrangement and that corporate PPAs will not be able to erase that structure.

You will always need that framework to encourage competition. So there needs to be a way for corporate PPAs and RESS to sit in conjunction with one another. The barriers that make it more expensive to develop new assets in Ireland compromises our ability to close Corporate PPA transactions and it’s for government to recognise that those barriers are there and to work with industry to remove them and keep driving down the costs.

Darragh Crowley There has been a step change in the capacity of renewable generation that’s coming out to the market along with a rise in the importance of sustainability and that’s married up with lower prices. It makes for an attractive environment for corporate PPAs to get concluded. On the syndicate deals, they are very interesting and something that needs to come to the

market in terms of encouraging the next layer of corporates that would like to participate into the market. On a practical level, it would be very useful for developers to look at things through the lens of the corporate buyer and see what would be useful in terms of internal structure. That is the one thing I think would really push things along from the corporate perspective.

William Walsh We are heavily involved with the Government and Department of Finance, so from our perspective, getting the policy right is crucial to a successful future for corporate PPAs. What we would see as a success would be big partnerships and aggregation. The bigger companies coming together and potentially putting mechanisms in play that the smaller corporates can leverage off the back of. We developed a support scheme for renewable heat recently and learned many lessons from other jurisdictions and now we believe we have a solid offering to renewable heat industry. Aggregation drives down costs and makes PPAs a much more viable option for companies of all sizes.

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We should avoid using simplistic arguments when discussing the complex issue of a border poll The ESRI’s Seamus McGuinness and Adele Bergin outline some of the key economic considerations currently missing from the ongoing constitutional debate on the island of Ireland being spurred on by Brexit.

Brexit has elevated discussions related to the constitutional future of Northern Ireland to the centre of debate. Even without Brexit, continued demographic change in Northern Ireland makes it increasingly likely that a border poll will arise in the future. Political or economic disruption as a result of Brexit may lead to this occurring sooner rather than later.

However, what is currently lacking in the debate is hard evidence related to key questions that need to be answered for voters in any future border poll to make an informed decision. In a recent paper, ‘The Political Economy of a Northern Ireland Border Poll’ we began piecing together the evidence base on just some of the questions that are likely to form a key part of any future border poll debate.

Some of these questions, and the existing evidence, are summarised below.

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How has the economy of Northern Ireland been performing?

There is little evidence to suggest that Northern Ireland has benefited from any peace dividend. In terms of GDP per capita, Northern Ireland ranked the 10th poorest from 12 UK regions in both 2000 and 2014, with only the North-East region and Wales ranking lower. Over this period GDP per capita grew by just 7 per cent in Northern Ireland, compared to 30 per cent in the Southern and Eastern region of the Republic of Ireland, which contains around three quarters of the country’s population. The gap in real per capita incomes between Northern Ireland and the Southern and Eastern region of Ireland was approximately €25,000 in 2014. We find the gap in

incomes between Northern Ireland and leading regions in both Great Britain and the Republic has been widening over time and there is little evidence to suggest that this trend will not continue.

What are the causes of Northern Ireland’s poor relative performance?

We argue that Northern Ireland’s poor performance, relative to that of the Republic of Ireland, is due to low levels of productivity that are likely to be driven by a number of key factors including a widening gap in educational attainment, lower intensity and poorer quality FDI, and lower levels of export orientation among both manufacturing and service sector companies. Northern Ireland’s poor performance in these areas also

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points to a lack of effective UK regional policy and, related to this, insufficient funding in key areas under the various devolved administrations.

Over what period would the process of unification take place?

Many of the assessments of the cost of unification appear to assume that unification will occur immediately following any border poll result in favour of unification, with all the associated costs of administering Northern Ireland immediately transferring to the Republic.

Such a scenario would be highly risky and unmanageable, both politically and economically, and it is both advisable and likely that any unification process will require a substantial transition period. So how long might any transition period last? Looking at some recent constitutional upheavals involving the UK, while the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997 occurred 13 years following the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the planned transition period for Brexit was just two years. A transition period should also involve the introduction of new education, regional and industrial policies aimed at increasing productivity levels in Northern Ireland and reducing the eventual cost of unification.

Furthermore, presuming that the UK has left the EU by that stage, Irish reunification will also involve the North reentering the EU, which opens the possibility of EU involvement in the transition process.

What is the likely cost of unification to the Irish tax payer?

Another factor relates to negotiations on debt and assets that are attributable to Northern Ireland. In terms of citizens in the Republic, a central concern will be the additional cost of running Northern Ireland under unification. The level of subvention, which refers to the gap between government spending and tax revenues in Northern Ireland, is often focused on as a measure of this cost.

Subvention in 2014 was £9.16 billion.

However, when items of expenditure not directly related to the running of

Dr Adele Bergin.

Dr Seamus McGuinness.

Northern Ireland are subtracted, for example, its contribution to UK defence spending or UK government debt, potential subvention levels could fall by around 25 per cent. The level falls further when account is taken of UK public sector pensions and contribution based old age pensions, both of which would remain a UK liability post-unification.

Nevertheless, it is Northern Ireland’s low productivity levels that create a need for subvention payments in the first place, and the ultimate cost (or benefit) to the Irish tax payer will depend on the success of policy reforms aimed at addressing this problem.

variations in levels of patient demand and points towards failures in the social care systems of both jurisdictions.

Will the loss of the NHS be costly to Northern Ireland citizens?

Our analysis suggests that the gap between the Irish and UK health systems has narrowed, presumably as a consequence of much higher levels of per capita health expenditure in the Republic and the impacts of austerity policies in the UK. According to OECD data, in 2017 per capita health spending (PPP adjusted) was €3,930 in Ireland and €3,045 in the UK. The Irish system does have more up-front charges compared to the NHS; however, it also contains balances to ensure that healthcare remains free at the point of use for the most vulnerable in society. By international standards, both health systems have an unacceptably high acute bed occupancy rates, which results in an inability to cope with

Concluding comments A border poll appears increasingly likely at some point. It is important that any debate on this vital issue is accompanied by facts, so that voters can be appropriately informed. There is little to be achieved through a static analysis of Irish unification whereby the current costs of administering Northern Ireland, which are themselves debateable, are simply superimposed on the current tax and welfare systems of the Republic.

Such a scenario would never seriously be proposed, or ratified, in any border poll. Responsible debate on the economics of Irish unification should be based around the facts that have been established through research that fully accounts for the likely dynamics associated with any unification process.

What we must avoid at all costs is a repeat of the UK Brexit referendum, which is best characterised as a scenario of spurious claims and counterclaims that led, ultimately, to sustained political stalemate.

Dr Seamus McGuinness is a Research Professor at the Economic & Social Research Institute, Dublin and Dr Adele Bergin is a Senior Research Officer at the ESRI.

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InterTradeIreland – building cross-border economic benefit

Growth, risks and new opportunities The “cold, denying silence”, as the crossborder trading relationship was described by one national newspaper at the time, has long been broken thanks in part to the work of InterTradeIreland in fostering, supporting and developing the business and research community’s links between north and south.

“The major difference between then and now is that new relationships now exist and thus it is easier for us to facilitate engagement and to go after opportunities. In fact, we had reached the stage where we rarely talked about barriers, the focus was almost entirely on opportunity,” states Gough.

Unveiling research on cross-border supply chains InterTradeIreland Chairman Ken Nelson, Aidan Gough Designated Officer InterTradeIreland and Business, Enterprise and Innovation Minister Heather Humphreys TD.

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With InterTradeIreland set to mark 20 years of assisting small firms and other stakeholders to explore cross-border business on the island of Ireland, Aidan Gough talks to David Whelan about market evolution, Brexit preparedness and where InterTradeIreland see new opportunities.

Describing the much-changed landscape of cross-border trade on the island of Ireland, Gough, InterTradeIreland’s Designated Officer and Director of Strategy and Policy, believes there has 26

been a major shift away from the minimal interaction between the two economies of two decades ago, borne out of lack of engagement and relationships between businesses.

Since its creation, the Newry-based cross-border body, which primarily assists small businesses in Ireland and Northern Ireland to explore cross-border markets, develop new products, processes and services and to become investor ready, has overseen an average annual 4 per cent increase in crossborder trade and recent figures show a record high all-Ireland trading market in excess of €7 billion for 2017.

InterTradeIreland’s work with businesses is not confined to the border area and the organisation has engaged with some 42,000 businesses from all counties on the island and directly supported around 9,000.

“Those businesses have generated over €1.2 billion in business development value through additional cross-border sales, investments or efficiency savings,” says Gough.

“Participating businesses have created close to 16,000 jobs in the small business sector, predominately in rural areas, all over the island.”

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InterTradeIreland – building cross-border economic benefit The wider trade flows across the island have progressed and cross-border trade has more than doubled over the last 20 years, benefitting the over 90 per cent of small businesses that make up the cross-border market. InterTradeIreland’s research suggests that those businesses that trade across the border on the island receive an average 9 per cent productivity uplift, increase the likelihood of job creation and have a doubling of turnover.

“Our supports facilitate small businesses to get on to the export ladder. We know from our research that 75 per cent of businesses that have gone on to sell off the island took their first steps on the export ladder through entrance into the other market on the island.

“Cross-border cooperation delivers for small businesses and it delivers benefits for both economies,” Gough states.

Support Gough explains that InterTradeIreland operates two pillars of support – trade and innovation, each with a range of programmes within. Under trade, the Acumen programme has proven successful in assisting businesses to develop new markets, new customers and new sustainable sources of income on the island, while Elevate offers funding for specialist sales and marketing support to grow micro enterprises.

InterTradeIreland's Funding for Growth team helps growing businesses access the finance required to achieve their ambitious plans.

The Designated Officer and Director of Strategy and Policy explains that such supports are tailored to and underpinned by an evidence base. As one of the largest conductors of cross-border research, Gough highlights that InterTradeIreland places a high value on

its research which informs their understanding of the all-island market and programme development. The InterTradeIreland All-Island Quarterly Business Monitor ensures that the organisation remains “on the pulse” of small business sentiment across the island.

To this end, InterTradeIreland also plays an important role in contributing to policy development for both governments on the island of Ireland through its involvement in various committees and steering groups, feeding in their research to inform debate.

While the value of trade has changed dramatically, so too have the intricacies of the market. Highlighting the major shift in cross-border trading on the island in the last two decades and also a significant change in the complexities and interconnectedness of supply and export chains, Gough points to research which shows an increase in cross-border goods trade alone of €1.6 billion in 1995 to €3.7 billion in 2017.

The 2018 Cross-Border Trade and Supply Chain Linkages report by InterTradeIreland outlined that Northern Ireland accounts for 10-12 per cent of total exports from Ireland to the UK as whole and accounted for 7-8 per cent of imports. The report also found that a significant share of cross-border trade is accounted for by businesses that trade in both directions, with two-way traders making up around 18 per cent of firms

but accounting for over 60 per cent of exports and 70 per cent of imports.

Given their understanding of the closeness and importance of the economic ties linking Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain, Gough outlines the importance of InterTradeIreland’s role following the outcome of the UK’s referendum to leave the European Union.

Brexit “As well as our understanding of the allisland trade market, following the referendum we responded quickly to initiate research on the impact of the various outcomes for that market. We didn’t know then, and we still don’t, what an agreement would look like but it was quickly apparent from our research that a no deal scenario posed a real threat to cross-border trade. Reverting to WTO tariffs could lead to a 9 per cent decrease in cross-border trade. When factoring in non-tariff barriers, this figure could double.”

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Under the innovation pillar InterTradeIreland has a number of support programmes in place for business innovation and growth, including the FUSION programme which helps to fund a high calibre science, engineering or technology graduate and partners business with a third level institution with specific expertise. Another example is the Challenge Programme, which embeds a proven, reliable and repeatable innovation model into the organisation.

Work underway at McAvoy Group, Lisburn, Co Antrim – the construction company has benefited from InterTradeIreland’s innovation programmes.

Gough highlights a fundamental understanding of the need for a frictionless land border for many small businesses on the island of Ireland, stating that in one month an average of 177,000 lorries, 205,000 vans and over 1.8 million cars will cross the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In one day, it is estimated that some 30,000 people make the cross-border commute to work.

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InterTradeIreland – building cross-border economic benefit

InterTradeIreland recently launched a new Bitesize Brexit campaign to help SMEs prepare.

“Whatever new trading relationship emerges post-Brexit, businesses will continue trading across the border and we will continue partnering with these businesses to deliver mutal value.”

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However, more striking was the understanding of business preparedness for any disruption to the status quo. The InterTradeIreland All-Island Quarterly Business Monitor (July-September 2016) revealed that 97 per cent of businesses across the island had no plans in place to deal with a UK exit from the EU. The survey also showed that 91 per cent of cross-border traders had no experience dealing with tariffs and 80 per cent of businesses said that TV news was their only source of information about Brexit.

“We recognised early on that businesses were not getting ready despite the fact that Brexit could pose a considerable threat to their existing business model.

We found that businesses were not preparing and weren’t factoring in the risk,” says Gough.

InterTradeIreland’s research which uses 28

detailed, firm-level patterns of risk exposure to examine the capacity of firms to absorb shocks outlines that just over half of Ireland’s goods firms have at best a mediocre ability to absorb shock and that more than 7 per cent are extremely vulnerable to any post-Brexit fall out. A similar outlook is recognised in the services sector where the most exposed or highest risk category stands at 4.4 per cent, while over 47 per cent are at risk.

This understanding formed the basis of various supports rolled out by InterTradeIreland in relation to Brexit. The launch of the Brexit Advisory Service for potential and current cross-border traders in early 2017 provided a service including direct access to specialist technical advice in areas such as tariff and nontariff barriers, rules of origin, certification, staffing, exchange management and logistics through Brexit Readiness

vouchers to the value of €2,250. As well as this, Gough says that specific guidance on tariffs at detailed product level, as well as access to latest research, led to core supports being built on the mantra of encouraging businesses to “plan, act and engage”.

“We very quickly got on the road engaging with businesses and advising them on how to undertake risk analysis to understand where they are most exposed. In this regard we brought in experts, recognising that the small business nature of cross-border trade meant a lack of capacity or capability to undertake these assessments from existing resources. As well as establishing exposure, we were able to take this information and develop supports in relation to actions that could be taken to put new processes in place to mitigate risk,” explains Gough.

Uptake of InterTradeIreland’s Brexit Planning vouchers and support services has been high, especially as the exit deadlines grow closer. Well over a third of all applications for the scheme launched in May 2017 have come this year. However, Gough explains that the organisation continues to tailor and evolve their research and supports from their interaction and communication with traders, including he says, the tendency of small business to be overwhelmed when delving into Brexit.

Gough highlights that even for those

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InterTradeIreland – building cross-border economic benefit

businesses not yet engaged in Brexitplanning, it is not too late to identify risks and opportunities. Recognition of the overwhelming nature of Brexit for small business and the opportunity to still identify exposure and mitigate risk is the basis for InterTradeIreland’s enhancement of its Brexit support.

“Planning is never wasted,” he states.

“Businesses need to work out where their greatest exposure is and try to mitigate any risk. Analyse your own supply chains, your export market, employee impact, VAT, cash-flow, these are all areas that can be assisted with early interventions.”

Gough explains that the enhanced Brexit Advisory Service, where businesses can secure up to €5,625 of funding and benefit from a new bespoke online learning tool (Bitesize Brexit) focussed on practical help to prepare for Brexit, has been much welcomed.

Gough says: “Our research and ongoing engagement with cross-border traders identified that for small business Brexit was overwhelming and often the elephant in the room in terms of future planning. What we are seeking to do is to break that elephant down to bitesize chunks which can be readily understood and actioned.

“Like everything we do our supports are evidenced-based interventions and Brexit is no different. Our research agenda allows us to remain on the pulse of small business sentiment and tailor our programmes. Our research, coupled with our staff, InterTradeIreland’s most valuable asset, helps deliver programmes that deliver for small business.”

Opportunity

“We are in a very different place than we were 20 years ago and those relationships that didn’t exist across all spheres of business and research activity now do exist. Whatever new trading relationship emerges post-Brexit, businesses will continue trading across the border and we will continue

partnering with these businesses to deliver mutual value to both Ireland and Northern Ireland.”

Gough highlights the emergence of new areas of opportunity despite Brexit which InterTradeIreland is focussing on. These include the areas of Industry 4.0, adaption to a low carbon economy and the re-development of cross-border clusters.

He adds: “We are also targeting SME productivity, which is a key challenge for both governments on the island, in the knowledge that businesses involved in cross-border trade have a productivity premium. Also, we are looking at the facilitation of cross-border clusters and all-island clusters in areas of opportunity such as that of the bioeconomy, advanced manufacturing and life sciences.”

While InterTradeIreland’s focus remains on small and micro businesses, Gough outlines scope for facilitation of crossborder partnerships with other agencies within research communities. A prime example is the partnership brokered by InterTradeIreland between Cancer Trials Ireland and the Northern Ireland Cancer Trials Network which has resulted in the sharing of cancer research trials on an all-island basis.

“When you broker these partnerships you find other opportunities and so we’re now

looking at things like all-island bio banks.

All of these initiatives have supply chains behind them that link in to industry, offering new opportunities for business including small businesses.”

Gough continues: “The research partnerships we facilitate are expansive and evolving. The US-Ireland R&D Partnership, for example, is a trijurisdictional alliance launched in 2006 and to date 51 projects have been successfully funded under the partnership across key sectors including agriculture, health, science and engineering, telecommunication energy and sustainability. Funding raised to June 2019 was valued at over €78 million.”

As well, InterTradeIreland has recognised a doubling of the amount of successful applications by companies and researchers it helps to collaborate in Horizon 2020, the EU Commission’s €80 billion research and innovation programme designed to boost jobs and growth across Europe.

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However, the Designated Officer and Director of Strategy and Policy is quick to point out that InterTradeIreland’s recent work has not solely focussed on helping small businesses to mitigate risk but also to identify opportunities going forward.

Dr Richard Fernandez, co-founder of Luxcel Biosciences in Cork. Luxcel Biosciences is a previous winner of InterTradeIreland’s start-up competition, Seedcorn. The company has now been snapped up by an international buyer for an undisclosed sum.

“These relationships and networks exist.

Going forward we remain positive and see further opportunities to facilitate new cross-border potential,” concludes Gough.

W: www.intertradeireland.com

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Not working: Where have all the good jobs gone?

Labour economist and author David Blanchflower discusses how unemployment figures are becoming less important to wage growth and economic performance, believing underemployment to be the best and most accurate measure.

David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and a former external member of the Bank of England's interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), says that despite claims that many leading economies are at or reaching full employment, labour market slack is behind weak inflation and low wage growth.

Blanchflower believes that current forecasts of weak growth for many economies, such as Ireland’s and the UK’s, are too optimistic and bases his assumption on the fact that many economic forecasters appear not to have learned from errors of the past.

Defining these errors, Blanchflower focusses on the UK and points out that in 2008-09 central bankers missed the emergence of the recession and had still 30

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not recognised it nine months after it had started. “It wasn’t that they didn’t have any foresight, they didn’t actually have any hindsight and that raises a problem when considering the current economic outlook,” he says.

Another error, he believes, was the implementation of austerity, which he describes as an “unmitigated, reckless disaster” and which he says explains much of today’s fractured political and economic outlook, including Brexit.

“It looks to me that the mistakes that were made in 2008 are being repeated now and there is every prospect that the UK is already in recession,” he states.

Offering context to his argument, Blanchflower highlights that while some may believe that UK policy postrecession has been successful, the reality is that the recovery from the 2008

crash in the UK is the third slowest recovery ever, behind only the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and the Black Death 600 years ago.

Blanchflower points to the assumption that existing low unemployment levels means economic prosperity, recognising that the labour market has often been the major gauge of economic prosperity and that reaching full employment (3 per cent of the total labour force idle at any time) is often associated with economic boom.

In response, he poses the question: “If the UK and US are at full employment, how come so many people are hurting?”

The labour economist believes that much is do with overly optimistic forecasts.

Using the example of the Bank of England’s August 2008 GDP projection based on market interest rate

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expectations, which projected no recession, despite the fact that EU economies had actually been in recession for about six months and the US’s longer still, Blanchflower highlights the UK GDP estimate for Q2 of 2008 as +0.2.

“That completely threw me, I had been saying the UK was in recession,” he admits.

“Actually, what happened was that the estimate didn’t get revised down to a negative until July 2009 and so you’d have to wait until then to recognise two successive quarters of negative growth in the data. What was first estimated as +0.2 growth actually became -0.7 growth and what turns out to be true is that the original estimates were horribly wrong because policy makers and statistical analysts are much too optimistic.

“The reason this is so relevant is because I think this is probably where we are currently and the figures are overly optimistic.”

Turning to the period after the recession, he points out that the original OBR productivity forecasts for 2010-2017 and the subsequent 20 forecasts, based on outturn data, were far more optimistic than the eventual outcome (see figure 1).

Blanchflower believes that forecasting optimism is also diagnosable in the labour market.

predicted. Diagnosing this, he adds: “The assumption was that wage growth would mean revert and go back to 2008 levels, meaning wage growth in the order of 44.5 per cent. This is the forecast that has always been made but wage growth has not mean reverted.”

“Despite the fact that output doesn’t pickup and productivity doesn’t rise, you still keep saying it’s all going to be fantastic and it never turns out that way. You also say wage growth has been really weak but don’t worry, wages are all going to pick up because we’re nearly at full employment.”

Pointing to 23 successive MPC wage forecasts for the period 2014–20, Blanchflower highlights how “optimistic” forecasts have constantly been revised down. Taking 2015 as an example, the original forecast made in 2014 for 2015 was a 3.75 per cent increase in wage growth. The subsequent revisions were Q2: 3.5 per cent; Q3: 3.25 per cent; and Q4: 3.25 per cent. However, the outcome was much lower at 2.4 per cent. This is a similar story throughout the forecasts.

So why is the wage growth so weak?

Blanchflower outlines that real wages in the UK are some 4.5 per cent below what they were in 2008 and that real wages are much less than they were for the same period, something which should not be the case if the UK was at full employment.

“What you see each time is that the same forecast is always being made despite the evidence to show that these were wrong 22 times.”

“Wage growth is expected to slow in the year ahead, according to the latest research from pay analysts XpertHR”, he says. “Pay awards over the past year have typically been worth 2.5 per cent but there is less optimism for the coming year, with a going rate of 2.1 per cent expected to emerge over the next 12 months, much less that the AWE Total Pay single month growth which averaged at 3.5 per cent but had many exclusions.

Blanchflower outlines that despite a pick up in wage growth in the UK and the US over recent years, wage growth has done nothing like what forecasters have

“Similar data in 2008 suggested that we were in recession and it appears to me that at the very least growth is going to be very weak.”

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Figure 1: Successive OBR productivity forecasts (output per hour) for the UK; 2010–2017 120

Successive forecasts June 2010 115

2009 Q1 = 100

March 2017 Outturn 110

105

100

95 2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Note: Solid lines represent the outturn data that underpinned the forecasts at the time (the dashed lines).

Source: ONS, OBR

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10.5

Figure 2: UK Unemployment and Bell/Blanchflower underemployment rates

9.5

Underemployment rate (SA) 8.5

Unemployment rate (SA)

7.5

6.5

5.5

4.5

3.5

Underemployment Blanchflower previously authored the book ‘The Wage Curve’ which looked at how the unemployment rate impacted wages and prior to 2008, the unemployment rate kept wages down because of the availability of other workers.

“It turns out that post-2008 my wage curve book is wrong,” he states. “The unemployment rate is now irrelevant for wage determination and what matters is the underemployment rate.

“If you want to explain the fact that a variable has not mean reverted you need to explain it with a variable that has also not mean reverted and so the new labour market variable is the underemployment rate.”

He adds: “It appears that instead of wages being impacted by things at the external margins, ie the labour market, they are now actually being impacted at the internal margin.

Blanchflower defines underemployment as a worker who carries out a set number of hours but would like to work more hours, believing these underemployed staff are inadvertently keeping the wages of those working their desired hours down.

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“When recession hit in most countries the number people who said they wanted more hours, rose sharply and there was a fall in the number of hours that fulltimers wanted their hours reduced by.

Even though the unemployment rate has returned to its pre-recession levels in many advanced countries, underemployment in most has not.

“Underemployment replaces unemployment as the main influence on wages in the years since the great recession and this largely explains the lack of wage pressure and why central banks have been wrong.”

Blanchflower believes that a misunderstanding of labour markets is driving mistakes in economic growth predictions and that even though unemployment rates are at historic lows in many countries, this does still not suggest that those country's labour markets are close to full employment.

unemployment), which was overestimated by central banks when wrongly raising rates. Taking the UK’s 2008 experience as an example, he points to various business surveys such as the Bank of England’s agents’ scores, an EU’s Commission sectoral survey of the UK and consumer perceptions which all show declines at a time when the recession had not yet been identified.

The academic draws comparisons with similar data occurring now of a steady decline of similar scores. “We’re now in a territory for many businesses that we haven’t been in since 2008. When this happened in 2008 it predicted that was coming was going to be horrible and that is a concern.

“Underemployment replaces unemployment as the main measure of labour market slack in the post-recession years,” he states.

He concludes: “The phenomenon is that we have seen error upon error despite clear signs that structural change has occurred. There is a clear desire to seek business as usual but that is no longer where we are. I don’t think we’re at full employment and I think the NAIRU is likely to be untrue. If we were at full employment then wage growth would be taking off and it’s not.

Blanchflower believes that a greater focus on business sentiment could be more valuable in assessing wage growth predictions than the NAIRU (nonaccelerating inflation rate of

“As it turns out, underemployment proves to be the most important variable and that’s an explanation to why people are hurting and why I think recessions are coming.”

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Ombudsman expects considerable number of tracker mortgage decisions The Central Bank’s Director General for Financial Conduct told the Committee that the failings within the banking sector had been a systemic and cultural issue whereby some had failed to halt such behaviour even after they had been warned. This claim came less than a month before KBC Group Executive Director Jonathan Thijs was forced to apologise for saying that “all of this tracker mortgage stuff” was “annoying”.

Derville Rowland said that despite being given “clear instructions” to “stop the harm” once investigations into the tracker mortgage scandal had begun, onsite inspections of some banks revealed that they had failed to do so.

The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, Ger Deering, has told an Oireachtas finance committee that he expects to make “a considerable number” of decisions on tracker mortgage complaints over the course of winter.

The Ombudsman told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and Taoiseach that he had been dealing with 1,174 tracker mortgage complaints at the end of November having received 374 new cases over the first 10 months of 2019. These cases included AIB customers who had been told that they were wrongly denied tracker mortgages, but the committee member and Fianna Fáil spokesperson for finance, Michael McGrath TD, noted that the “prevailing rate” for such mortgages would have been as high as 7.9 per cent.

The Central Bank published their final report into the entire ordeal in July 2019, saying 40,100 borrowers had either been wrongly refused mortgages or given the

incorrect rate for the cheap mortgages linked to European Central Bank mortgage rates.

The Ombudsman told the committee that he plans to publish a synopsis on the initial tracker mortgage decisions taken by his office in January and then to publish progress reports either quarterly or biannually. Central Bank officials told the committee that banks will have to review how they handled customers if the ombudsman finds against them, with the banking industry said to have ring fenced over €1.1 billion in order to pay future fines, refunds and compensation related to the matter and banks are said to fear that more yet may be needed.

Rowland further told the Committee that €693 million had been paid to 98 per cent of the 40,500 customers affected. When it was put to her that this figure represented a rise of 400 on the total number included in the Central Bank’s July report on the matter, she explained that the combination of a data lag, which had made some information inaccessible at the time of the report’s publication, and more complaints being lodged during the investigation had meant that the number had risen once again.

Speaking in October, she said that 11,000 complaints had been made to that point and the figure of those outstanding was down to 126 at the time. Rowland also told the Committee that the Central Bank had strengthened their approach to supervision of lenders and that while their supervisory work was complete, they would continue to monitor the outcome of any complaints, appeals and court cases.

Also giving evidence in October was the Central Bank's Director of Enforcement and Anti-Money Laundering, Seána Cunningham, who told the committee that the Central Bank are examining the actions of senior individuals with a view to possibly imposing sanctions. Cunningham demurred when asked if the Central Bank were “hopeful” of sanctioning individuals, saying that they would go where the “evidence leads us”.

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Brexit and constitutional futures The Tánaiste Simon Coveney and former MP David Lidington in London before a recent meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

The Good Friday Agreement, with its overwhelming endorsement on this island, represented a major constitutional moment that should have made more of a dent on orthodox British constitutional legal thought than it has to date. That may still change, writes QUB’s Colin Harvey.

Whatever happened to the new beginning? As the term Brexit suggests we (everyone living here) have an intriguing relationship to an event and process that often appears to be happening to us, without majority agreement, and with differing views on the appropriateness of the mitigating measures in the Withdrawal Agreement and Protocol. Arguably, the absence of agreement to Brexit itself, from two constituent parts of the UK, stands as the most significant problem. That this is cast as a political argument, with no constitutional legal traction, is at the centre of a dilemma. A dilemma that

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raises larger questions: How did we get to the point, post-Good Friday Agreement here, where its principles have garnered so little practical constitutional legal weight within the UK, but have gained such widespread international recognition and acclaim (including within the Protocol)?

All the wishful thinking about a more legally pluralist UK, the talk about new forms of constitutionalism – and our unique constitutional circumstances – confront the granite reality that is a Brexit brought about by a UK-wide vote, and the enduring hold of traditional

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principles of British (or should that be English) constitutional law.

That is one reason why so many are now considering alternatives. The entitlement to hold a view on our constitutional future is hardwired into our supposed ‘new beginning’. The key is that conversations must be guided by the values of the GFA, and that new configurations follow informed dialogue, respectful debate and proper planning.

My own view is that this island is already in a detailed conversation about the constitutional future but there is a habit of neglecting the work completed or underway. Lazy, dismissive shorthand prevails. At its worst it reveals a condescending attitude towards civic leadership that takes place outside of approved, orthodox settings. Forgetting of course that it was courageous civic leadership that underpinned the entire peace process.

Pretending that there is no work done or this is not in fact happening is unhelpful, especially if the collective ambition is to encourage and promote responsible planning and preparation. The island is on a path towards concurrent referendums on whether people would prefer a united Ireland (and thus EU membership) or wish to retain the Union with Britain. Making use of the arrangements to test the principle of consent/right to self-determination, at the appropriate time and with proper preparation, should provoke no one.

Planning has commenced; governments will catch up.

Brexit alters the nature of the discussion because Irish reunification means automatic return to the EU for this region, as confirmed by the European Council in April 2017, and as President Macron recently observed. That might be a good or a bad thing depending on your view of the EU, but it will inform the debate.

What we are discussing is in full alignment with the constitutional legal orders of both states, an agreed, democratically endorsed foundational constitutional compromise underpinned by domestic and international law. This stands behind everything else that has

“Making use of the arrangements to test the principle of consent/right to self-determination, at the appropriate time and with proper preparation, should provoke no one.” emerged since 1998. Pull it away, label it provocative, dangerous and divisive, dismiss it as decorative and you risk the whole edifice collapsing even further. A different approach is required. We need to talk openly and honestly about how we share this island in the years ahead.

An inclusive and properly organised approach to providing a framework, including, but not limited to, political parties would end speculation about the criteria and required evidence that will trigger such a step. There is now an urgent need for clarity and certainty, and both governments will have a vital role in filling in some of the existing gaps.

Those calling for prudential planning and preparation are the responsible participants on this island at this time.

I have suggested a date to be agreed by both governments, within the framework of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference: 22 May 2023 (which would be within the lifetime of the next Parliament – if it runs its ‘full course’ – a big if in the current context). A Monday is not ideal. But sufficient time to allow for the required levels of preparation.

Such an approach would end speculation about the criteria and required evidence that will trigger such a step, but will not end disagreement and challenge on, for example, the question to be asked and who will be eligible to vote. Both governments, through a new Joint Declaration and associated domestic law and policy changes, would set and implement the framework, following extensive, wide and deep

consultation and engagement, including, but not limited to, political parties.

Measures outlined would embrace a Citizens’ Assembly and a Minister for reunification in Ireland, with appropriate North-South inclusions and linkages to ensure informed and evidence-based dialogue. The matter should not simply be left to the Secretary of State and the flexibility to engage in the way noted is, arguably, already there in the provisions of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, and in the way they have been judicially interpreted to date.

To conclude, it was inevitable that Brexit would prompt constitutional reflections.

As these conversations advance, and they will, it should be recalled that the values of human rights and equality are also central to the Good Friday Agreement. These values now map on to urgent matters such as climate justice and environmental rights. Vital ingredients in the ongoing dialogue about how we share this society. If this is genuinely about a better and therefore ‘new Ireland’, then we need to hear much more about how the lessons of our history will be learned, north and south.

Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. He has served in several leadership and management roles at Queen’s including: Head of the Law School; Director of the Human Rights Centre; Director of Research (Human Rights); and as a member of Senate.

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Data governance for the public sector OpenSky Data Systems hosted a round table discussion on the future of data governance in the public sector, bringing together key stakeholders from across the public and private sectors.

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William Flanagan

Declan Sheehan

Brinsley Sheridan

Denis Parfenov

Alieen McHugh

Owen Harrison

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Roundtable public data; private data is the data generated by citizens, with their phones, payment and travel cards; public data is non-personal and non-sensitive data produced on the citizens’ behalf at the taxpayers’ expense. Private data needs to be secure, while public data has to be open, which require resources.

Owen Harrison We all accept the value of data, but organisations must make sure they know what data they hold, that they can access that data, that they understand what it represents, how it has been processed and who is responsible for it. All of those things are required to be present and explicit in an organisation in order for data’s potential to be reached. In a smallscale organisation, all those aspects are

well known. People either know them or are within arm's reach of someone who does. In a large-scale organisation, it’s clear to see that such awareness and understanding isn’t so apparent. In order for those aspects to be readily available, you need strong governance.

Denis Parfenov Every single day, more than two and a half quintillion bytes of data are produced, which is by one estimate two hundred and fifty thousand times more than printed material in the US Congress. This data can be roughly split into private data and

William Flanagan The people on whose behalf the data is being controlled, need to have confidence in those who are controlling the data.

The public tend to be quite harsh on public 4

William Flanagan

Aileen McHugh

Declan Sheehan

William Flanagan is the Commercial & Technology Officer of OpenSky, of which he is also a cofounder. He is also the executive sponsor of OpenSky’s key accounts. With 20 years of experience in technology to his name, his work has spanned a wide and varied group of domains, including the health, environmental, transport, housing and financial sectors.

Dr. Aileen McHugh is Head of Operations at the Property Registration Authority (PRA) with responsibility HR, Finance, ICT, Corporate Services, Casework and Customer Service, Spatial Data and Mapping, Quality, Governance and Compliance.

Aileen previously spent over 17 years as a civil servant in the Houses of the Oireachtas, which included working with several parliamentary committees. Aileen holds a primary degree in Public Administration, a Masters in the Management of Change and a Doctorate in Business Administration.

Declan is the Chief Information Officer in the National Transport Authority. He oversees all of the technology and information projects in the Authority, which include the Leap Card family of systems, the travel information systems, the taxi regulation systems, Rural Transport systems, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics and the Corporate systems. Declan was previously senior programme manager on the Leap Card system.

Owen Harrison Owen Harrison is a Principal Officer in the Office of the Government CIO in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. He has responsibility for the implementation of the Public Service Digital, Data, and Shared Applications strategy under the Public Service ICT Strategy. He has a BSc in computer science from DCU, and a PhD in computer science from Trinity College Dublin.

Denis Parfenov Denis Parfenov is an entrepreneur, open data advocate, founder of the Data Management Hub and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Ireland. He is also a member of the Creative Commons Global Network, a member of the Open Data Governance Board and the Open Knowledge Ambassador for Ireland.

round table discussion

Why is data governance important? What are the benefits of effective data governance?

Our partners have been involved in a project to preserve the works of Alexander Kluge, a German author and film director.

It was estimated that digitising Kluge’s works would require storage for two petabytes of data at a cost of $70,000$100,000 per year; that’s data of just one creative and productive individual out of seven billion of us. There is also the environmental cost, for example one of Amazon’s data centre which is under construction near Blanchardstown will consume four per cent of Ireland’s energy.

The moonshot benefit of effective data management is that we, the global community of individuals are enabled by trusted data to address global problems collectively.

Brinsley Sheridan Brinsley has 30 years’ experience in enabling and driving leading edge ICT projects in commercial semi-state and the public sector. His most notable positions were/are Head of IT in Bord na Mona where I was responsible for 120 system implementations across 47 locations in Ireland, UK, France and USA serving 600 users and his current role as Head of ICT in the Residential Tenancies Board.

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bodies when there’s an absence of data governance.

For example, when there is a breach involving a social media site, the question is often “why wasn’t the regulation stronger?” A data breach involving a public sector organisation would be even more harshly viewed by citizens. The concept of data governance, and the lifecycle of the data is fundamental to the overall picture of public confidence. Confidence is absolutely key, as the leaking of personal data could have quite serious consequences for the security and safety of an individual.

Aileen McHugh

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What are the key elements of data governance? Can you identify any opportunities to strengthen data governance?

William Flanagan The important thing is the governance structure. For example, you get a lot of data sharing between central government and local authorities, but the processing of that information could be done in 31 different ways if there’s no one national data dictionary. In many cases, there’s no reason why there couldn’t be that national data dictionary. One of the difficulties would be that they’d have to adopt these standards in 31 local authorities as well as the central body, which is easier said than done. Defining standards is relatively easy but adopting them across public sector bodies is a challenge.

Infrastructure RT

In terms of the PRA, both registration, and the collection of personal data for that purpose, are mandatory. An extra duty of care therefore arises with a public register containing personal data.

Some people wrongly think data governance is the same as ICT governance. We hold paper-based records going back to 1708. It’s also about the management and conservation of archives, for example, and making them

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accessible and available online. Equally, it’s about decision making authority for bulk data requests. If the public sector wants to innovate, we need to fully understand data governance requirements in context, to enable the emergence of appropriate space for data sharing. We need to have in place a mature stage data governance regime to retain trust and provide evidence of full regulatory and legislative compliance.

We are all looking after a national asset. The benefit of this data is trust from the citizens. As a government organisation, trust is a huge issue with the citizen. The way to get trust is accurate management of that national asset. Is it secure? Look at the Public Service Cards and how that affects IT and MyGovID. It is key that we have accurate, secure data and that we are producing databases with proper data governance that we can trust.

can imagine that it is a greater challenge across the whole of public sector.

Declan Sheehan

We regard data as a corporate asset that both our organisation and the wider economy can get value from.

Data governance is about putting in place the relevant rules and regulations to extract maximum value from that asset. In terms of governance, we need to ensure the data quality, put in place the common data business language, securing it and putting in place privacy by design so we protect the citizen’s data whilst making it available to the wider economy for purposes such as innovation.

Brinsley Sheridan

Accuracy is huge. In our own data centre, we have to improve our accuracy. It’s the accuracy of your contacts; are you dealing with individuals or companies? How do you identify them? The deduplication of our data sets is also a huge problem. Things like EirCode have helped hugely. We are putting in a new system now to try and leverage the EirCode to stop the duplication process, but it does come down to people and companies. You need a centralised data dictionary identifying what everything is where we identify them in the same way across the board.

An entity is different to different people.

Declan Sheehan

There are many owners of data within an organisation.

Finding a way to govern that data across an organisation has been the biggest challenge for me. My organisation has 15 different functional areas, each with their own data set. Finding a way to administer data governance across the organisation is a challenge. I

Aileen McHugh What we found useful was that we revised our Governance Framework this year and for the first time it became necessary to conceptualise data governance in the context of protecting our data assets in a changing data landscape.

The act of articulating our issues in a public facing strategic document greatly assisted us in capturing all the various forces at play and in visualising how to establish an appropriate way forward both in terms of innovation and sharing our data. However, more guidance from the centre is required to assist all public bodies in this process.

Denis Parfenov There is an acronym, FAIR making data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Time is very important. On average, a digital object has a lifespan of just 18 months and a hard drive lasts between five to 10 years. We need to think decades ahead at the very minimum. At present data disappears much quicker than

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Roundtable we are able to preserve it.

Trust is paramount; the authenticity and persistence of data has to be assured algorithmically for future users of data.

Owen Harrison

Declan Sheehan We obviously put those systems in place some time ago and invested a lot of time in putting in place a varied and wide collection of data sharing agreements. It would be very useful if there was a standard data sharing agreement that we could use for these organisations, and for future organisations that we want to share data with. It would also be very beneficial if there was a standard tool or technology for sharing data between organisations in the public sector.

sharing, such as data cataloguing. We can’t share what we don’t know we have.

We need to pursue technological solutions to encourage interoperability, what we want to get everybody to is API-based integration.

Then, we need to address stewardship. We need each organisation, if they have a lot of data, to start appointing Chief Data Officers and ensuring that is an explicit role within your organisation. All this ties in with the prospect of centrally released guidance that would support that.

Infrastructure RT

How do we improve data sharing across government?

William Flanagan We need to champion data sharing across government.

One way to do that would be to hold up a shining light to case studies where sharing has been done already. There was a really good example in the NTA in the taxi regulation space. Taxi regulation is an ecosystem of stakeholders across the public sector and beyond. A multifarious collection of stakeholders’ data sharing is at the root of all of that; the governance is what

Owen Harrison All that makes complete sense.

Our department is actually obliged to produce a data sharing agreement template so that is on the way. To stimulate sharing, the first thing you need is legal clarity as to whether you can share data.

That was the primary purpose of the Data Sharing and Governance Act from a sharing perspective. The idea was to make it explicit how you go about sharing data between public service bodies and in what cases you can share if you don’t have an alternative form of legislation that gives you explicit rights to share.

After that, there are a number of elements to stimulate

Denis Parfenov

Technology is pretty easy, incentivising people to do the right things is much more difficult and it takes a lot of time and effort. Firstly, it has to be legally mandated that data is available within an agreed period of time intervals and under a service level agreement. In order to invest time and money utilising the data, one needs to have legally binding assurances that it will be accessible in the future under pre-agreed standard.

Secondly, in countries like Ireland, with relatively small

populations, it can be difficult to make the business case for data re-use. Data has to be seen as a component of public infrastructure, similar to public roads, public parks and public libraries, all of which serve a purpose and are all designed, built and maintained by the State. The data has to be seen as a digital public infrastructure. Applications which built on the top of the public data will change in the same way we change bicycles or vehicles, but at the same time the road remains the same and you know it will exist tomorrow.

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From a broad public service perspective, the key elements of data governance start with a broad vision of what we want from data and how it can serve the public. From that vision, you need a series of standards and rules to make sure that vision gets manifested – like data dictionaries, systems for use, processes to follow. Once they are acknowledged as needed, we need an authority who has the power bring about those rules. The recent Data Sharing and Governance Act established that who: the Minister of Public Service and Reform has the authority to bring about rules and procedures governing public data on a regulatory footing.

After you set a vision and the who, you need compliance.

Compliance can come from systems, for example, restricting data processing, to auditing initiatives. The Act provides for a Data Governance Board, that board has the powers to monitor compliance and report to the Minister.

underpins the ability to do all of that. In that case, it’s an enabler that gives the operational benefit to an ecosystem that otherwise would be much more expensive to the NTA. The same goes in PRA, where external organisations need access to their records to perform title checks on properties. Data sharing is fundamental to these examples and the governance must be there as an enabler. The technology is usually relatively straightforward but having robust data sharing agreements is fundamental to success.

Aileen McHugh I agree in relation to legal mandate. The Statistics Act is an example of clarity and authority which details exactly what’s required of public bodies, even in relation to envisioning how and what data might be collected by organisations in the national interest. I think we need greater clarity about the new legislation on data sharing. We also need more case studies and scenario testing. Public sector bodies are very diverse, and it would be useful to learn 4

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about more unusual stories, rather than narratives solely in relation to the larger government departments. In addition, beneath the Data Governance Board there could be a Data Governance Officers Network where common issues could be aired. This forum would be representative of all data holding organisations. In the PRA we have developed a specific governance and compliance model. We do have a CIO, but data governance forms part of oversight and is distinct from ICT and all other support functions.

Brinsley Sheridan If you look at data sharing, you’re typically talking about data coming out of databases and going onto the open portal and the Government has .csv files, but if you’re looking at data sharing in general, you have to look at all the files people have that are not traditional data. We went through an exercise of identifying all of this as part of GDPR and it put discipline on us. We are an organisation of 100 people and we had millions of files. We had data

stewards appointed in all the five functional areas but what can’t be underestimated is the job to actually classify and categorise them into a taxonomy. There’s the question of whether that taxonomy should be central or organisation specific. I think the point we’re making about how different we are at the ground level stands. There are parts of it that can be centralised and then whatever other classification should be up to you. We have put together a taxonomy but haven’t implemented it yet because the job is going to be huge. We culled all our old data before GDPR but to get value from those files you have to classify them, archive them and have a data retention policy. The effort that good governance requires can’t be underestimated.

How important is open data? How can we leverage open data to facilitate innovation in public services?

Denis Parfenov We see open data as a public library of the 21st Century,

where open data can be defined as non-personal data produced on the citizens’ behalf and at the taxpayers’ expense and available for use and re-use to anyone for any purpose. Ireland has made excellent progress in opening up data sets, but to make a difference in someone’s life, the data needs to be converted into information; information has to become knowledge; knowledge needs to be taken into account while making evidence-based decisions and the decisions must enable actions. It takes money, energy and human efforts to manage data, so it has to make differences in people’s lives, from things as simple as informing about train schedule times to enhancing our collective intelligence by enabling scientists to work collaboratively across the globe on addressing global issues.

Owen Harrison The obvious aspect is the sparking of innovation and making a positive impact in a real sense for people. There’s also the element of trust and building trust with the public.

Without trust, we can’t deliver the services and innovations we want to. Open data is a pillar of establishing trust in that people can interrogate the policy decisions made by seeing the same data Government sees and can assess the quality of decision making. If organisations are instilling an open data culture, it’s a reflection of data maturity within that organisation. On the issue of trust, a recent survey was measured that 67 per cent of people in Ireland trust the Government with their data. A world leader on this is Norway at 70 per cent, so we’re not doing badly.

Aileen McHugh A good example of data sharing relates to mapping or what is now geospatial data.

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We all originally used OSi paper maps and then this moved into the digital environment. For my organisation this is base data.

Other source data is inputted including title documents and maps lodged by applicants for registration. This is how we produce our title information which ultimately becomes publicly accessible knowledge in relation to property rights.

Open data becomes easier but entails greater risk in the digital environment and that‘s why data governance has emerged as such an important issue.

William Flanagan The entire lifecycle of this data is being funded by the taxpayer, by the time it’s made public they can see where their money went. I think open data is a really good way to demonstrate value to the public. Strategically, it can be a tool to stimulate economic activity too; for example, Transport for London’s strategy is to build APIs, rather than apps, and put them out there to the marketplace. Someone out there is going to unlock the latent value in that data.

Security of open data is also an important consideration because technology has moved on. What was thought to be unhackable before is being found to not be so. For example, it would be crucial that open data is strongly anonymised, so as to prevent personal identifiers being reverse engineered via Machine Learning or AI engines.

Brinsley Sheridan I think if all public service bodies asked the question of how important open data is in someone’s life, they would start to have a clearer understanding of when to release data. Take our rent index for example, there’s a housing crisis in the country and all of a sudden, a data set that nobody really cared about

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Declan Sheehan There are huge advantages to cross-sector data sharing. The NTA are huge consumers of data, particularly in our transport models. We are also producers of data and we’re beginning to use other data sets to enhance our data. We are applying machine learning techniques to these to identify very useful insights that we would never have seen through traditional data analytics. This is one of the big advantages to open data.

What one area should we focus on to improve data governance in the future?

Brinsley Sheridan Accuracy. All data, public or private, must be representative, accurate, secure and relevant. I really believe that MyGovID is a fantastic idea, but the way that it has been presented hasn’t

been great. I want to know who someone is so my data is accurate, so that I can give you the service you want and inform government policy to make proper decisions.

There’s an education process there for the public in general to accept the need to grasp something like this.

Declan Sheehan It would be really good to have a central data governance forum put in place across public sector bodies that would help us all move to a more consistent place when it comes to managing data going forward. I would also like to see some standard data sharing agreements put in place to make it easier to transfer and share data.

Aileen McHugh Greater clarity on the accountability and legal aspects is needed along with a central network of Data Governance officers so that all our voices are heard when policy is being made.

Consistency is also important in aligning the interacting and competing legislation, policies and values, some as drivers and others as restraints, on further development of data sharing across government.

we’re asking for is organisations to invest in governance because you get all the benefits from that.

Inevitably, people will ask why they should invest money and resources in data governance.

We have to help people recognise the value of putting data governance in place and champion data governance at the individual organisational level.

Denis Parfenov The data management technologies evolve constantly, and algorithms know no borders. The example that springs to mind is the social credit system in China, where the Chinese Government combines criminal records, medical records, social media and everything else to assign a social credit score to 1.4 billion of its citizens. Sooner rather than later, the world will be fuelled by data algorithms that will be used everywhere in the world, by state bodies, banks and insurance companies, to determine, for instance, our mortgage rates and insurance premiums. We need to make sure that it’s not only big enterprises that benefit from

utilising data, but we, individuals around the world benefit from data-driven economies and societies of the future.

Owen Harrison

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previously becomes front and centre. We had to share our data set anomalised with the ESRI because they’re doing hedonic regression analysis.

What makes that compelling is that, with close to 80 per cent of our addresses EirCoded, we can use other data sets to show the local electoral area boundaries. We can now give very accurate data as to what the average rent of a three-bed semi-detached is within an electoral area just by sharing correctly with a number of bodies.

We need to implement the Public Service Data Strategy, which sets out 31 actions to create a coherent and mature data ecosystem across the Public Service. MyGovID adoption, one of the strategy actions, is a perfect example of a key enabler for accurate data processing and protecting people’s data. It’s a very successful project, growing by about 5,000 verified accounts per week. It’s an exemplar data project that all public service bodies should use to make sure they’re protecting people’s data. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection did a recent survey and 87 per cent of people think the data collected should be reused between public service bodies so they don’t have to provide it again.

People get it, they trust us with their data, they see the value in sharing — so let’s get on and do it.

William Flanagan We need to sell the idea of data governance as a suite of tools that’s going to improve the management of data across the public sector. What

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Environment Ireland

Speakers: Cathy Maguire, European Environment Agency; Les Carberry, Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment; Dave Foster, Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs; Richard Bruton, TD, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment; Laura Burke, Environmental Protection Agency and Aurel CiobanuDordea, DG Environment, European Commission.

Environment Ireland 2019, organised in association with the EPA and Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, saw record numbers of attendees.

Over 350 delegates came together to discuss the major issues threatening the Irish environment. The day opened with a Ministerial address from Environment Minister Richard Bruton TD and visiting speakers from the EU Commission and the European Environment Agency and was sponsored by Arthur Cox and Irish Water. We are excited to announce that the 2020 event will be expanded to a two-day conference, to receive details of the 2020 conference please contact info@environmentireland.ie.

Richard Bruton, TD, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

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Environment Ireland delegates.

Oisin Coghlan Friends of the Earth asks a question of the speakers.

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Sean Finlay, Geological Survey Ireland; J Owen Lewis, IIEA Climate Group and Rónán Kennedy, NUI Galway.

Pat Goodman, European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) and Fiona Regan, DCU Water Institute.

Laura Rafferty, Arthur Cox and Tanya Ruddy, Fehily Timoney and Company.

Niall Gleeson, Irish Water and Florence White, Ervia.

John FitzGerald, Climate Change Advisory Council and Oisin Coghlan, Friends of the Earth.

Cormac Madden, ESB International and Eimear Cotter, EPA.

Eamon Gallen, Irish Water and Laura Brien, Commission for Regulation of Utilities.

Delegates at the NVM exhibition stand.

A delegate visiting the ICRAG exhibition stand.

Speakers: Diarmuid Torney, Dublin City University; Deborah Spence, Arthur Cox; J Owen Lewis, IIEA Climate Group; Laura Behan, Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and John FitzGerald, Climate Change Advisory Council.

Niall Gleeson, Irish Water adresses the conference.

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Anne- Marie Casey, ESB International and Maeve Thornberry, Maeve Thornberry and Associates.

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conference report

eolas issues

Housing Conference 2019 John O'Connor, Housing Agency; Fidelma McManus, Beauchamps; John Hannigan, Circle Voluntary Housing Association; Sharon Cosgrove, Oaklee Housing and Gerard Cahillane, National Development Finance Agency.

The Housing Conference 2019, sponsored by Beauchamps and Opensky, took place on Tuesday 3rd December at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Dublin.

Delegates heard from a range of speakers including those from the Housing Agency, National Development Finance Agency, Oaklee Housing and Dublin City Council. Topics focused on the delivery of the Rebuilding Ireland plan and included the challenge of delivering new homes, transforming housing through innovative technology and working towards net zero emissions for new social housing. If you would like to attend the 2020 conference, please contact info@eolasmagazine.ie.

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1: Michael Cronin, OpenSky Data Systems; Susanna Lyons, Housing Agency; Dáithí Downey, Dublin City Council; Fidelma McManus, Beauchamps; Brian Rankin, Choice Housing and Dara Deering, Home Building Finance Ireland. 2: Niamh O’Grady, Mason Hayes & Curran and Anne Doyle, Beauchamps. 3: Susanne McCabe, Opensky Data Systems with Denis Bergin, Bank of Ireland. 4: Paula Shannon, Simon Clear & Associates and Dominic Stevens, JFOC Architects. 5: Susanna Lyons and David Rouse, Housing Agency. 6: Peter Ayton, Fold Housing Association Ireland and Colm Ward, South Dublin County Council.

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Health and care services report

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Strengthening health care Paul Reid, Director General of the HSE, talks to Owen McQuade about his first impressions of his role leading the health service and his priorities for the coming year.

Reflecting on his first six months, Paul Reid relates his first impressions of his role in leading the HSE. Prior to taking up the role he undertook a “very useful” and comprehensive stakeholder engagement campaign meeting with An Taoiseach, ministers, HSE staff, staff representative bodies, patients, patient advocates, clinicians, and the top 30 mangers in the HSE. When asked what came out of that exercise, he replies: “Firstly, a sense that the organisation was in trauma and turmoil because of what happened around the CervicalCheck controversy. Secondly, we were at war with a lot of our key stakeholders including government, the department, our trade unions and our

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staff didn’t feel connected with senior leadership.” The major impression he came away with from the exercise was that he is going to have to spend a lot of his time on stakeholder management.

“We have to start to gain their trust and confidence. If we can get them all working with us towards the same end goal that can be very powerful. The trust wasn’t there. The Government, the Department, the media, the public all thought we were working against them.

That was the key focus of my first six months; working with all our stakeholders,” he explains.

commitment from health care staff: “I spend a lot of my time out and about. I commit a day and a half every fortnight to make sure I am out in the services.

You get a real impression of the commitment of staff to services. They are very committed to their job and that comes through in any staff satisfaction survey. They are very committed to health care and working in challenging conditions.”

Moving onto other impressions he lists three, the first being the level of

The third impression is around the capacity and skills set of senior

The second impression is that the HSE centre is “not strongly connected enough with the service delivery system of hospitals and community settings”.

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Having launched a new service plan in mid-November Reid frankly states: “We are not providing the service that the Irish public needs or expects. That’s just a statement of fact.” However, he believes that this can mask “a lot of quite positive experiences”. From an overall health perspective Irish people are living longer, with a lot of key clinical diseases having better treatment. People are living longer, healthy lives which Reid says is positive. “That puts extra demands on the health service but overall, it’s a positive thing.”

The HSE carries out a national patient survey each year and it gives very positive experiences for those that have gone through the system with a hospital stay. Their experience is actually quite positive, with 84 per cent stating positive/satisfied experiences between out emergency department, admissions and discharge experiences. “There are a lot of positives about the Irish health service and we need to recognise and celebrate that more,” says Reid.

The last impression is that there is a real challenge to strengthen financial management process and controls “to ensure predictability for the funds that government gives us. It has been one of my early priorities”. When asked if that is the result of poor process or just a case of everyone thinks there is an endless supply of resources, he replies: “We don’t have an endless budget. We have to manage within budgets, each month, each unit. We don’t have strong financial systems that are not connected but that’s not the early solution. The early solution is good financial management month by month. It’s getting financial discipline. We’ve done some good work on that in the last six months.”

This is reflected in the fact that the budget overrun last year was €800 million and this year it is expected to be less than half that, which is a good

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managers: “Coming in I thought the primary focus would be building leadership capacity across the organisation. I thought it might be 60 per cent leadership and 40 per cent management in terms of challenge but I’ve come to the view it’s more management; it’s probably 70:30 management to leadership in terms of challenge. We have to get the fundamentals right in management.

That’s about how we manage people, the service and finance.”

Reid at the launch of the HSE’s mychild.ie service.

“We now have a new board in place, and they are mapping out their corporate plan for the next five years.

That’s an important milestone and it will be a roadmap for our future.” turnaround in six months from Reid’s perspective. “We had over run in the first five months of this year. This [reduction in overrun] has given government confidence and it has helped me secure some extra funding for next year. We are building the trust and confidence with government in terms of financial management.”

Reform When asked does he feel management is sometimes held responsible for things that are more policy than management, Reid insists that “it’s not really a distinction”. “For example, looking at people on trolleys can be a function of how the system is managed and how the processes are run,” he says. “There can be huge variations between hospitals.

Sometimes it’s variation in the local population but other times it’s down to operational issues. There are clear policy areas such as investment profile for health in the future.”

Reid says there was a similar discussion

this morning involving himself, the HSE board chair and the Minister. HSE has now a new board and it is very connected with policy formation, “because we know what’s happening”.

“That’s something that will be important for me and the HSE board and executive will look to influence that. I fully respect the role of the Department in policy formation but, going back to my Civil Service days, you can’t have good policy unless you think the implementation through,” he says.

The HSE announced the formation of six regions as a key part of its reform plan in late 2019. Reid has much experience of reform, not least from his days at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, where he was chief operating officer. “The starting point for me is the patient. Those that are using the services. I start there and work back. I’ve done that in every job I’ve been in, whether in the private sector from a customer perspective, or my days in the not-for-profit sector with Trócaire. In looking at what patients want he says: 4 47

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patient’s perspective?’ If they are not adding value we have to stop them. We also have to strengthen the connection between the delivery system and the core. The core has to support the frontline services and not the other way around. I’m concerned how the centre has grown to what it is currently,” he states.

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Moving on from structural issues, to softer issues such as changing the culture of such a large organisation, he replies: “Personally, where I get most of my energy from is working with the frontline teams and staff. We need to look at how we provide the supports they really need and to give visible leadership and focus on listening and the culture [of the organisation].” Reid acknowledges the huge challenge in changing the culture of an organisation of 119,000 people dispersed across the country.

A new board Reid with Minister for Health Simon Harris TD and HSE Chairman Ciarán Devane.

“The first thing they want is for the service to be delivered locally and they want to have a local connection and identity to services. Secondly, they want their services to be integrated. Currently, we have a hand-off for customer experience whereas it should be a handover. If they are in a primary care centre and they have to be referred to an acute setting, or vice versa, that should be a seamless handover. Patients want services local and integrated and that’s why I’m supportive of the [new] regions.

It’s not about geography, it’s more about integrated devolved decision-making and budgets etc.”

Thirdly, Reid believes that HSE has to transform the way the patient engages with the system. He says that it has to move away from the primary care route into the acute setting through the emergency department towards community-based services. This means strengthening GP and pharmacy services and extending our primary care centres to have diagnostics. “That means fundamentally changing the route to market for the patient,” he adds.

Reid says that this will be reflected in future budgets, with more resources going to primary care.

This year’s budget has already started that shift and any extra funding this year

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reflects that new transition – this includes one million extra home help hours, extra nursing home support schemes, 1,000 staff into the community side – public health nurses and primary care nurses.

“The best way to help the acute side is to build-up capacity on the community side.” When asked if this will be difficult as it will take time to move the centre of gravity of the health service from primary to secondary care, Reid says that they have no choice but to start this transformation now. “The reality is that we have 127 primary care centres around the country. Some of them are state-of-the-art buildings but don’t have the resourcing or capacity or diagnostics that they need and that can be a huge relief for the acutes. When you look at emergency department attendances there is a significant proportion that doesn’t need to be in the emergency department.”

Turing his attention to the corporate centre of the HSE, he has asked the question to colleagues, “what should the core be about?” He acknowledges that there will always be the need for central functions such as clinical standards, quality standards, controls of levels of employment and financial oversight. “We now have to look at the centre and see what we currently do. The primary test should be, ‘is it adding value from a

Reid says he has just caught breath after an “intense” first six months. Looking to the future and, particularly 2020, he sees the new board of the HSE having a pivotal role. “We now have a new board in place, and they are mapping out their corporate plan for the next five years.

That’s an important milestone and it will be a roadmap for our future.”

Looking to 2020, the detailed design and business case for the six new regions will be the focus. “However, you can’t have the whole system waiting for the new.” Therefore, some early priorities will include things that Reid can start now, such as strengthening clinical and medical resourcing and their voice within the organisation. This will also include strengthening the resources of the chief clinical officer, “a key function relating to quality of patient care and standards.”

He will also start “that shift towards primary care and well as strengthening the leadership of the organisation and then recruit for the new regional organisations”.

Although there are many challenges in his new role, Reid is optimistic and says he has seen a lot of good practice and innovation that needs to be built upon.

“We need to be a more process driven organisation. I see some great examples of care in hospitals and community settings. We need to scale these up and then roll them out across the system,” he concludes.

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Members of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, including chairman Fred Barry, appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in December in order to provide TDs with an update on cost controls for the project.

With the overall price of the project still unclear and constantly rising in estimations, Barry told the PAC that the cost would rise by €50 million as a result of inflation alone if current rates of 7 per cent remain.

The estimated cost of the project has risen from €800 million in 2014, to €983 million in 2017 and again to €1.43 billion in 2019. That figure rises to €1.79 billion when costs associated with equipping the building and IT are factored in. These estimates do not include the costs of family accommodation, a research centre, possible excess construction inflation or any other possible changes to clinical standards.

When asked by Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster if it was true to say that nobody actually has any real idea of what the final cost would be, Barry answered that the matter is “not a yes or no” question.

“The contractor will make claims, we will resist them,” he explained. “It would be a surprise if some of those claims don’t

stick before the job is over. It’s true we can’t say exactly where it [the price] is going to end up.”

Munster responded: “I think from that response, it is fair to say that the €1.7 billion is aspirational rather than reality.”

Munster further pressed Barry on why the minutes of meetings of the board where construction inflation had been discussed were redacted and on the board’s experience in building hospitals.

“I have built no hospitals on a greenfield basis,” Barry responded.

When asked by Munster if this lack of experience would allow “contractors to play you [the board] for fools”, Barry responded: “I accept that there may be others much better than me at the job.

But I was asked to do it, so I’m not really here to interview for the job.”

The board was also pressed on an expenditure of €285,000 up to October 2019 on public relations services, which were “extraordinary” according to the

independent TD Catherine Connolly. “On a PR company, I think it is totally unacceptable, I think it is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ money,” the TD said.

“There is something seriously wrong if you are resorting to a PR company.”

When asked by the Labour TD Alan Kelly about the resignation of Paul Quinn, the Government’s Chief Procurement Officer who resigned from the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board in August 2019, Barry replied: “I don’t want to say anything in the context of offering a critique, good or bad, of an individual who has left.”

Quinn, whose job it is to ensure that government is getting value for money in its investments and infrastructure projects, exited the board as costs were revealed to be spiralling once again. His resignation was not the first of the project, with original board Chairman Tom Costello and Project Director Joe Pollock having also tendered resignations before him.

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Health: Confidence and reform Despite announcing plans for reform of health services and Sláintecare investment in mid-2019, Minister Simon Harris TD is facing a motion of no confidence early in 2020, as opposition parties seek to force an imminent election.

Following the narrow defeat of a motion of no confidence in Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy TD in early December, opposition parties have now turned their focus to Simon Harris as the health system enters its historically most difficult months of January and February.

Harris has stated that he is unconcerned about a motion being brought forward, however, with the numbers looking increasingly unfavourable for him and the Government, he has also taken the opportunity to welcome a general

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election and called for scrutiny of the opposition’s plans for health.

Harris, it could be argued, in attempting to implement reform has enjoyed a leniency in terms of criticism in recent years that would usually not be afforded to those holding other portfolios.

However, revelations about the scale of the overspend on the National Children’s Hospital in early 2019 appeared to change that and while Harris fended off defeat in that instance, scrutiny has intensified throughout a rolling stream of

crises, such as those of CervicalCheck, a dispute over the funding of new drugs, the HSE’s budget overrun and the final costings of the deal secured to end the nurses’ strike.

Criticism has all but overshadowed progress which has been made. For example, the restructuring of health services to establish six new regional health areas, where new bodies will be given control over their own budgets, which will be allocated on population needs. Accountability and transparency

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a new GP contract to bring about universal free GP care by 2028 and an increase in hospital beds.

The appointment of Paul Reid as Director General of the HSE has been welcomed, recognising his track record for delivery and his ability to bring fresh input into health reform.

The Action Plan was followed by Budget 2020 which announced finding to recruit 1,000 frontline staff by 2021, the expansion of free GP care to children under eight years old, a €100 million investment to help reduce waiting lists and an additional one million home help hours.

In August, the Minister unveiled the Sláintecare Action Plan 2019, an ambitious document laying the foundations for the Government’s decade long plan for reform the health service. Amidst the many changes proposed within the document were plans to remove private healthcare from public hospitals, planned negotiation on

However, many within the health sector were quick to read between the lines of the investment announcements. For instance, it’s estimated that such is the gap in supply and demand for home help hours that even with an additional one

million hours, there will remain a deficit of roughly the same number again.

Critics point to the absence of a clear price on Sláintecare’s reform ambitions as a weakness in the proposals.

Changes to the system will likely cost multiples of billions and without such funding being readily available, revenue raising initiatives, likely to be in the form of taxes, will be necessary.

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should be increased, with each area better able to address issues most prevalent to its population.

Amidst a series of scandals, the Government has repeatedly portrayed Ireland as a high spender on healthcare.

To some extent, this figure has been used to argue that increasing expenditure on healthcare is not achieving value for money. The OECD rates Ireland as one of EU’s highest spenders on healthcare per capita.

However, what is often omitted is that these figures incorporate public and private spending. State-funded healthcare, on an individual basis, ranks Ireland much lower in comparison with its counterparts.

Harris has also moved to make the health system more accountable to patients where mistakes have been made. The Patient Safety Bill he brought forward has been approved by Cabinet and will make it mandatory for health service providers to disclose serious patient safety incidents to health watchdogs.

However, shadowing over proposed progress is a series of failures and crises that will dominate the legacy of the Minister’s tenure. The INMO recently conducted research that over 100,000 patients had already gone without beds in Irish hospitals in 2019 by October, only the second time the 100,000 figure has been breached. Challenges in delivering frontline services are set to increase as winter pressures intensify and the Minister will have to defend the Government’s policy direction.

On top of those acute pressures, public perception of the competency of the health service is in decline. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists review of CervicalCheck recently found that 15 per cent of cases reviewed were missed opportunities to prevent or diagnose cancer earlier, a final cost for the National Children’s Hospital has yet to be established and the future funding of Sláintecare is far from detailed. Reform of the health service will need to face these challenges if it is to deliver change.

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Better communication means better patient outcomes Nobody is infallible, things do go wrong sometimes but it is how we approach these errors and communicate them to our patients and their families that will have the biggest impact on building the trust and confidence integral to the doctor-patient relationship. The Medical Council is determined to work with stakeholders to improve how doctors communicate with patients but outstanding problems concerning recruitment and retention must also be addressed to allow doctors to work effectively.

Communication is central to the smooth running of any industry but none more so than that of medicine, which depends on the sharing of clear concise information between doctors and their patients, writes Bill Prasifka, CEO of the Medical Council.

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So often doctors meet with patients at difficult times when the communication of information is just as important as the manner in which it is delivered, and the support offered.

However, complaints to the Medical Council have illustrated the emergence of a concerning trend in modern healthcare in the form of poor communication from medical practitioners. As published in our annual report we received 396 complaints with 19 per cent of those falling into the communications category in 2018, the 52

same percentage as in 2017.

Complaints relating to communications vary greatly and can include a misunderstanding, a disagreement or a personality clash. Sometimes a complaint may fall under other categories as well as communication. Issues of poor communication are not acceptable – either to the patient or the Medical Council and we are dedicated to improving the patient experience by supporting doctors to deliver the highest standard of care.

The Council provides guidance to doctors on matters relating to conduct and ethics through its Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners. Good communication has always been considered essential by the Council. A quote from our ethical guide reads: “Good communication… is central to the doctor-patient relationship and essential to the effective functioning of healthcare teams.”

The relatively recent publication of the Scally report demonstrated that communications continues to pose a challenge to be addressed within the system. Dr Gabriel Scally’s findings tell us that better communication between doctors can only lead to better outcomes for patients in terms of both safety and experience.

Communication issues have arisen among doctors as well as in the doctor patient relationship in the form of bullying. The results of the Your Training Counts survey showed concerning prevalence of bullying among medical professionals. Over 40 per cent of respondents to Your Training Counts 2017 reported that they had experienced bullying and harassment in their post.

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Bullying and harassment were not specifically defined as terms but were open to the interpretation shaped by personal experience of each trainee who responded. Since YTC began in 2014, reported bullying among trainee respondents has increased by over 6 per cent.

These figures do reflect experiences noted in published Medical Council reports into inspections of clinical training sites. The Medical Council has a zero tolerance approach to bullying at all levels among registered medical practitioners.

Doctors have a duty to protect and care for their patients but the environment in which they are now expected to do so is tougher than ever before as practitioner numbers dwindle. Worryingly as the numbers of applications to the register decrease the number of voluntary withdrawals continue to rise and we are now at a point whereby the flow of those leaving is likely to surpass those joining in the coming years.

We need a comprehensive and coordinated approach to managing this situation to ensure that we have the right doctors in the right place at the right time to care for the Irish public at the highest possible standard.

Data from our Workforce Intelligence Reports indicate that we are over reliant on foreign trained doctors in a bid to fill the gaps left behind by our emigrating graduates. We are trying to deal with these shortages by relying on costly alternatives such as locum services which can adversely affect the continuity and quality of patient care.

Evidence of this is seen in the swelling of the General Division of the Register

Medical Workforce Intelligence Report 2018 3,000

2,576

2,714

2,547

2,500 2,000

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1,958

1,500 1,000

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948

1,453

1,054

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resulting in a drop in the number of those engaged in specialist training and experts in particular fields within the profession.

In 2018, there were 2,190 doctors who enrolled on the Medical Council register for the first time. The primary growth reported was in the General Division of the register.

Most new entrants to the register were on the General Division and educated outside of Ireland. Doctors from countries outside of the EU cumulatively contributed more new entrants to the Irish register of medical practitioners than Ireland.

This article is not about doctor shortages but rather about patient safety, however we have now reached a point in which neither can be mentioned independent of the other. Without adequate staffing resources we cannot protect patients and if patient safety standards are to be met it will necessitate an increase in practitioners.

We need more attractive working conditions and increased opportunities to enter medical training programmes in order to guarantee substantial, highquality workforce recruitment and

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Voluntary withdrawl

retention, both short-term and long-term.

Doctors leaving the register are citing resourcing shortages as well as a lack of appreciation and difficulties in obtaining work life balance among reasons for travelling abroad for work where such criteria are met.

We are essentially cultivating world class professionals and watching them leave to benefit another healthcare system to the detriment of our own. If Ireland continues to fail to address these cultural and practical challenges that exist within the system this situation will evolve, and the problems will escalate even further.

Advertorial

Although the standard of medical education remains high in Ireland, we are continuing to lose a large proportion of our highly trained graduates as they look abroad for better working conditions.

Reports into hospital training sites reflect the high standard of medical education offered despite ongoing challenges in recruitment and retention within the healthcare system.

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Here once again we see the need for a greater emphasis on communications skills. It may be that those involved are not aware they are behaving inappropriately as they struggle to work in an ever more pressurised environment. Given the pressurised environment of the modern medical profession in this country coupled with staff shortages and overcrowding it is unsurprising that the strain has started to show.

As the regulatory body for medical practitioners in Ireland the Medical Council remains committed to protecting patients and supporting doctors, especially in these difficult times.

T: +353 1 498 3100 W: www.medicalcouncil.ie

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Digital transformation in HBS Assistant National Director, Digital Organisational Change at the HSE, Maria O’Loughlin discusses how HBS (Health Business Services) staff are driving digital transformation utilising digital technologies, underpinned by a culture of innovation, creativity and curiosity.

A desire to be digitally relevant to customers, staff and patients is driving the desire for transformation within Health Business Services, the business division of the HSE, says O’Loughlin.

As a large organisation with responsibility for pay and pensions schemes through to management of HSE’s 2,500 health properties, processing of invoices and annually processing 5,000 new staff appointments, the HBS is constantly analysing new ways to transform the service for maximum efficiency and greater impact.

Digital transformation progress and ambition within HBS is multi-faceted. Big programmes of transformation are centred around the like of robotics, where AI is supporting finance, the HR

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leaving process and the Garda vetting process. HBS will soon implement the first customer relationship management (CRM) solution across the health service and the National Integrated Staff Records and Payroll (NISRP), which initially moved 18,000 people on to a single source of truth for staff records and allows a self service portal for staff to access information, is being expanded.

Additionally, as the largest land owner in Ireland, HBS is looking at a national estates information system to make estate management entirely digital and more effective. The National Distribution Centre (NDC) is enabling technology to facilitate efficiencies with just in time (JIT) and lean methodologies delivering what is needed at the right time to front line staff. The Integrated Financial

Management System is being integrated across the country, allowing for the joining and upgrading of financial systems nationally for a centralised view of financial data, allowing reports.

O’Loughlin explains: “We have a lot of big innovative programmes across HBS, but we also have a lot of smaller projects and a lot of people working in HBS. It’s massively important for us that it’s not just the big programmes where we are focussing transformation but that there is a culture of creativity and innovation spread throughout, so that everyone comfortably feels that they can make a difference in digital transformation.”

Having recently joined HBS, O’Loughlin, an organisational psychologist, outlines her ambition to see change, digital or not, centred on people. To this end, she

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highlights a well-circulated statistic within HBS that the components of any digital project are only 20 per cent the technology, 30 per cent the process and 50 per cent culture and organisational change.

“It’s important for us to enable our people to be supported throughout change and to make sure they are confident and comfortable within it. If people are not happy with what we are doing, if they don’t see the vision or mission, then it won’t happen. People will be disengaged, and we won’t move forward.”

O’Loughlin outlines ongoing work to “make our culture our advantage” in HBS, adding that within the organisation “digital is every person’s job”.

With this in mind, she highlights that ‘why?’ is a reoccurring question behind any ambition for change and explains that the improvement of employee satisfaction, creation of innovation and a strengthening of reputation are key drivers.

“We need people to be confident and happy with what we are delivering. We want our staff to be proud of the organisation they work for and to achieve this we must engage with them on change.

“Organisations need to embrace change as an unending process. It shouldn’t be something that has a beginning and an end. This is why it is important to us in HBS to digitally transform. We need to continually foster a readiness for change.

“It is important that colleagues feel they have a combined influence to create the change. It also highlighted that employees want to input in change and to be part of the conversation at many points of time. If employees are supported to hold positive views about the need for organisational change and educated about the positive implications for themselves and the wider organisation, this can have a positive impact on the organisational climate and change readiness.”

O’Loughlin simplifies three core areas of

focus for introducing change: emotional, intentional and skills. On emotional, she describes the necessity for trust in the vision/mission. On intentional she adds the need for a key focus on collaboration, discussing the need for organisations to leverage the power of collaborative knowledge to stay attuned to an ever-changing environment.

This element ties in with O’Loughlin’s

“We are trying hard to be open and transparent in eHealth Ireland and to open up a social mindset that we have where we can collaborate cocreate and cooperate at a higher level than we have done before,” she says.

are going to remain human in nature and

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“Digital health, and indeed any type of digital transformation, is all about the people who are delivering the change.

The technology, of course, is IT but the transformation and change itself is all about social and behavioural science.

Embracing that is a positive way to move forward.

“It’s important for us to enable our people to be supported throughout change and to make sure they are confident and comfortable within it.” third core area of focus in skills, which she explains is about ensuring that staff feel relevant and useful in a world where technology is changing the future of jobs.

“For us, it’s about communicating to our staff that digital transformation is not all technical. A lot of our skills going forward we are working to establish how can people work together to communicate, collaborate and be more analytical about the challenges we are facing.”

In a report on digital dexterity, Gartner Adding: “The intentional element is about establishing the plan and getting an attitude for ‘let’s do something’. It’s also about establishing how we do it. If there is no plan, then there is no potential for people to buy in to the journey.”

highlights research that suggests 25 per cent of midsize enterprises will attain digital transformation leadership status by 2022 by systematically enhancing digital dexterity. A recognisable need for organisations to engage and take

Giving a context, O’Loughlin says that HBS are forward looking on their next strategy to 2023, talking to their staff about the strategy’s ambition, staff involvement and future planning. “Just as important to our plan will be our people strategy around how we are going to bring people along on the digital transformation journey and enable them to deliver on the three-year outlook. We do that through lots of engagement both within and outside of our organisation.

“A key component of any digital transformation will be the plan around data. We have lots of data within HBS and we have identified a desire to be a leader in data utilisation, however, we need a roadmap to get there and a plan to get our people there.”

advantage of digital has seen the HSE roll out their ambassadors For Future Health Skills Programme, which was piloted within HBS and introduced customised upskilling plans in a range of areas including internet safety and security, online pay slips, GDPR and even for HBS pensioners.

Concluding O’Loughlin summarises: “While technology will be an enabler of digital transformation, the key component will be the ability to get people to feel like they are a part of change and to accept the chance to change. Transformation cannot be something that is forced on people, it’s something we want to work with them on.”

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Nursing and midwifery regulation in a time of change midwives in recent years. This has implications as much more work is involved in assessing these applications, with multiple processing steps to ensure recognition of qualifications, verifying transcripts and experience, and because there may be requirements for periods of adaptation in Irish healthcare settings to ensure applicants meet the standards and requirements for registration.

Nursing and midwifery education

The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI) maintains the largest register in healthcare, with 76,000 registered nurses and midwives. Nurses and midwives make up a third of all the healthcare staff in Ireland. There is no doubt that nurses and midwives will play a pivotal role in the overall direction of travel for healthcare in Ireland in the coming years, writes new NMBI CEO Sheila McClelland.

Changes in healthcare

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We are already seeing the emergence of big changes at the European and national level, such as: •

in the nursing and midwifery workforce itself;

•

ageing populations with more complex needs and multi-morbidity;

•

re-imagined healthcare models and reconfigurations, such as Sláintecare; and

•

technological developments.

Clearly nursing and midwifery are going to be impacted hugely. Nursing regulation also has to keep up, protecting the core missions of patient safety and the integrity of the professions of nursing and midwifery.

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How does NMBI, as the nursing and midwifery regulator, prepare for the changes and challenges?

We need to deliver, and continually improve on our statutory obligations.

These are maintaining a Register of Nurses and Midwives; setting standards for Higher Education Institution nursing and midwifery courses; setting professional standards for nurses and midwives; and considering complaints against nurses and midwives who practise in Ireland. But there are also challenges.

Register of nurses and midwives and a global workforce We have experienced an increase in the number of applications, and first time registrations, from overseas nurses and

We will focus considerable time and effort on future-proofing nursing and midwifery education and standards, to ensure nurse and midwives have the correct skills and competences. We need to do this because we now know at a national and European level that there will be more emphasis on community based care, preventative care, multidisciplinary teams, changing roles and decision making rights, technology adoption, revalidation and continuous professional development.

Fitness to practise Considering complaints against nurses and midwives is always serious. It is a time of anxiety if there is a complaint about you as a nurse or midwife, or if you are making a complaint about the practice of a nurse or midwife. We are very aware of the impact that being involved in a complaint has, and NMBI staff try to guide people through the process with sensitivity. We will continue to be empathetic to the needs and expectations of both complainants and registrants. We recognise the need to get quicker at undertaking initial investigations, and progressing and completing the entire process. New legislation will help us deal with cases more expeditiously and we are putting in place a range of measures to realise improvements regarding timelines.

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Complaints

NMBI: Planning for change For us in NMBI, we need to be prepared for changes and we need to be agile in our response to them, but it cannot just be rhetoric: it has to be real and tangible.

Those working in nursing and midwifery, and patients, need to see and feel it.

We are currently in the process of finalising our strategy for 2020-2022. This will set the direction for NMBI and nursing regulation for the next three years. It will have specific, associated yearly work programmes, to deliver on our role amidst all the changes and to respond to those changes.

Contribution to policy: data, research and evidence It is important to emphasise that you cannot plan for the future without having an evidence base and data, and you cannot plan for the workforce of the future in healthcare without ensuring nurses and midwives have the right education and training.

We can all see the data gaps at this stage. In 2018 alone, we saw it with the Public Pay Commission for its report, the

data limitations identified in the Health Service Capacity Review, and the recommendations by the Taskforce on Staffing and Skill Mix for Nursing about the need for more data, more evidence and frameworks.

Workstream Three of Sláintecare is, of course, looking at workforce planning, new ways of training and the teams of the future. NMBI is gearing up and preparing to develop and maximise our contribution to the big policy debates. We can do that by providing the evidence base and data for registered nurses and midwives working in Ireland. Here is where NMBI has a huge role to play, in collaboration with our other regulation colleagues, policymakers, nurses and midwives, and the public.

Our new digital system which will assist with all of this is under development. In making this investment we need to be sure that we are future proofing the Register, and the information we are holding on the Register.

NMBI Strategy 2020-2022 As part of our new strategy: •

Our new digital platform will capture

Training location

2015

2016

2017

2018

Ireland

1,389

1,321

1,391

1,342

517

1,034

1,748

1,018

343

1,040

1,545

1,443

2,249

3,395

4,684

3,803

EU excl. Ireland Non-EU Total Overall

the required data for all registered nurses and midwives; •

We will work with stakeholders to develop a regulatory framework that reflects the multi-disciplinary models of healthcare envisaged under Sláintecare while also ensuring that nurses and midwives’ scope of practice remains understood, defendable and safe;

•

We will continue to regularly review our code, education standards, and guidance, to ensure they remain relevant to what nurses and midwives are experiencing on the front-line; and

•

We are going to streamline the process of engaging with NMBI for nurses and midwives, allowing them to pay online, giving easy access to records and data, and enhanced self-service.

At the end of the day, patient safety is what drives the NMBI. There needs to be an evidence base to what we do regarding policy, and we need to be linked and fully integrated with the rest of the healthcare system and other regulators. The changes are coming and happening, and we need to be responding, to ensure nursing and midwifery can fully develop and expand as professions, and nursing regulation remains relevant.

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Breakdown by training location of first time registered nurses and midwives

health and care services report

Fear of legal action, litigation, and insurance costs, can discourage candour, but if we think back to our mission, we need to learn from mistakes in order to improve patient safety outcomes. In light of recent developments in healthcare, there is now more reflection about whether there are better ways to deal with complaints. The Professional Standards Authority in the UK has been leading the way on this issue of what to do when something goes wrong, by looking at what regulators can do to embed a culture of candour. The regulators in the UK signed up to a statement in 2014 to encourage candour, and in the recent review we see that they have made progress in encouraging candour amongst their registrants since then.

T: 01 639 8500 E: communications@nmbi.ie W: www.nmbi.ie

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Digitising and standardising healthcare Head of eHealth and EU Engagement at the Department of Health, Elaine Colgan, talks to eolas about the digitisation of Northern Ireland’s health service records, the standardisation of health care and how both are “enabling care and empowering patients”.

“At the start of our journey, around 2010 and 2011, we had so many systems working in their own silos, that contained their own information and didn’t share that information with one another, which meant that clinicians couldn’t share that information efficiently between them,” Colgan explains. “Everybody has had experiences, either directly or indirectly, where people have told you they had to repeat everything they had told the last person they had seen. The solution for Northern Ireland for this was what we call NIECR – the electronic care record.”

The NIECR was created through a portal approach, placing it atop the Northern Ireland health system’s existing and disparate data and sucking it out and placing the data in one place for the first.

“The feedback has been phenomenal,” Colgan says.

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The NIECR now has 25,000 current active users, 30 per cent of which are nurses. “Right across the community, social care, health care, primary care, all the clinicians are using this now,” Colgan says. She outlines the key successes of the process as follows: • Key information summary: “If you have a long-term condition, this allows your information to be shared across all the people who are tasked with your care. Normally that type of info would be held in your GP system, but now if you have to go to hospital for whatever reason they well be able to access your records”; • The Diabetes pathway: “This has enabled standardisation of care for all Diabetes patients in Northern Ireland.

Standardised care is the first step

because you can’t digitise if everyone is doing things their own way.

Standardisation is one of the trickier parts of the digitisation of healthcare and the Diabetes pathway has been a great success story in that regard”; • Radiology: “Radiology orders are able to placed in one place now, bringing together the three regional systems. So that reduces the need for repeated tests and clinicians can see your previous test results”; • Results sign-off: “A blood test or laboratory test of some kind needs to be signed off when the results are in, usually by the doctor that ordered it.

This will now flag if results haven’t been signed off and because the results can be signed off digitally, this now makes the process a lot quicker”;

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• Immediate discharge summary: “This has huge benefit for patients. If you’re in secondary care or hospital or have been an outpatient, instead of having to take a handwritten letter to your GP, this enables a standardised letter to be sent to your GP at the instant you leave. So as soon as you get to your GP, they will know what medications you’ve been given, what treatment you’ve undergone and any follow-up treatment that they are required to give you”; and • Cross-border radiology: “This is mainly for patients in the border areas in the west or in Donegal who might get treatment at the cancer centre in Altnagelvin. Radiotherapy referrals can now be done cross-border and our counterparts in the south can make a referral for the north.”

It is, Colgan says, once you get passed the behind the scenes technical work that you begin to see the patient-facing benefits of digitisation and standardisation of care, including eTriage, and My Care Record, the patient portal version of the NIECR. eTriage takes place when a patient attends their GP, who decides that they are unable to treat the patient and refers them to secondary care. What had previously been a paper-based system that created multiple opportunities for letters to get lost along the way is now done electronically, enabling the secondary care technician to see why the patient has been referred and allowing them to assign an appointment in minutes. “The best time that we’ve managed is somewhere around half an hour from the patient leaving the GP to having an appointment,” Colgan says.

“That’s not the case for everyone but this has certainly reduced the timescale from a referral to getting an appointment.” The system was named an Award-Winning Solution at the 2018 UK Public Sector Paperless Awards.

The first phase of the rollout of My Care Record has been specifically targeted at dementia patients. “We’re taking the agile approach,” Colgan explains. “Phase one began August 2018 and what that includes is high-level information: your appointments, educational material about your condition, shared files that can be shared with those providing your care and a circle of care where you can nominate a family member or friend, which is particularly relevant for dementia patients, to be able to view

“There’s a queue of conditions and clinicians who want to be able to interact with their patients. It’s about capturing and evaluating the benefits so that two or three years down the line we have the evidence that this is working.” your portal on your behalf and check your appointments and where you need to be.

“Phase two will start soon and introduce goal setting. You can set your own goals, dietary or fitness goals, or a clinician can set a particular goal in the case of your treatment or care. Hopefully in the summer, phase three will introduce medication – so you can check online what medication you should be taking and how much if you’ve forgotten or lost the box – and your laboratory results.”

While managing the present transitions, the Head of eHealth is also looking to the future: “We’ve got Citizen Identification. At the moment we’re in the pilot phase, where the clinician knows the patient sitting in front of them and they onboard them, but when we think about scaling this up for all Northern Ireland patients, we have to ask how we identify patients and how do we enable them to identify themselves to access their records?

“We need to think about consent, particularly for children, and ask at what point do we stop automatic parental

access to their records? We’ve started with dementia patients, but we need to think about where we go next. We’re thinking possibly Diabetes, but there’s a queue of conditions and clinicians who want to be able to interact with their patients. It’s about capturing and evaluating the benefits so that two or three years down the line we have the evidence that this is working.”

This future vision involves a completely role-based system, where a specific clinician, such as a physiotherapist, will have certain access approvals. “This is going to be a regional system, in order to do that all care will now be standardised using the one system rather than variations of the one system,” Colgan says.

“The question is what happens to all that work in the other patient portal: the answer is that there’s a definite need to press ahead with that work because it will take at least five years to have full rollout of this programme and we want to be able to have patients move seamlessly from one programme to the other,” she concludes.

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The future of EMEA healthcare health and care services report

What is being done locally to address these pressures?

There are efforts in motion to stem the increase in demand and provide better care for those already in the system. Yet, there is not just one magic bullet that will resolve the problems. There are many different streams in play and the timing of each will align at different points before the full benefits are to be realised.

There is a growing change in the culture of the healthcare providers across all countries that recognises the importance of technology in delivering better quality care to higher numbers of patients within a much shorter timescale. In parallel, there are also initiatives to work across other areas of national, local governments and social care to address poverty, unemployment, poor education, smoking, alcoholism, drugs, obesity – some of the biggest causes of poor health across the world.

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A Q&A session with James Norman, Healthcare Chief Information Officer, EMEA at Dell Technologies on the current state of healthcare and its organisations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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What are the commonalities across healthcare organisations within EMEA?

treatment for previously terminal

Although subject to different regulations and priorities, it’s striking how similar healthcare organisations are across the globe. Health systems from other geographical locations assume healthcare provision in EMEA is working towards the same standards and pathways of care. The aging population due to improvements in lifestyles and

push care out of the secondary sector

diseases has led western countries to face new challenges in the provision of care. We’ve seen an increase in the cost to provide care, along with a move to into the primary sector to prepare for this rise. While care pathways are being redesigned to provide more care closer to home, the number of people entering emergency departments continues to add to the pressure already within the system.

What are the trends we are seeing in healthcare technology?

There are several technologies that have the potential to really change the way healthcare is delivered and to improve the outcomes to patients including digital pathology, augmented reality and virtual reality, artificial Intelligence, and robotics.

When looking at digital pathology, it’s surprising it has taken so long to gain traction, especially with the potential benefits so great. The tipping point for adoption has been the combination of AI algorithms into the software, to support faster identification of potential areas of concern on the slides as well as the ability to enhance diagnosis through recognition of similar patterns and the associated reports from other patients slides. By using AI to categorise and index slides, it’s possible to search through millions of patient records and slides to identify patients whose pathology slide is similar in nature to the

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Other technologies such as 5G and IoT will revolutionise the provision of care out in the patient’s home and other nonclinical settings. The Internet of Things is a maturing technology that is widely used in healthcare and improvements in digital outputs from monitors and reduction in the size of patient monitoring devices have really helped to accelerate adoption. Once 5G becomes a common standard across the globe, we will see a rise in the use of remote monitoring and mobile sensors as the ability to capture more data about the patient in a secure manner becomes possible.

What is needed to support adoption of these technologies amongst healthcare providers?

one being viewed by the clinician. This ability to support diagnosis rather than attempting to replace the clinician by carrying out the diagnosis has helped to break down the barrier to the use of AI in the treatment of patients.

Of course, the reduction in the cost of storage and the increased power of compute have also had a big impact, albeit from a cost and usability side rather than adoption by clinicians. That said, without these improvements in performance and reduction in costs, it would be much harder to embed the technology in mainstream patient care.

Graham Evans, Chief Digital Officer who leads on digital strategy for the what has become the largest ICS in the country

The same can be said for virtual and augmented reality. Until recently, these technologies have been primarily used in the labs to create a vision as to what healthcare in the future might look like.

Now that the computing power to drive the software can be delivered in a standard laptop or tower PC, we are starting to see greater investment in the technology and more use cases being developed as to how it can improve patient care, improve research, improve treatment outcomes and support patients to understand the impact that any treatment might have on them in the longer term.

Companies are now working on the next generation of self-guided robots that no longer need supervision to carry out minor surgical procedures. This technology will be able to deliver lifesaving care in the most impoverished and remote regions across the globe, where access to a clinician is difficult or nearly impossible.

Our automated, integrated approach to infrastructure inclusive of storage, backup, recovery, data protection, and archiving capabilities means that you can secure data, on-premise or in the cloud and better meet regulatory requirements while enabling data to be translated into meaningful insights faster to improve patient outcomes, further innovation, and position your organisation for what’s to come.

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Dell Technologies is providing the technology infrastructure to support a digital imaging for pathology service which will aim to improve health outcomes for up to 3.2 million patients across the North East and North Cumbria (NENC). Working with seven NHS Foundation Trusts across the region, as part of their ambitious integrated care system (ICS), the service will be hosted on behalf of NENC and Teeside-based North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust. The organisation was awarded a contract funded by the Northern Cancer Alliance in a bid to improve health care through the Digital Care Programme.

comments: “How we optimise health services and specifically improve diagnostic services for the benefit of the population we serve is a key priority. Our region has become renowned for advances we make within digital technologies and this move will further herald our commitment to the populations of the North East and North Cumbria.”

Having a plan, a strategy, commitment and budget is only the start of the transformation journey. Innovation throughout will be needed to meet growing challenges. To implement the solutions that can be delivered by these new technologies, healthcare providers need to focus in the first instance on modernising their core IT capabilities.

The saying goes that ‘you can’t build a house on quicksand’. Well the same goes for a digital healthcare solution.

Before any digital transformation can begin, it is important to look at the basics. If moving to a cloud operating model, you will need a balance of private cloud, hybrid cloud, and public cloud options mapped to a specific clinical or business workload. Some applications will need to stay on premise and that means maintaining some level on in house infrastructure.

For more information contact Fergal Murray, Account Executive E: Fergal.Murray@dell.com

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Procurement in healthcare With healthcare in Ireland undergoing rapid and extensive change, National Director of Procurement for the Health Service Executive (HSE), John Swords explains the current state of play in the world of health procurement, including Brexit and the logjam effect of stockpiling.

“If you follow the procedures and process correctly, you lessen the risk associated with challenges that come from industry,” Swords says, setting out his stall for the basics of health procurement, an easy touchstone to return to in a time of flux in Irish healthcare.

Health remains the underlying principle to Swords’s role: “Patient care is the bottom line here,” he says. “Health looks

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after the 17,500 people who attend hospitals every single day. You don’t hear a lot about that, but you do hear about the one thing that has gone wrong.

Sometimes that’s only right because criticism and the correct complaints keeps the service good. There are errors and people suffer for that, so you look at the screening programme and the issues around that. That’s a story on its own around procurement.”

Procurement in health, much like health itself, is a world that has seen plenty of change in the last decade, as Swords illustrates by explaining the duties of his team. “We have sourcing contracts, logistics, procurement systems, corporate procurement, planning and capacity development,” he explains.

“Two of those would have been unheard of about 10 years ago; you wouldn’t have heard about systems although we

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It is a long way from where Swords began in his career, as he explains that innovation brought about by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) and the centralisation of the health system has seen both his role and overall healthcare come a long way since the 1990s. “The bar has been raised, through the development of the OGP, the development of procurement in health and other developments. I go back to 1990 when I was with the Eastern Health Board, we were trying to get the eight health boards together at the time to move onto the HSE and a shared service to where we are now into Sláintecare and all the change and reform happening around that,” he says.

“Each of our areas are complex in their own right and you need professionals.

Our way of working is combining all those professional approaches, of which we are probably the least recognised of all and at some stage, the most important. That gives a mix of how we should be doing our business.

Recognition is a key part of that, and recognition comes in the form of winning or losing in court and thankfully we haven’t lost any recent cases, but they still go through everything, so it is a validation in its own right. The people within that play a major role in its development and brining a good service right down to the patient. Each of our areas rely strongly on the professionals around us.”

Such extensive scope means extensive spend. As Swords details, €3.2 billion addressable spend covers the Section 38s and 39s, with over 700 staff, 2,500 customers, 3,000 locations, 2,700 requests for procurement support and 1,000 deliveries every day. The 2,000 pharmacies around Ireland, delivered to once or twice a day, are not counted in that 1,000. Of the 2,700 requests for supports, Swords says: “That’s high, which is saying that we’re getting there

in telling people that it’s important to follow procurement guidelines every day.

“Managing our spend means that we are accountable. It’s really important the bar is raised. All the work being done by procurement people is raising the bar,” he says. “We’re bringing in a programme of education from next year, from diploma to master’s degree. We need visibility for that. We have a single financial procurement system that is very successful. Procurement plays a huge role in this because purchase to pay is massive in this area. The professionalism it drives is incredible. If you start with a good base in regard to the catalogues. We have visibility of what

complex workload to deal with, but “throw in the market and what’s happening in the world such as Brexit” and more complications arise, but this is an area Swords says Ireland is wellpositioned to deal with.

“A huge amount of work has been done in health for Brexit. We have been asked why we weren’t stockpiling as the UK were and the answer is because we spoke to industry,” he says. “We spoke to over 160 companies on the medical devices side and over 230 companies in relation to areas outside medical directives. Every single one of them said not to stockpile as it would crush the system and cause delays. We have two

health and care services report

should have. You would hardly have thought of compliance as an issue and we have a department for that now to educate people in the Section 38s [the 23 non-acute agencies and 16 voluntary acute hospitals currently within the HSE Employment Control Framework funded under Section 38 of the Health Act, 2004] and 39s [non-acute/community agencies being provided with funding under Section 39 of the Health Act] to tell them that procurement is important and that money must be spent in the way that government has set out.”

“Each of our areas are complex in their own right and you need professionals.

Our way of working is combining all those professional approaches, of which we are probably the least recognised of all and at some stage, the most important.” we’re spending. That helps industry and helps us to explain what we’re looking for.

“We have about 213 frameworks because we do them from the point of view of health. We bring them to the Prison Service, for example, with things such as methadone, medics going into prisons, into social welfare, they’re covered by ourselves. Spend under management is the contracts involved in that, the mini competitions. We’re starting to get very good traction on that.

If you’ve been coding on top of that and you have finance with pre-authorisation of orders, that brings a whole new spectrum to days gone by where everyone was ordering everything they wanted, and nobody could see what they were up against. Professionalising the whole service and the way we do our business cleans that whole area up and gives us direct access to what we want to buy in the future.”

With 49 hospitals, nine Community Health Organisations, the public sector and 12 corporates, Swords has a

to three weeks stock in any given hospital and seven weeks stock in the national distribution centre in Tullamore and the companies have six onwards in their stock.

“We should be able to sustain the initial shock of Brexit. In the UK, by way of comparison, they stockpiled and are not centralised. They were at one stage but outsourced their logistics, contracting and systems, which was a massive mistake that we learned from. They are decentralised at the top because they have no directive. They’re reliant on people doing the same thing at the same time, which doesn’t happen. Medical devices were the area that caused the most concern because the EU decided that they weren’t going to give any derogations and basically pulled the chain on the UK. 50 to 60 per cent of our medical devices come through the UK and would be no longer recognised after Brexit, so we had to move to the EU, which was a massive task. We’re well placed by way of Brexit,” he concludes.

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Increasing mental health supports for second level school children The Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP), the largest representative body for counselling and psychotherapy in Ireland, is seeking a commitment from the Government that effective and timely therapeutic interventions will be made available so that vulnerable second level school children across Ireland can get the help they need, when they need it. Lisa Molloy, Chief Executive of the IACP, writes.

Irish children and adolescents are experiencing mental health issues at an alarmingly high rate. A Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) study reveals that by the age of 13, one in three Irish children will experience a mental health difficulty (Cannon et al 2013). Demand for support is rising for issues such as anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation (Irish Times April 2019). The suicide rate amongst Irish teenagers is the fourth highest in Europe (UNICEF Report Card 2017).

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) tells us that school is one of the most important places for promoting mental health and that schools are best placed to identify children who are experiencing emotional distress. While the Irish Government has been committed to developing programmes to strengthen young peoples’ coping skills and improve overall mental health and wellbeing there is, nonetheless, a lack of enough access to therapeutic supports for second level school children who may be

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experiencing mental health difficulties.

Evidence shows that a range of psychological interventions, including counselling and psychotherapy, are effective in the prevention of suicide and self-harm, and that timely access to them is crucial. We know that access to these therapies remains a significant challenge in Ireland, particularly access to the Health Service Executive (HSE) Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

The IACP proposes that second level school children would benefit from the introduction of an ‘on-call’ therapeutic counselling service, additional to existing arrangements. This service would complement and support the invaluable work already being carried out by principals, guidance counsellors, teachers and other professionals in our second level schools. It can also help to fill the identified gap in onward referrals from schools, where children are generally experiencing lengthy delays in accessing external and state services.

The introduction of a funded ‘on-call’ support service connected to the school would enable access to essential mental health supports in a timely and seamless manner.

UK Experience with school counselling School-based counselling is well established across the UK and has been proven to work and to be cost-effective.

The cost of six school-based therapeutic counselling sessions in the UK, is estimated to be one tenth of the cost of a referral to a community CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) service. The UK Department of Health estimate that a targeted therapeutic intervention delivered in a school costs about £229 but derives an average lifetime benefit of £7,252. This represents a cost benefit ratio of 32-1. In Wales, 85 per cent of those who availed of school-based counselling did not require onward referral to CAMHS.

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James Browne TD, Steve Mulligan (BACP), Jo Holmes (BACP) and Lisa Molloy in Leinster House.

An evaluation carried out for the Welsh Government – assessing the first three years of its school-based therapeutic counselling strategy – indicates that school-based counselling is associated with ‘large and significant reductions in psychological distress’ and that it is ‘consistently rated positively by a range of stakeholder groups and viewed as a non-stigmatising, easily accessible form of early intervention’.

The provision of counselling to school children is a cost-effective, easily accessible, early intervention, which offers professional support for vulnerable children, and adolescents, who are experiencing mental health issues/emotional distress. The IACP advocates that counselling and psychotherapy supports should form part of a holistic approach to the promotion of wellbeing amongst children and young people in Ireland.

The IACP is calling for Government to build on the commitment outlined in the ‘Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice 2018-2023’. This framework states that ‘all schools and centres for education will provide evidence-informed approaches and

Established in 1981, the IACP identifies, develops and maintains professional standards of excellence in counselling and psychotherapy through education, training and accreditation. We promote best practice and the professional development of our members and hold at our core the protection of the public. We represent both the interests of clients and our more than 4,200 members nationwide. If you’re seeking a counsellor/psychotherapist in your area, call 01 230 3536 or logon to iacp.ie today to view our online directory with details of counsellors/psychotherapists in your area.

support, appropriate to need, to promote the wellbeing of all their children and young people’. The IACP’s proposal for development of an ‘on-call’ therapeutic counselling service for second level school children is very much in line with this objective.

A nationally representative General Public Survey commissioned by the IACP and carried out by Behaviour and Attitudes (2019) finds that 88 per cent of Irish adults strongly support therapeutic counselling services to be made widely available for children and young people in all Irish schools. The need has been identified and the support is palpable, so

the next step is to make this a reality.

In this regard the IACP is seeking government support for a feasibility study to be carried out in a number of secondary schools to determine how best to establish this necessary service.

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Call to build on commitment to wellbeing in schools

About the IACP:

The foremost hope of the IACP is that any child attending secondary school will be able to access the help they need, when they need it.

T: 01 230 3536 E: ceo@iacp.ie W: www.iacp.ie

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First climate adaptation for health plan announced health and care services report

snaps. The island of Ireland currently has the highest rate of excess winter deaths – defined as “the number of deaths that take place during winter months compared with the rest of the year” – in Europe with 2,800 excess deaths per year. A 2013 study also found Ireland to have had 294 deaths in the last three decades related to heatwaves. It is said within the Plan that “while climate change projections see generally warmer winters that may reduce the risk of cold-related illness, significant health impacts will continue from extreme cold snaps and more frequent heavy precipitation events during winter, including snow, sleet or hail”.

The Plan comes with eight key recommended actions as they relate to these environmental risks:

The first Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the health sector, a five-year plan covering 2019-24, was announced in October 2019 by the Department for Health.

The plan was developed under 2018’s National Adaptation Framework and the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, using the Sectoral Planning Guidelines for Climate Change Adaptation, also drafted in 2018.

The plan applies to the Department of Health, the agencies of the Department, including the HSE, HSE service providers and non-HSE health sector services.

A joint Department-HSE team developed and drafted the Plan, drawing on the views of the public, stakeholders and literature reviews conducted by the Department. The implementation of the actions set out by the Plan will be overseen by a newly founded Climate 66

Change Oversight Group for the health sector, which will be led by the Department.

The main areas of focus for the Plan are UV radiation and sun exposure, as well as worsening air pollution due to climate change. As it stands, over 11,000 cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year and the National Cancer Registry predicts this figure to more than double by 2045. In 2014, the European Environment Agency estimated 1,050 premature deaths occurred in Ireland secondary to particulate matter.

The Plan also covers the types of severe weather events that are likely to become more frequent, such as windstorms, heatwaves, flooding and extreme cold

•

The application of a Health in All Policies approach to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment’s Clean Air Strategy;

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Increasing public awareness of UV risks and influencing the changing of behaviours;

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Uniform system-wide severe weather planning;

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Health Impact Assessments across all sectors, in line with the World Health Organisation’s Health in All Policies guidelines;

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The undertaking of a major survey of health infrastructure resilience;

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The conduction of epidemiology and research on climate change health impacts and adaptation policies; and

•

The development of a new public health heat wave plan.

In his foreword to the Plan, Minister for Health Simon Harris TD said: “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing us and it is clear we need to step up our response to this growing issue.

The window of opportunity is closing, and it is essential we take adequate steps now to respond to this challenge.”

Harris concluded his foreword by stating his hope that the Plan would prove to be “the start of an important conversation that must continue”.

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Safer services for patients

Members of the team who implemented electronic traceability of Special Feeds at CHI at Temple Street. (L to R): Sinead Moran, Bernadette O’Connor, Timea Varga, Deirdre Kane, Vilma Slavinskiene, Cherrylyn Panganiban, Marian Draper, Ruth Ennis.

Case study: Innovative traceability of infant feeds at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Temple Street.

Risks to patient safety occur when there is a mismatch between a patient and the care they receive. Errors can occur at time of diagnosis, treatment or on-going care. Hospitals are using GS1 standards when implementing traceability solutions to ensure the reliability of data and to optimise processes. This in turn can reduce preventable errors, enhance Electronic Health Record management, support outcome-based medicine and comparative effectiveness, and provide transparency for better clinical and supply chain management.

Reducing the administrative burden on clinical staff According to a recent survey (Cardinal Health Hospital Supply Chain Survey, 2019), clinicians report spending more than twice the amount of time they would like to on supply chain-related tasks, and as a result have less time with patients and increased stress levels.

Barcodes can be used to automatically

Case study: Safer services for patients The Special Feeds Unit (SFU) at CHI at Temple Street looks after the storing, preparation and delivery of prescribed feeds to infants with special dietary needs, some which require very specific care, such as metabolic patients, and it is vitally important that these patients receive the correct feeds.

The hospital implemented a GS1 standards-based traceability scanning system that captures the critical data about each product, location, staff member that delivered or prepared the feed and ultimately the patient that received it. This means the hospital now knows where each feed is, and, a product recall can be done in seconds resulting in a safer service for patients.

New controls within the system prevents the dispensing or preparation of any expired or recalled product. The intelligence built into the system prompts staff to select short-dated products should they be available, helping to promote better stock rotation, reducing waste and saving the hospital money.

The movement of all products is recorded against a ward or patient, ensuring that wasteful, buffer stocks are not built up in several areas around the hospital. Added to this they estimate time savings equate to half a full-time member of staff every week.

Mona Baker, Chief Executive Officer, CHI (Children’s Health Ireland) at Temple Street, says: “Our staff take great pride in delivering the best care for patients.

We know where each feed is, and a product recall can be done in seconds.

This is an excellent example of innovation at CHI at Temple Street to improve patient safety.”

Background GS1 licences the most widely used system of supply chain standards, serving more than two million public and private sector organisations worldwide.

For more information, please contact: Siobhain Duggan, Director of Innovation and Healthcare, GS1 Ireland.

T: 01 208 0660 E: healthcare@gs1ie.org W: www.gs1ie.org/healthcare

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The traceability solution supports the five patient rights: right patient; right drug or device; right time; right dose; and right route.

capture information identifying products, locations and patients, creating a more streamlined environment freeing up time for clinical staff to care for patients.

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they had to manually hunt through paper records from the last six months to identify what patients had received that batch as well as to locate the tins of product with that batch number so that no further product could be distributed.

Now, this can be done in seconds.

The previous process was paper-based and time consuming. If the hospital received a recall notice from a supplier, 67

conference report

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Irish Gas Forum 2019 Speakers: J Owen Lewis, IIEA Working Group on Climate; Cathal Marley, Ervia; Minister Richard Bruton, TD, Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment; Samantha McCulloch, International Energy Agency; Jim Gannon, Commission for Regulation of Utilities and Denis O’Sullivan, Gas Networks Ireland.

The Irish Gas Forum took place in Dublin recently and looked at how the sector is undergoing a transition to a low carbon future. To date most of the focus has been on electricity but now there is a need to move the policy debate towards the transition of Ireland’s natural gas network to low carbon gas sources.

This important conference was supported by Ervia and Gas Networks Ireland and sponsored by KPMG and Pinsent Masons. A panel of expert local and visiting speakers looked at a number of issues including the options for decarbonisation; the critical role of carbon capture and storage; power-to-gas technologies; the legal and regulatory framework; biomethane injection and the new EU Gas Package.

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Minister Richard Bruton, TD addresses delegates.

Neil Walker, Ibec with Carmel Fields, Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

John Fogarty, Community Power with Jessica Gregory, Oak Hall Consulting.

Roisin McLaughlin, The Utility Regulator with Bobby Gleeson, Gas Networks Ireland.

Catherine O’Brien and Hilary O’Meara, Accenture with Ian O’Flynn, Gas Networks Ireland.

Joanne Ross, Bord Gáis Energy, asks the panel a question.

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Local government report

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Work begins on long-delayed Electoral Commission Recommended in 2006 and promised as part of Enda Kenny’s Government, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy TD, has announced that work has finally begun on the setting up of an Electoral Commission.

Minister Murphy’s decision was announced in July, bringing to a close 13 years of waiting for work to be seriously undertaken toward the foundation of an Electoral Commission after it had been recommended by the Commission on Electoral Voting in 2006. The founding of the Commission had been promised when Fine Gael had come to power under Enda Kenny TD in 2011, but no actions were forthcoming.

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The 2006 report said that there was “an increased need, in the context of electronic voting, for the establishment of a single independent statutory electoral

commission for Ireland” and that an Electoral Commission “would be in keeping with best international practice and would have responsibility for relevant aspects of electoral administration and oversight currently vested in the Department, the Commission and various other commissions, including the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO), the Referendum Commission and the Constituency Commission”.

The responsibilities of an electoral commission should also include the development of standards for electronic

voting, ensuring overall compliance with those standards and the observation of elections conducted by electronic means.

It is envisioned that the Commission will oversee and regulate elections in Ireland. In 2016, a Joint Oireachtas committee published a report into the foundation of an Electoral Committee, saying that the purpose of such a commission is “generally to guarantee that electoral administration is carried out in an independent manner – free from political interference”. It is believed that the Commission’s responsibilities will include the solving of problems within the

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The responsibilities that will be delegated to the Electoral Commission upon its foundation are currently split among various government departments, statutory agencies and components of the Oireachtas. Carlow-Kilkenny Fine Gael TD John Paul Phelan is currently the Minister for State with Special Responsibility for Local Government and Electoral Reform. His portfolio is the responsibility of Minister Murphy’s Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.

In a joint statement, Murphy and Phelan said that the Commission would be “established on a statutory basis and will bring together several electoral functions in an independent, dedicated public body”. Murphy said that he was “delighted to be bringing forward the establishment of an Electoral Commission which will bring added coordination to our electoral functions and will significantly contribute to the development of our electoral system and policies into the future”, while Phelan called the announcement a “major event in the evolution of Ireland’s electoral system”.

The estimated costs for the new Electoral Commission range from €3.3 million up front, with additional yearly costs of €1.8 million to €2 million each year. This estimate, however, does not include the funding that is already dedicated to SIPO or the Referendum Commission, both due to be incorporated into the Electoral Commission. It has also been suggested that the 1997 legislation which governs the logging of politicians’ interests, such as property and shares, should be reviewed. SIPO has previously made similar recommendations to the Government and the action is a possibility under the new commission, Phelan said in 2018.

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“Up there with Seanad reform, this is a chestnut that needs to be grasped.”

electoral register, the organisation of referendum campaigns, redrawing of constituency and local area boundaries and dealing with issues regarding engaging with the electorate, as well as encouraging more citizens to vote.

Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform John Paul Phelan TD provisions of the Electoral Act have been outdated by changes in technology, which have brought about new methods of political activism and fundraising. One of its main points was that the current definition of a third party, in political terms, “leaves out a significant number of groups engaging in campaigns that are self-funded”. Third persons are currently defined as a person or body which accepts a donation above a set threshold given for political purposes. “It also leaves open the possibility of dispute or difference as to whether a donation received was for political purpose, or for charitable or other purposes,” SIPO’s submission says.

Phelan also said the new agency would have a role to play in setting the standards for online political adverts and it would carry out national research into all elections and referendums held in Ireland. The Commission will also include a research and advisory arm that will aim to inform the Oireachtas on considerations related to the reform of electoral law and related issues. Work is underway on the drafting of the General Scheme for an Electoral Commission Bill that will end 13 years of waiting.

In March 2019, SIPO submitted a detailed criticism of Ireland’s current electoral laws and the Electoral Act as part of the consultation process for the setting up of the Electoral Commission.

Citing “gaps and challenges” currently in the electoral laws of Ireland, SIPO said that any Electoral Commission’s first task should be, or at least involve, a “comprehensive review of the Electoral Acts”.

While Phelan referred to the establishment of an Electoral Commission, along with Seanad reform, as a “chestnut that needs to be grasped”, he may also need to concern himself with growing outcry over local authorities facing increasing commercial rates and reducing services. The issue has been aired at both the Public Accounts Committee and at Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil in the past months.

SIPO put forward the case that

Fianna Fáil TD and PAC member Shane

Cassells has called local government the “starved dog of Irish public administration”, while Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane blamed the shortages on the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD’s refusal to fund the commercial rate compensation scheme.

Cullinane said that Dublin City Council would lose a total of €8.7 million while Waterford City and County Council will see a 13.5 per cent drop in rates, €3.3 million, making it proportionately the most affected council. South Dublin County Council will lose €4.1 million while Fingal County Council will lose €2.3 million. Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, Owen Keegan, backed up the assertion that the drops were due to the halting of government compensation, despite promises to the contrary, he claimed.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney said that compensation of €47 million was paid annually to local authorities between 2014 and 2019 in lieu of commercial rates from Irish Water. With Irish Water liable for commercial rates from 2020, he said that the requirement for compensation in lieu of commercial rates comes to an end. The Tánaiste defended the Government’s record on local government funding, saying that Exchequer funding for local authorities has increased in recent years, including the allocation for 2020 for Waterford City and County Council of just over €3 million, a €700,000 increase from 2019’s allocation rate.

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New Council chief wants Fingal to keep leading local government officials in the country having started with Dublin County Council as a clerical officer. A native of Corduff, County Monaghan, she joined Fingal County Council when it was formed in 1994 following the dissolution of Dublin County Council and moved steadily upwards, eventually being appointed Director of Service in 2011.

Stints in the Housing and Community Department and Planning and Strategic Infrastructure Department followed before her recent elevation to the Chief Executive’s role.

She attributes her successful rise to the career opportunities that local government afforded her during her career which included participating in a programme for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University in 2016.

As the head of one of the most strategically important local authorities in the country the new Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, AnnMarie Farrelly, will be a key player in the future Advertorial

development of Ireland over the next decade.

Having been appointed as Interim Chief Executive last May following the departure of Paul Reid to become Director General of the Health Service Executive, AnnMarie Farrelly was subsequently appointed on 1 November as Fingal County Council’s sixth Chief Executive since its formation in 1994.

She is the first woman to take the helm in Fingal which is now the third biggest local authority in the country after Dublin 72

City Council and Cork County Council.

Heading up a staff of almost 1,500, she will be responsible for a budget of €269 million in 2020 and a three-year capital programme worth €619 million. The county is the fastest growing area in Ireland, having seen its population double in 25 years to 300,000, and also has the youngest, best-educated and most diverse population as well.

Farrelly is one of the most experienced

“One of the great benefits of a public service career are the many opportunities that exist in terms of education and experience,” says Farrelly. “There are opportunities to work on large scale multi-million-euro projects as well as working with Government, private sector and other stakeholders. This provides a broad level of experience, particularly in a progressive county like Fingal where there is also an openness to innovative thinking and new solutions.”

Farrelly will now bring that in-depth knowledge and extensive experience to bear in her new role as she works to meet the many demands of a county that is growing rapidly.

“The County has been transformed since the Council was established in 1994. Not only has our population doubled over the past 25 years but our rates income, which was €3.7 million back in 1994, rose to €129 million in 2019. The number of councillors has also grown from 24 to

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40. This level of growth is an indication of our success but has also presented some challenges, such as the need for more housing and better infrastructure, which we will continue to address.”

“I want to build on our achievements to date. I will work with the elected members to ensure the county continues to prosper and we protect the quality of life of the people who live here by helping to address their housing, economic and recreational needs.

“I also want to ensure that Fingal remains a vibrant, outward-looking and well-run council that embraces opportunity and diversity. We will need to take a lead on issues such as Climate Action, public transport improvement, employment and housing.

“As a local authority we need to protect, manage and improve what we have and to plan and prepare for our future sustainable growth and expansion. It is also important that we perform our core responsibilities well and I do intend to keep a focus on this area, particularly on our various regulatory roles.”

Fingal County Council is seen as one of the most effective councils in Ireland and Farrelly and her management team have several major projects in the pipeline which are being watched with interest across the country.

Another is Our Balbriggan, a socioeconomic regeneration project in the North Dublin town which has the youngest population in Ireland and where 32 per cent of the population were not born in Ireland. The project has generated strong buy-in locally and the Council have set themselves an ambitious target of achieving 20 things in the first year of the Our Balbriggan plan.

Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Eoghan O’Brien, pictured with AnnMarie Farrelly following her appointment as Chief Executive of Fingal County Council.

“As a local authority we need to protect, manage and improve what we have and to plan and prepare for our future sustainable growth and expansion. It is also important that we perform our core responsibilities well and I do intend to keep a focus on this area, particularly on our various regulatory roles.”

Farrelly adds: “Other projects include the Swords Cultural Quarter, which is a €25 million redevelopment of the area around Swords Castle and County Hall in our county town. The strategic vision for Swords is a place that will cater for future sustainable growth and will promote a thriving vibrant town. The vision seeks a comparable increase in employment and services with high density, people intensive uses in the immediate vicinity of the MetroLink route which has now been finalised.

“We are also developing the Fingal Coastal Way which, when completed, will be a dedicated walking and cycling route along the coast from Sutton to Balbriggan.

“We want to ensure a good quality of life for all our citizens both young and old and that means continuing to increase housing supply across the county and completing residential masterplans to ensure that there is sufficient land available for development. But it also means embracing change so we will

deliver our new five-year Migrant Integration and Social Cohesion Strategy and the Climate Action Plan. We will shortly unveil a Digital Strategy as well and we are committed to the Council becoming a digital workplace.”

Farrelly’s appointment has been well received in Fingal where she has earned the respect of her staff, her councillors and her citizens according to the Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Eoghan O’Brien, who says: “I was delighted to support the recommendation of the Public Appointments Commission to appoint AnnMarie Farrelly. I firmly believe that she is the right person to lead our Local Authority. She is an exemplary public servant whose knowledge of the sector is second to none.”

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One of these is Project Talamh which will lead to the delivery of a mix of social, affordable and private housing on council-owned lands at Donabate, Mulhuddart and Cappagh. The recent completion of the Donabate Distributor Road has unlocked the lands at Ballymastone and will pave the way for up to 2,400 housing units plus schools, a recreation hub and a nature park.

local government report

Given her background, one of the key advantages that Farrelly brings to the job is a detailed knowledge of the county and its immediate and ongoing needs.

She was able to hit the ground running when she was appointed, first as Interim Chief Executive, and then as the permanent leader of the organisation.

Fingal County Council T: 01 890 5000 E: customercareunit@fingal.ie W: www.fingal.ie Social: @fingalcoco

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Limerick to host Ireland’s first mayoral election by 2021 Limerick, the only city to vote in favour of having a directly elected mayor in a plebiscite in May, has been set a deadline of May 2021 for the election of its first mayor in what could be the start of a major shakeup of local governance in Ireland.

The plebiscite on directly elected mayors was put to the cities of Cork, Limerick and Waterford on the same day as the local and European elections in May 2019. With Limerick the only city to vote in favour, its Implementation Advisory Group is recommending that the first election be held in or before May 2021.

The chair of the Implementation Advisory Group is Tim O’Connor, the former consul general in New York for several years and former Secretary General to President Mary McAleese. On the day of the group’s first meeting, O’Connor told the press that it would be continuing with its work for six months

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in the hopes of presenting a report to the Government by June 2020. It is hoped that legislation will be enacted by autumn 2020 in order to allow the election in May 2021 to be held.

The Implementation Advisory Group is made up of Limerick councillors, members of the city and county executives, academics and businesspeople from around the city and county. Diarmuid Scully of the Centre of European Studies at the University of Limerick, a group member and former Mayor of the City and County of Limerick, warned after the group’s meeting that a possible general election in the first half of 2020 should not slow

down the process of securing a first election date.

Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform John Paul Phelan TD appeared to pour cold water on the idea of such a delay happening should there be an election. After meeting with the group, he pointed out that the idea of directly elected mayors for the three Munster cities had had cross-party support.

The Minister of State also added that the addition of the position would be an opportunity to rebalance the deficits currently gripping local government in Ireland. He expressed the hope that Limerick’s pioneering of the directly

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elected mayor model in Ireland could set the template for the rest of the country.

Under government proposals, the directly elected mayor will assume a significant portion of the executive functions that currently lie with the local authority’s Chief Executive, including annual budgets and local policy. Indeed, it was claimed in the run up to the plebiscites that the proposed mayor for Cork City would be the most powerful politician in Ireland outside of the Government Cabinet.

It was said before the plebiscites that the new mayors would have powers in housing, planning, roads, policy, judging the lawfulness of council decisions and the corporate functions of their councils, while the Chief Executives would retain powers in areas such as social housing, granting licenses and permits and enforcement matters.

Dublin, where calls for a directly elected mayor have only grown louder since the foundation of the office of Mayor of London in 2000, was excluded from the plebiscite process due to what was called “the complexities of local government in County Dublin and the Dublin Metropolitan Area” in the Local Government Act 2019, which provided the legal footing for the plebiscites in the Munster cities. Instead, the Act called for “detailed and informed public discourse on the matter” with regard to Dublin, where a Citizens’ Assembly focused on the matter is due to be set up.

The passage of the plebiscite in Limerick is the first concrete step that began not long after the foundation of the London mayor’s office in 2000, when the 2001 Local Government Act included the provision for the election of mayors starting with the local elections of 2004.

However, this provision was repealed in 2003.

Annual cost of office

€313,916 Mayor salary: (Flat rate)

Expenses:

€129,854 local government report

It was announced before the plebiscites that the directly elected mayors would all receive a salary of almost €130,000 per annum, but the Implementation Advisory Group has provided more details on the total cost of the newly created office. On top of an annual salary of €129,854 per year, the mayor will receive a flat rate of €16,000 annually for expenses. His or her advisor and programme officer will earn annual salaries of €66,741 each and a personal driver will earn €34,580, bringing the total cost of the office to €313,916 per annum.

€16,000

€34,854 Advisor: €66,741 Programme manager: €66,741 Driver:

Ideas have also been floated for the appointment of a night mayor in Dublin in order to better protect the night-time economy and cultural hotspots that have found themselves either displaced or facing ever-increasing rents due to prices in Dublin. The model has been trialled in Amsterdam, Toulouse and Zurich among other cities, but so far, no concrete plans have been forthcoming on the matter.

The directly elected mayor model that will now be implemented in Limerick is most likely to be analogous to the one seen in England, where London has had its own since 2000 and there are now eight other directly elected mayors throughout the country. Described as “chairs of their area's combined authority and are elected by the residents of this area”, there are now elected mayors in London, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, West Midlands, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, West of England, Sheffield City Region and North of Tyne.

Responsibilities differ for the mayors outside of London: “The devolved powers and the level of funding varies across the combined authorities. For example, all have responsibility for the Adult Education Budgets from 2019, but

only some will be piloting full retention of business rates. Similarly, while all of the directly elected mayors will have responsibility for franchised bus services, only some will have responsibility for new key route networks of local authority roads.”

The Mayor of London, currently Labour’s Sadiq Khan, differs from the other mayors. London Councils say that he “has a duty to set out plans and policies for London covering transport, planning and development, housing, economic development and regeneration, culture health inequalities and a range of environmental issues including climate change and air quality” along with “a number of other duties relating to culture and tourism, including responsibility for Trafalgar and Parliament Squares”. He also sets the annual budgets for the Greater London Authority and the GLA Group, which includes Transport for London, The Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade.

With the rejection of the creation of offices in both Cork and Waterford, those invested in the reorganisation of local government in Ireland will turn their eyes to Limerick and 2021 to see how the tone is set for this overhaul’s beginning in Ireland.

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Delivering housing for the people of Mayo

Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy TD with Oireachtas members and Mayo County Council.

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Housing and the provision of sustainable housing solutions is a priority for Mayo County Council. It’s about changing people’s lives for the better and providing solutions to the many challenges that currently exist in the housing market says Tom Gilligan, Director of Services at Mayo County Council.

Our aim is to continue to deliver new social housing to meet the needs of people on our housing waiting list. In 2018, Mayo County Council did that and delivered on its overall housing targets as set out by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and, in actual fact, exceeded them. A critical part in achieving our targets was the on-going commitment and support of the Council’s Management Team, our own housing department, including our own in-house 76

team of architects and the continued support of our elected members. In 2018, as regards our build, leasing and acquisition target we exceeded our target by 12 per cent and the goal and ambition this year is to do better again. We have a very strong pipeline of delivery coming on stream. Our ambition for 2020 and beyond is to keep it going and to continue to deliver while all the time knowing that the people on our housing list are the primary focus and the need to

find a sustainable housing solution for them and their families. That is what drives us, and our primary goal and ambition is to deliver for our citizens.

In March 2019, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy T.D visited Mayo and got to see first-hand the good work being done by the Council. During his visit the Minister and his officials from the Department got to see both completed and on-going housing projects right across the County.

It was a constructive day and opportunity for the Minister to see all the great work we are doing here in Mayo. He was indeed very complimentary of all our housing schemes and we were delighted of the opportunity to take him around and to see the impressive work we are doing on the ground, including one of our largest construction projects and that is the provision of 27 housing units in Swinford, which is expected to be completed in 2020.

A significant challenge in Mayo along

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“Every day we hear a story as to why a property is vacant and each one is unique to that particular unit. We know that there isn’t one solution to sort out all the problems, but we want to work with property owners and to help them get their property back into use.”

Tom Gilligan, Director of Services, Mayo County Council.

with other parts of the country is the increased level of homelessness in the county. Currently Mayo County Council is involved, along with other stakeholders in the region in finalising the 2020-2022 West Region Homelessness Action Plan.

This Plan set outs a strategic framework to address the prevention and reduction of homelessness; provision of services and assistance to those who are homeless; and the promotion of effective co-ordination by homeless service authorities and providers in the administrative areas of Galway City and Counties Galway, Roscommon and Mayo. Since 2016 the West Region has experienced a 153 per cent increase in the number of adults accessing homeless services through emergency accommodation. This is the highest increase of any region in the country.

Another factor in the county which is an issue is the number of properties available to rent. Throughout 2019 we are seeing only limited properties available for rent and this is putting more

Pillar 5 of Rebuilding Ireland, the Government’s Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, deals with utilising housing stock and here in Mayo, we have a significant number of vacant properties, similar to other parts of the country and we see huge potential in getting them back into use. It’s all about reusing what we have and maximising the use of our housing stock. Apart from the obvious benefits of housing, economic and climate change, bringing vacant homes back into use reduces the pressure for new housing developments. Although bringing vacant homes back into use will help alleviate the housing crisis it is recognised that there are so many varied reasons why a property is vacant. Every day we hear a story as to why a property is vacant and each one is unique to that particular unit. We know that there isn’t one solution to sort out all the problems, but we want to work with property owners and to help them get their property back into use. Mayo County Council developed a Vacant Homes Action Plan and in addition set-up VacantHomes.ie, an innovative web portal on behalf of the local government sector.

percentage recorded at 48 per cent, Munster has 36 per cent, Connacht 13 per cent and Ulster 3 per cent. The number of properties brought or in the process of being brought back into use is nearly 300. Bringing a vacant home back into use can change people’s lives for the better and it’s so important that owners of vacant properties come forward as there are schemes available, such as the Buy and Renew and the Repair and Leasing Scheme which will help them get the property back into use. Our Chief Executive, Peter Hynes talks about Mayo as a County that is proud, prosperous, sustainable and inclusive and by utilising existing housing stock, through VacantHomes.ie and along with our ambitious capital build programme, we know we can deliver on this vision for the benefit of this generation and future generations to come.

E: tgilligan@mayococo.ie W: www.mayococo.ie & www.vacanthomes.ie

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The West Region Homelessness Action Plan 2020-2022 aims to put a strategic framework in place for the delivery of homeless services at a regional level.

Local Action Plans for each county area in the West Region will subsequently be developed in line with the West Region Homelessness Action Plan 2020-2022.

The Mayo Local Action Plan will outline detailed specific actions relevant to addressing homelessness at county level and in particular will focus on five key themes: prevention; support; protection; progression; and governance. The situation regarding homelessness is challenging and could be a lot worse if it wasn’t for the on-going hard work of our Tenancy Sustainment Office in helping to prevent people entering homelessness.

and more pressure on the rental sector.

During the month of November, we only saw approximately 100 properties available throughout the entire county.

VacantHomes.ie, which was recently revamped with additional functionality is providing key assistance to Vacant Home Officers now working in each local authority. VacantHomes.ie is available to assist local authorities in providing advice, assistance and can work with property owners every step of the way in bringing a property back into use. To date, the vacant homes website has over 3,200 properties registered with the province of Leinster showing the highest

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Local authority driven smart cities As councils across Ireland continue to drive the evolution of smart cities and communities, eolas talks to Cork native Kieran O’Hea about local government’s role in delivering the UK’s most people-powered smart city, Leicester.

As Head of Smart Cities in Leicester City Council, O’Hea is leading the implementation of a smart city strategy with people at its centre. Formerly the Chief Digital Officer of Brisbane, O’Hea has been involved in digital strategies for over 20 years and recognises the importance of a focus on the user, as well as the technology, when driving digital change.

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With Leicester set to publish its smart

city strategy in January, O’Hea discusses the development of a strategy, recognising that the experience in Leicester may be of benefit to those councils in Ireland considering or progressing a smart journey.

Offering context, O’Hea points out that Leicester is an evolving city. Traditionally industrial, Leicester is diversifying both economically and in terms of population.

The city has a population of over

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O’Hea believes that these are factors that lent themselves to a vision of a smart city and specifically, a peoplepowered smart city by 2025.

“We’ve opted for this direction recognising that very few other smart cities in the UK have a strong people focus. Smart cities by definition tend to be technology focused but we want to change that course. So, rather than launch into partnerships with technology providers, we’ve been asking people what they want and expect from their smart city,” he says.

While the strategy has yet to be published, to some extent Leicester has already begun its smart city evolution, largely through the Council’s preexisting digital transformation strategy.

Offering some examples, O’Hea points to improvements in connectivity infrastructure; WiFi and digital support hubs; digital citizen engagement; and data sharing, as existing work.

“Our ambition is to advance these and build on that existing base. Our focus for the city is to see citizens empowered by technology and so the smart city strategy will be much broader than digital transformation.”

The Council has recognised the

potential value in transitioning to a fully smart city. By 2050 the number of the world’s population living in an urban area is set to increase from 55 per cent to 68 per cent and it’s estimated that the global smart cities market will exceed $237 billion by 2025.

The vision for Leicester’s strategy is to combine built, digital, natural and social environments to deliver an inclusive and sustainable city, in which all its people may prosper through culture, learning, wellbeing and work.

Outlining the approach to reach this ambition, O’Hea highlights the recognition of a city needs-led and demand driven strategy, providing sustained solutions to identified need and involving citizens in the plans being established.

local government report

350,000 people from 50 countries across the globe and it has been recognised as the UK’s top city for the increase of digital business births.

Uniquely, Leicester has a link to space technology. The city lays claim to a Leicester-built instrument operating in space every year since 1967.

tackle identifiable challenges within the Council such as social inequality and exclusion; the climate crisis, the wellbeing of an ageing population and traffic congestion.

O’Hea says that therefore, priorities identified for the smart city strategy include health and wellbeing, especially independent living and isolation; mobility, air quality improvement; and sustainable energy, carbon reduction and fuel poverty reduction.

The Smart Leicester strategy provides the foundations for a programme of actions to deliver people-focused projects that will make the city greener, healthier and more inclusive. To date around 40 projects, have been identified based on the criteria of

In creating a roadmap to a smart city approach, O’Hea outlines a number of key steps taken by the Council including: •

the creation of a dedicated smart cities team;

viability, capability and impact and the Council are evaluating which projects to bring forward in 2020.

O’Hea concludes: “Looking to 2025 our ambition is to achieve the most peoplepowered smart city in Britain with next

•

audit of the city’s current smart landscape;

•

stakeholder engagement identifying desired outcomes;

effective use of artificial intelligence (AI)

•

identification of scalable and sustainable projects; and

“The outcomes of our approach will

•

collaboration with other cities.

digital literacy, a more prosperous,

A smart audit, stakeholder engagement and city benchmarking led to the creation of key themes to be endorsed by a future strategy, which aims to

generation mobile, full-fibre broadband, universal gigabit connections and more and data.

hopefully bring about greater levels of innovative economy and smart transport infrastructure to ease congestion with fewer, cleaner cars, so that the air will be better to breathe.”

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This conference will examine a wide range of issues including: ✔ Reforming the justice system

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Technology and innovation report

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Securing our Public Service in an Evolving Cyber Threat Landscape technology and innovation report

Cyber security concerns continue to evolve rapidly, with new threats emerging every day. Cyber actors range widely from individuals, hacktivists and activists, to criminal groups, nation states and terrorists. Although these cyber actors each have their own motives and intentions, they share a common objective to exploit trust in the target, be that human or computer, writes Jacky Fox, Managing Director of Accenture Security and vice-chair of Cyber Ireland.

In the past 12 months, cross-industry security executives surveyed by Accenture in Ireland for our State of Cyber Resilience research1 reported 258 targeted cyber-attacks, with 35 successful security breaches. Nearly two thirds (62 per cent) of Irish respondents experienced loss of IT services as a result of a cyber breach and nearly half (42 per cent) suffered loss of operational services as a result. Four in 10 respondents reported suffering financial loss following a security breach and six in 10 reported remediation taking more than 30 days. This all demonstrates the level of challenge faced by government, citizens and businesses in securing the digital world today.

Costs to the public service are rising

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Learning from the success of government agencies and companies achieving high levels of security is an important step towards reforming cyber security defence mechanisms. In the private sector, the scale and scope of

recent breaches mean cyber security continues to be a primary concern for CSuite executives and board members.

According to Accenture’s ninth annual Cost of Cybercrime Study of the public service published with the Ponemon2 Institute, public service organisations are spending more than ever to deal with the costs and consequences of increasingly sophisticated attacks. In 2018, the average cost of cybercrime for a public service organisation globally was $7.9 million, up from $6.6 million in 2017 and an increase of 17 per cent.

Every government agency operates with a unique mission – often with a constrained budget and limited resources. In the face of those realities, how can government effectively and efficiently safeguard systems and data?

Success lies not only in investing in the latest security technology but in developing a proactive and practical approach to cyber resilience and the ability to recover from the inevitable. This involves assessing the risks and building an organisational strategy to deal with these risks. In Ireland we are anticipating the release of a new national Cyber Security strategy in 2019 which will provide guidance on this.3

Average cost of cybercrime is rising in Public Service globally

Security breaches can come from numerous sources inside and outside an organisation, and threats are nothing if not diverse and dynamic. Just when an organisation believes it can successfully defend against one type of attack, another attack technique or vector emerges.

Hybrid motives in ransomware Ransomware attacks, for example, can cause serious disruption to business operations and can be costly, even if the data has been backed up properly and is securely stored offline. The attacks involving the Goga ransomware earlier this year – where unknown actors gained access to several organisations and infected networks with Goga ransomware – have reportedly cost victim organisations at least US$40 million in the first quarter of 20194. While the motives behind attacks may appear to be financial, targeted ransomware attacks may at times serve hybrid motives, whether financial, ideological, or political. Regardless of motive, while the ransomware threat remains, organisations must ensure they take adequate measures to prepare, prevent, detect and respond to a ransomware attack.

Technologies introduce risk, and so do humans Whether by accident or intent, many employees are often the root cause of successful cyberattacks. Often a person is the easiest target to infiltrate an

Average annual cost of cybercrime per public service organisation, Accenture Cost of Cybercrime Study 2019

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1: Accenture’s 2018 State of Cyber Resilience Report: https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/insights/financial-services/2018-state-of-cyber-resilience 2: Accenture’s 2019 Cost of Cybercrime Study: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/security/cost-cybercrime-study

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People-based attacks have increased the most 99% 96%

Malware (-3%) 75%

Web-based attacks (-12%)

63%

Phishing and social engineering (+0%)

63% 63% 54% 57%

Botnets (+3%) 38%

Stolen devices (+9%)

47% 31% 30%

Malicious insider (-1%)

53%

Ransomeware (+4%)

57% 45% 44%

Denial of service (-1%)

technology and innovation report

59% 62%

Malicious code (+3%)

2017 2018

Per cent of cyberattacks experienced by public service organisations, Accenture Cost of Cybercrime Study 2019.

organisation using various methods of social engineering, such as ever efficient phishing emails or person to person for more targeted attacks.

It is anticipated that the Irish National Cyber Security Strategy will focus on improving the awareness of cyber security basics for all citizens. However, this is even more important for our public service personnel. According to the Cost of Cybercrime study, only 4 per cent of security leaders in the public service globally say the employees in their organisations are held accountable for cybersecurity today.

Despite awareness being high and strategies to mitigate cyber security breaches having been widely implemented in the past, the level of preparedness and the resulting success differs drastically. To stay ahead in the current high-risk and transformative environment, organisations need to be more effective and diligent in addressing security; not only within their technology practices and policies but also across the strategy and governance of the organisation.

Build a cybersecurity strategy A crisis response plan is not enough.

Every government organisation also needs a proactive, holistic security strategy. The strategy needs to address not only the protection and security of data and technologies, but also the integration of these with other security measures, the creation of policies “fit for

Assess risk Conduct a risk assessment to determine the areas of greatest vulnerability and potential consequences of an attack. To engineer effective defences, take a realistic and pragmatic view of the threat universe and most likely scenarios.

Conduct the assessment with both security experts and stakeholders throughout the agency and plan for recovery and resilience from those threats.

Lead security efforts with intelligence and advanced analytics Digital gates and guards used to be enough to protect networks and data.

But that’s not the case anymore.

Effective protection now requires use of advanced threat intelligence supported by advanced, multifaceted analytics to help identify and manage threats.

Our National Cyber Security Centre provides threat intelligence data which is available to public service organisations.

The use of techniques such as employee behavioural analytics use vast quantities of data from multiple sources to baseline normal network activity and identify anomalous or questionable activities in real time.

T: +353 87 618 2618 E: jacky.fox@accenture.com W: www.accenture.com

Dan Sheils, Managing Director, Health & Public Service, Accenture in Ireland: “Accenture recommends that government organisations embed a rich security strategy at the core of all digital technology. It is essential that any technology project builds in security at the offset rather than trying to bolt it on immediately prior to production. In doing so, government organisations will be best placed to address both the evolving cyber-threat landscape and take maximum advantage of today’s evolving technologies.”

Pat Ryan, Head of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau: “Cyber Security is everyone’s responsibility, but must start and be driven from the top down for organisations and public sector bodies. Therefore, it should not be just a problem for the IT Department, but an integral part of any department’s overall business strategies.”

3: Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment, National Cyber Security Strategy: https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/communications/topics/Internet-Policy/cybersecurity/national-cyber-security-strategy/Pages/NCSC-Strategy.aspx 4: Accenture iDefense 2019 Threatscape Report: https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/insights/security/cyber-threatscape-report

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Here’s a practical approach outlining three key areas to focus on:

purpose” in the digital age, and the training necessary for employees to be the first and last line of cyber defence.

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National Broadband Plan work to begin After many delays, the Cabinet has signed the contract for the implementation of the National Broadband Plan with the consortium National Broadband Ireland.

The signing means that meaningful work to connect 540,000 rural homes and businesses to high-speed internet will begin in 2020.

The signing of the contract will come as a great relief to those rural residents not covered by the private companies who have until now been the only option to access high-speed internet in Ireland.

First announced in 2012, the signing of this contract has been seven years in the making.

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been delayed a further five years. He also predicted that the overall cost of the implementation of the plan would eventually come in under the €3 billion budget it has been allocated.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called the signing a national solution to a national problem once the ink had dried on the contract. He said that the National Broadband Plan was done with the objective of ensuring that nobody was left behind in Ireland when it came to jobs and services. Referencing the delays and cost that had caused much consternation throughout the tendering process, the Taoiseach said that the opposition had had five months to come up with a cheaper and better alternative broadband plan but had failed to do so.

Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Richard Bruton TD said that the average rural customer who avails of the broadband offered by National Broadband Ireland will pay the same on average as an urban area customer would pay to a private company. “A controlled price of €100 will be paid to National Broadband Ireland from the retailer,” Bruton said in a radio interview after the signing. The Minister added that it is National Broadband Ireland who assumes the risk if uptake turns out to be lower than expected, but that the Government will reclaim 60 per cent of the profits if uptake is higher than expected.

The Taoiseach also stated that had the contract not been signed in November as it had been, the process would have

Work is to begin on the rollout of the plan in January, with the initial focus on connecting 300 hubs around the country

to make broadband accessible locally to as many rural communities as possible.

While total rollout could take up to seven years to complete, these hubs — GAA clubs, community centres and local libraries — will act as community amenities in the meantime.

The 300 areas have been identified and made public, with areas such as Carrigaline in county Cork covered. It is also notable the density of hub points in Gaeltacht areas, such as Leitir Mealláin, Bearna and Carna in Galway and Árd na gCeapairí and Toraigh in Donegal.

It is expected that 130,000 premises, approximately one quarter of the overall plan, will be connected by the end of the year 2021, with 40 per cent to be connected by the end of 2022. With 95 per cent of the 540,000 premises to be connected by the end of 2025, the hopes of rural Ireland rely on the implementation process being smoother than the planning process.

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A sit down with Jacky Fox technology and innovation report

that government, academia and the private sector work together to tackle the problem. We need to work out how we can effectively share threat intelligence nationally, internationally and within business sectors.

We also need to monitor our networks for active threats and develop new tools utilising features such as artificial intelligence to automate security tasks where possible. The use of automation will free up our valuable cyber security professionals to develop strategies and perform the tasks we can’t automate.

Jacky Fox is the Managing Director of Accenture’s security business in Ireland, helping clients build resilience from the inside out so they can confidently focus on innovation and growth. Jacky is also vicechair for Cyber Ireland – a national cyber security cluster that provides a collective voice to represent the needs and challenges of the cyber security sector across the country.

Why did you choose a career in cyber security?

I have always worked in the technology sector and spent much of the early part of my career working with the public sector in Ireland as it became increasingly computerised. Initially we installed personal computers, then we networked them together and then the internet came along which was designed for communications not security. This started our exposure to the everincreasing attack surfaces that we are susceptible to today.

Traditionally cyber security is a male dominated profession.

Do you see shifts being made in the sector to attract more women?

Citizens have growing expectations for more and better digital public services.

What are the key cyber security challenges facing the public service today?

There are huge efforts being made globally to shift the dial on this. Recent (ISC) Women in Cybersecurity research puts the number of women working in cyber to be 24 per cent, up from 11 per cent in 2017.

It’s important that security supports the provision of new and existing digital services from Government.

Organisations, public and private alike, are presently facing two major challenges; keeping abreast of the increasing threat landscape and dealing with the growing shortage of skilled cyber security professionals to protect and defend our assets. Currently the global deficit is estimated to be three million people. Ireland is heavily reliant on our digital economy, as well as the investment technology giants have made here, so we need to get security right.

In Ireland, organisations like Cyber Ireland and Skillnet are raising awareness and offering training programmes. Initiatives like Teen-Turn, which provides teenage girls with the opportunity to gain hands-on technology experience, should make a real difference over time. Accenture has set a global target to have a 50:50 gender balanced workforce by 2025 and this should certainly help.

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Society is now so dependent on information technology to provide essential services, but the potential impacts of IT disruption are wide and varied. This sparked my interest in security and is why I chose – after my career break – to specialise in cyber security, resilience and breach investigations. I have no regrets. It is a fascinating area where I get to meet people from all walks of life and help organisations to tackle interesting and complex problems.

At Accenture, we help organisations to build a strategy in line with their risk appetite, implement security technologies and where required, we can run security operations for them also.

T: +353 87 618 2618 E: jacky.fox@accenture.com W: www.accenture.com

What can we do to deal with these challenges?

Dealing with cyber threats requires a multifaceted approach and it is important

This article makes descriptive reference to trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks by Accenture and is not intended to represent or imply the existence of an association between Accenture and the lawful owners of such trademarks.

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Driving digital innovation and delivering better services Barry Lowry, the Government’s Chief Information Officer for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, details Ireland’s journey towards digital innovation in government, doing more for the same price and the goal to make Ireland Europe’s number one GovTech country.

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“The Government’s strategy for digital isn’t about cost cutting, it is about doing more for the same level of investment,” Lowry explains. “That’s an important challenge for us as we move into an era where we are actively working to encourage more people to use our services digitally. Our ICT strategy is a simple model that outlines how the citizen will be enabled to use digital

government services at the time and place of their choosing, and using their device of choice.

“We need to make sure our services are intuitive, look and feel the same and have a single point of access. We need to join up our data, have more shared platforms, get our capability right and get our governance and legal basis in order.”

It has not gone unnoticed by Lowry that the work he has undertaken to create digital fluency in Irish governance has occurred at a time when global governance and technology have made for sometimes uneasy, sometimes too easy bedfellows. “Interestingly, in the last year we have had a robot [Pepper] address the House of Commons in Westminster, which in many ways shows

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“We also had the sinister side to technology such as the Mueller Report and the attempts to use technology to influence the most important election in the western world, the election of the President of the United States. Then there is the UK’s decision to leave the EU. We know all the areas where this is going to be a challenge to Ireland: trade, security, agriculture, etc. But technology is also an area where there is going to be a significant impact.”

This impact, Lowry reasons, will not so much relate to the actual technology, but more of the challenge where the UK’s exit from the EU will leave Ireland without the member state which is not only closest but whose culture is the most comparable to our own. “One of the areas where the government officials who spend time in Europe do feel concern is that, with the UK away, Ireland could be peripatetic, not just geographically, but culturally,” he says.

“There was only two parts of the EU using Common Law and who didn’t have a national identity card scheme: Ireland and the UK. Culturally, we are very different from mainland Europe, and I notice it when they’re talking about things like open source software and the digital gateway. They don’t quite understand how agreed approaches might impact on Ireland differently.

Culture is going to be one of the biggest challenges over the next few years. You can see that being played out in the newspapers with the ongoing discussions about data sharing across government. We need to use our digital strategy to be more active in Europe and make sure we are assimilated with what’s happening in Europe, because they are so focused on the goal of panEuropean digital government which underpins a single digital market.”

Lowry has been leading the march toward pan-European digital government

“Culture is going to be one of the biggest challenges over the next technology and innovation report

the growing political interest in digital.

Liam Maxwell, Government Chief Technology Officer moved to Amazon and Nick Clegg went to Facebook. Any of us in the public sector who can remember trying to educate our politicians on digital and technology for years know that a leading politician becoming part of a tech company is very interesting,” Lowry says.

few years... We need to use our digital strategy to be more active in Europe and make sure we are assimilated with what’s happening in Europe, because they are so focused on the goal of panEuropean digital government which underpins a single digital market.” on Ireland’s end. With gov.ie now up and running, and gaining “positive feedback from the users and the press”, he is quick to point to the “encouraging rise” in uptake of MyGovID, the single account that enables users to access services across various governmental departments. Having had 10,000 verified accounts two years ago, the programme now boasts over 410,000 verified accounts.

“It is becoming very clear that the public not only understands but supports the direction of travel” he says. “A survey carried out last year by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection found that nearly nine out of 10 people wanted the extension of the use of MyGovID into other areas. We’re now even seeing the public ask why they can’t use their government credentials in banking, insurance and other areas. This is quite common in other parts of Europe and I think it will be an important area of public debate which we will see develop over the next year or two.”

In terms of approach, Lowry says that Ireland’s is “very much aligned” to the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s principle of “userdriven digital services”, meaning that the Irish Government has been liaising with both users and governmental departments in order to better understand the user’s experience of the Government’s digital offering and make improvements accordingly.

“We are looking at how AI can help people with learning and visual disabilities. We are trying to make the best of cutting-edge technology and use it in government,” he explains. “The digital post box is now being developed.

The idea behind this is that a citizen can choose for any important document to be encrypted and copies held in their own personal post box, which means that if one needs to provide them, then they simply provide access via their post box.”

High up on Lowry’s to-do list has been the implementation of both the Government’s Public Service Data Strategy and the Data Sharing and Governance Act. The Act, passed into law in March 2019, was designed in

4

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needs, academia and funding, you can

Irish Smart Society progress 2012-2017

create something very agile and powerful for quickly taking new technologies and

Benchmark - 2016 - 2017

Ireland - 2012 - 2013

Ireland - 2016 - 2017

using them in areas of government need.

“We were interested to see if there was an opportunity for doing this in Ireland

Global Connectedness

and ran a session in June where we

technology and innovation report

Talent Development

Economic Robustness

invited a very broad audience to debate the topic and how it would look. It was

Entrepreneurship

Talent Base

great to see such a diverse group of people in a room together trying to develop a common vision. What we ended up with was a GovTech Ireland ambition: for Ireland to be the best place

Inclusivity

Innovation

in Europe to transact digitally with government and for Ireland to be the best place in Europe to start a tech start-up.”

“The report of the day will publish shortly

Environment & Quality of Life

Freedoms

and the Minister will be reporting back to Government before Christmas.”

Public Services

Trust Safety & Security

Source: Digital Planet, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, May 2018

Lowry concludes by outlining the steps that need to be taken in order for that vision to be reached: “We need to figure out a system whereby we can use government challenges to stimulate the start-up system. The view in the room was that there is enough government

order to make the delivery of services by public bodies more efficient and cost effective by providing a clear legal basis for the sharing of personal data in certain circumstances. The goal for the Act is to reduce the burden placed on the citizen to provide multiple copies of the same information when they come into contact with various governmental departments.

“Our data strategy was approved by government last Christmas and we had a really good workshop recently building out the implementation plan for it and the Data Sharing and Governance Act. We’ve now got a strong legal basis for doing more with our data, which when aligned with GDPR, will enable us to improve services”.

With regard to talent and capability, government has a number of streams of activity in place, including developing a new career structure for staff. “We also now have 34 people in government going through ICT apprenticeships, the first batch of many and we are delighted with that,” Lowry adds.

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Lowry is excited by what he sees in terms of unifying the digital approach of Ireland’s public services: “Importantly,

not only central government but the sectors: justice, health, education and local government, are setting up digital leadership groups. We are doing that to ensure that everybody in the public service is working together on a common vision and theme which we’ve created together.”

An important aspect of that unified public approach will be GovTech, the process described by Ben Leich, GovTech Lead for the UK Government, as “applying emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence, advanced sensing, blockchain, advanced data processing, etc.) to improve the delivery of public services through increasing efficiency and lowering costs”. Lowry pays tribute to Minister of State for Public Procurement, Open Government and eGovernment, Patrick O’Donovan TD for his willingness to explore the process.

“One of the great things to happen in the spring was that Minister of State O’Donovan wanted to explore whether the GovTech concept would work in Ireland,” he says. “GovTech is the idea that you bring together government

funding available, but that it’s more about finding out how you get access to that funding and creating easy playbooks to follow. A more cohesive digital talent development model was also asked for, and that meant for everybody in the country. The view is that a lot of the things that would help GovTech are available within the EU Procurement Framework, we just need to make sure that we are using them properly.

“It’s more about developing guidance for how to procure differently for those involved in procurement rather than dramatically changing the rules.

Government has to be an exemplar and set the way in terms of our own services.

GovTech is a real opportunity for inclusivity, it doesn’t need to be a Dublin-based model. It’s something that everyone in Ireland can use from their place of habitation of choice. We need to get everyone involved in this. We’re all stakeholders in this and everybody wants to drive it forward. People want to say that their company is a GovTech company, which is really encouraging,” he states.

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eInvoicing: Digital transformation in action technology and innovation report

eInvoicing Framework’. The eInvoicing Framework is available to access on the Buyers Zone at ogp.gov.ie

Reflecting on the past two years progress, Declan McCormack, Programme Manager, eInvoicing Ireland at the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) tracks the Irish eInvoicing journey so far.

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The eInvoicing Ireland journey started in earnest just two years ago, with the launch of the European Standard on electronic invoicing and now over 85 per cent of Central Government bodies have become eInvoicing enabled, are

compliant with the EU Directive and support the European Standard. This move to digital has been facilitated and enabled by the OGP’s national framework agreement for the provision of eInvoicing systems and services, ‘the

About eInvoicing Ireland: eInvoicing Ireland is a programme based in the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) and is responsible for facilitating public bodies in becoming compliant with the European Directive on eInvoicing (2014/55/EU). eInvoicing Ireland is supporting compliance with the Directive by promoting eInvoicing Awareness, Understanding and Action. eInvoicing Ireland is providing a wide range of materials and information tools for the various stakeholders including public bodies, suppliers and service providers.

For anyone looking to access the relevant information on eInvoicing in Ireland visit www.ogp.gov.ie/eInvoicing and for specific queries please email eInvoicing@ogp.gov.ie

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The European Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing ‘the eInvoicing Directive’ was transposed into Irish legislation earlier this year, allowing all other contracting authorities and contracting entities ‘Sub-Central Government’ until 18 April 2020 to reach compliance with the eInvoicing Directive. eInvoicing Ireland are working with SubCentral Government sector partners in Health, Education and Local Government to support them in their preparations to achieve compliance with the eInvoicing Directive. Enabling all Government bodies to be eInvoicing compliant signifies a real commitment to the greater use of digital when doing business with the public service, which is one of the six high-level outcomes set out in the Government’s ‘Our Public Service 2020’ strategy.

A key component of Ireland’s transition to eInvoicing is Peppol – the network (akin to a mobile phone network) that connects businesses to governments, and businesses to businesses, for the electronic exchange of procurement documents including eInvoices. Since Ireland joined as a Peppol authority in early 2018, along with 19 other European countries on the network, Peppol has expanded beyond its European reach. Singapore has become a driving force, in South-East Asia, for Peppol-based eInvoicing, joining as a Peppol Authority earlier this year. In February the Australian and New Zealand Governments jointly announced their intention to adopt Peppol for eInvoicing business transactions across public administrations in both countries.

From Pan-European to global network, this means that any Irish business, by connecting once to the Peppol network, can send eInvoices to anyone on the network – breaking down cross-border barriers to trade and opening up the world through digitisation.

The complete digitisation of invoice processing has a number of benefits

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The invoice links data in every step of the procure-to-pay lifecycle. eInvoicing allows access to this data in a standardised, structured and digital format. Connecting the data between business processes can help to transform how things are done. The ability to analyse and better understand such data enables public bodies to make more informed decisions with regard to expenditure, to deliver better outcomes for businesses and the public.

T: +353 76 100 8000 E: declan.mccormack@ogp.gov.ie W: www.ogp.gov.ie

In order to become eInvoicing enabled and reach compliance with the eInvoicing Directive by 18 April 2020, Sub-Central Government bodies should follow six steps: 1. Conduct an internal analysis of the organisation’s current invoice processing environment including invoice volumes, supplier profiles and the systems involved – eInvoicing Ireland have developed preparatory worksheets to support public bodies in undertaking this exercise, available at www.ogp.gov.ie/einvoicing 2. Identify the internal people/teams involved in invoice processing including the Finance, ICT and procurement teams 3. Develop the organisation’s eInvoicing strategy/approach, identifying whether basic compliance or fully integrated eInvoicing services/solutions are required for the organisation 4. Access the eInvoicing Framework through the Buyers Zone at ogp.gov.ie 5. The relevant lot for Sub-Central Government bodies is Lot 3, be sure to read the Framework documentation for Lot 3 carefully and follow the process to engage with the eInvoicing service providers on the Framework.

6. Once engaged, work with the eInvoicing service provider to implement eInvoicing across the organisation’s processes and systems, and with the relevant people.

10 things every Irish Government body needs to understand about the eInvoicing Directive 1. The European Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement* applies to all Government bodies (all contracting authorities and contracting entities).

2. The eInvoicing Directive obliges all Government bodies to be able to receive and process electronic invoices in accordance with the European Standard for eInvoicing (EN-16931).** 3. The deadline for Central Government bodies to be compliant with the eInvoicing Directive was April 2019.

4. The deadline for Sub-Central Government bodies to be compliant with the Directive is April 2020.

5. The Directive applies to all invoices relating to Government contracts above EU thresholds.

It is recommended that where Government bodies are receiving eInvoices relating to contracts above threshold they do not differentiate in terms of accepting eInvoices.

6. There is an exception for contracts declared to be secret/accompanied by special security measures.

7. The eInvoicing Directive does not prescribe how eInvoices should be sent, the Irish Government has chosen the Peppol eDelivery network for transmission of eInvoices in accordance with the European Standard.

8. The OGP eInvoicing Framework allows Government bodies access services and solutions which comply with the eInvoicing Directive and the national eInvoicing approach. To access this Framework log onto the Buyer zone on www.ogp.gov.ie and search for PEPPOL. 9. eInvoicing Ireland is supporting Government bodies to reach compliance with the eInvoicing Directive, for more information log onto www.ogp.gov.ie/eInvoicing and to join the eInvoicing community email einvoicing@ogp.gov.ie

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The second stage, on the journey to digital transformation, for Central and Sub-Central Government and the shared services and co-ordinating facilities who are already receiving eInvoices, is to raise awareness among suppliers that this digital option is available when doing business with the public sector.

Encouraging suppliers to issue eInvoices will support eInvoicing in becoming the main method of invoice processing in public procurement. eInvoicing Ireland supports the promotion of supplier eInvoicing adoption, in accordance with the eInvoicing Directive and national eInvoicing approach, so as to realise the associated benefits.

Becoming eInvoicing enabled

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including reducing the administrative burden on both the private and public sectors through the automation of processing and workflows. There are also the significant environmental benefits that transforming from paper to digital can enable, which go hand-inhand with the growing focus by Governments world-wide on the climate and the green agenda. In addition to this, there’s the value of the data itself. The true value of transparent data is yet to be fully realised, as explained by Roberto Viola, European Commission Director General, DG Connect: “This future will be built on data and is increasingly becoming the foundation of our economy. The European data economy, can bring us benefits in terms of the development of new technologies and the emergence of ecosystems around data.”

10.Beyond basic compliance with the eInvoicing Directive, solutions and services which integrate into the accounts payable/invoicing systems offer a better opportunity to realise the eInvoicing benefits and real digital transformation.

* To access the Directive: S.I. No. 258/2019 - European Union (Electronic Invoicing in Public Procurement) Regulations 2019 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2019/si/258/made/en/print?q=electronic&years=2019 **To access the European Standard on eInvoicing the I.S. EN 16931-1:2017 and S.R. CEN/TS 16931-2:2017 free of charge through the NSAIhttps://shop.standards.ie/en-ie/Standards/I-S-EN-16931-1-2017-80591_SAIG_NSAI_NSAI_2092009/

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Disruption, disruptive technologies and organisational stages of growth

Finn de Brí, Chief Information Officer, Houses of the Oireachtas argues that market disruption should be less about the focus on technology and more about an organisation’s stage of development.

In the era of disruption, it’s important to recognise that conditions have to be right for change, argues Oireachtas CIO Finn de Brí. de Brí speaks in the context of a global push for the adoption of disruptive technologies such as that of AI, robotics or big data, in both public and private sector organisations.

Market disruption, he states, is possible at various stages of an organisation’s development and does not necessarily require the need to adopt the latest technological innovation. Instead, the CIO stresses the importance of an understanding of an organisation’s standings and its potential for disruption

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before the integration of disruptive technology.

“Sometimes disruptive technology doesn’t work. That can be for many reasons such as the technology itself not being mature enough or because your organisation isn’t ready for it,” he says. Adding: “Rather than feel bad about failure, we need to accept it.” de Brí equates the adoption of disruptive technology within an organisation that is not yet ready as to that of sending a fiveyear-old to university and points to big data as an example of a technology that, while compelling to many organisations,

has not lived up fully to expectations.

“Organisations need to be at a certain stage of development before they can adopt certain technologies,” he states.

Outlining his understanding of organisational development, de Brí points to similarities in the human growth process and the various stages of cognitive development. Each stage is learned and used repeatedly but also forms the basis on which to build later stages upon.

“These are competencies and capabilities that you use over and over again as you continue to develop as a

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human and organisations go through a similar process, jumping through very vertical stages of growth. Vertical learning allows for an increase in capability but horizontal learning is about applying capability to many organisational situations.”

de Brí outlines the need to understand the opportunities for individual organisations within each stage and to utilise their abilities for maximum outcome. “Technology shouldn’t be the driving force for organisational development but should be used in conjunction with capability and growth ambition.”

and business process capability is about taking stage five capability and targeting mass sections of the economy. “Not many organisations are doing this but it is possible through real analytics.” This also forms the basis for the later stages of large scale operational project and portfolio capability (stage seven) and capability dynamics and coordination (stage eight).

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de Brí highlights the strikingly similar eight stages of development for public and private sector organisations with the only difference being at stage one. For a private organisation, this usually occurs through product development, compared to a public organisation whereby stage one usually relates to legislative capability.

but automation can be really disruptive,” he states.

Highlighting once more that most

Outlining the eight stage of growth, he says: “Each stage, when learned, can be used over and over and each has the potential to bring about disruption.

Depending on the stage an organisation is at will determine if a disruptive technology can be adopted. It would be wrong to assume that every organisation needs to strive towards or reach the final stage.”

Stage one (legislative capability or product development), de Brí highlights, can bring about market disruption on its own. “This is happening all of the time.

Organisations have been doing it with product differentiation, service differentiation, price etc. This disrupts the market and it’s not done through technology.”

Stage two centres on the organisation structure and business process capability. Organisations can capitalise on market disruption through doing this well. Ryanair, for example, have optimised this process to present as a low-cost airline. “We’re not even talking about IT here,” he says, emphasising an organisation’s capability to disrupt without that disruption being driven by technology.

ICT and business process engineering capability is stage three and a stage pinpointed by de Brí as one where many organisations, especially within the public sector, currently find themselves.

This stage centres on automation of services, such as government services being available online or the services offered by the likes of Amazon, Uber or Spotify. “This isn’t a disruptive measure.

There’s no disruptive technology such as AI or big data involved in the automation process. It’s just automation,

“Technology shouldn’t be the driving force for organisational development but should be used in conjunction with capability and growth ambition.”

Stage four of development, master data management and customer data integration capability, represents a move to “significantly drag down silos within an organisation”. de Brí believes that this is the point at where real value in analytics is optimised.

Analytics and business intelligence capability, which is stage five, is built upon this integrated data. Using the likes of Paddy Power, YouTube and Netflix as examples, de Brí says that the ability to build business processes around analytical opportunities is majorly advantageous for organisations who hold such capability.

Stage six, flexible case management

organisations will not need to reach these later stages, at least not while the disruptive technologies currently available do not suit their development process. de Brí says: “Disruptive technologies are not always appropriate for an organisation and an organisation’s stage of development will determine if certain technologies are appropriate for adoption.

“There are many opportunities for organisations to disrupt, with each stage of development offering many unique opportunities. Disruption is less about the technologies and more about the organisation and its stage of development, alongside its ability to create new disruptive changes.”

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What is the Alternative Dispute Resolution Process? technology and innovation report

IE Domain Registry, the company that manages Ireland’s country domain name, introduced a new dispute resolution process for contested .ie domains on 1 July 2019. This new process has been built on core principles: fair play and a fair hearing, the use of industry best practice, a right of appeal and an independent, neutral service provider, explains David Curtin, Chief Executive of IE Domain Registry.

From time to time, disputes arise in relation to domain registrations. There have always been formal processes for managing disputes in relation to .ie domain name registration. The two options were to initiate formal legal proceedings or to engage with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which mediates global domain name disputes. Both can be costly and time-consuming.

Our new Alternative Dispute Resolution Process, introduced following a policy development process by stakeholders within its Policy Advisory Committee, now gives individuals and organisations, particularly SMEs, an easier, faster and more affordable way to dispute the registration or the use of a .ie domain.

The process accommodates a wide variety of dispute types, including online impersonation, domain disputes between competing businesses, website contentscraping, defamation, rights-based complaints, and others.

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It’s important that Irish citizens, businesses and organisations have access to a dispute resolution process that is transparent, affordable and straightforward.

Who operates the process?

The process is independently operated

by Net Neutrals EU, an accredited dispute resolution body under the European Union (Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes) Regulations 2015.

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Net Neutrals EU was selected as the Alternative Dispute Resolution Service Provider by the Policy Advisory Committee, a stakeholder body set up by the board of IE Domain Registry in 2014.

A formal selection and tendering process with potential operators was used.

The Complainant and the Registrant (current holder of the domain) can work to resolve the dispute by communicating via the platform provided by Net Neutrals (currently the online forum, accessible to both parties and their advisers), www.netneutrals.eu .

Who is the process for?

The Alternative Dispute Resolution Process is for anyone who meets the criteria for submitting a complaint and who can prove: 1. They would ordinarily be eligible to register the domain name in question if it was not already registered by the Registrant; 2. They have rights in the domain name or in marks or identifiers very similar to it, or that their rights have been negatively impacted by the registration; or 3. The registration of the domain should be revoked as it has been registered or used abusively or in bad faith.

The process may be particularly beneficial for small and micro businesses due to its simplicity and reduced costs associated with opening a dispute.

What services are available?

Mediation: A trained independent Mediator will help the complainant and

the Registrant find a fair, amicable resolution. The Mediator will help keep discussions constructive, so the dispute can be resolved quickly.

Decision: A decision on a dispute is made by a qualified Domain Dispute Specialist at Net Neutrals. A decision can result in the .ie domain registration being transferred to the Complainant, or the deletion of the domain, or no action being taken at all (if the dispute is refused).

Opinion: A Complainant can ask a qualified Domain Dispute Specialist for a non-binding opinion on the dispute subject matter. This may be helpful prior to requesting a decision on the dispute through the Alternative Dispute Resolution Process or where the matter may become the subject of court proceedings.

Note that no action is taken against the domain registration in this instance.

Complaints made against a .ie domain — what to do If notice is received about a complaint submitted against a .ie domain registration, it’s important that a response is made. This ensures that the Registrant’s (current holder of the domain) view will be considered by the Domain Specialist.

The burden of proof is on the Complainant who needs to prove that they meet the complaint submission criteria. This is because the Registrant has already shown evidence of their compliance with the .ie Registration and Naming Policy when the .ie domain was registered.

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How the process works:

• referencing any rights to the domain name;

optional mediation service. If a decision

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If a complaint is opened it will be necessary for the Registrant to show that it wasn’t registered abusively, or in bad faith. Some examples of how this can be shown include:

Those who wish to use our Alternative Dispute Resolution Process will be initially encouraged to use the new on the complaint is requested, a qualified specialist will review submissions from

• proving fair use of the domain; or

both parties and decide to either uphold • showing that it is being used in connection with a legitimate business activity, or in connection with preparations to start a legitimate business.

or dismiss the complaint.

Because .ie Registrants will have already met the criteria for a .ie domain (namely a provable connection to Ireland and agreement to the terms of service), the

Why the new process?

burden of proof will be on the

We have always had a fair and transparent policy with Registrants, Registrars and the community and we wanted to offer an easier and more affordable option for disputing .ie domain name registrations:

Complainant. The Complainant, like the

F – Fair for the current Registrant and the Complainant. Fair play and fair hearing for both parties involved.

Dispute Resolution Process can be

I – Independent service provider operating the new online service.

R – Reputable, open and transparent process – decisions are made by experienced specialists.

Our new, Alternative Dispute Resolution Process provides the qualities of fairness, affordability, independence and transparency, and we believe it will help to solve issues in a timely manner.

connection to Ireland.

Further information on the Alternative found on our website: www.iedr.ie/adrp Ultimately, however, we believe that the number of complaints will be low, as Registrants will have already met the criteria for .ie domain registration. The burden of proof will be on the Complainant, and this will help to reduce the number of spurious or malicious claims.

T: + 353 (1) 236 5400 E: marketing@iedr.ie

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A – Affordable alternative to legal proceedings or WIPO disputes. Plus, it’s easy to use.

Registrant, must also have a provable

W: www.iedr.ie

Brand owners and holders of intellectual property rights will also be able to continue using the existing, formal dispute resolution process, which is independently operated by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

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Building a smarter police force Head of Digital Services and Innovation for An Garda Síochána, Tim Willoughby, outlines how mobile policing is enabling a faster and more interactive service, while easing the oversight process.

“Civilianisation is progressing at pace in An Garda Síochána. We used to have two superintendents in ICT, one in operations and the other telecoms. As part of the civilianisation of An Garda Siochána both have been moved into operational policing roles, so, along with my innovation role, I now cover the other roles,” Willoughby explains, detailing his role at the forefront of the push to digitalise and modernise policing in Ireland.

While the challenge was one that arose from technological need, the approach Willoughby piloted was one with a focus on the organisation and its frontline.

“New methods have to be adopted to make change. It’s not good enough to just talk about it,” he explains. “The first thing was speeding up how we work. We needed feedback loops and frontline

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engagement. The first thing I did with David Sheehan, who is now Assistant Commissioner, was to take four members of the frontline Garda team one day a week, every week, for the first six months. They need to own the service. It’s not good developing something for them and the backend people telling them what they’re going to get; they need to engage. Those four are turning into 70 Gardaí. Each division is producing two champions and we’re going to introduce them to what we’re doing and what the rest of Europe is doing so they can see we’re on the right trajectory.”

It was in Europe that Willoughby learned an important personnel lesson. Attending a hackathon in Sweden led to him understand the importance of UX (user experience design). At a time when

Gardaí had no UX experts employed, Swedish forces had four. Following the hiring of three UX experts, Willoughby says that they are now “spending their time in the frontline, getting the experience and getting the technology onto the side of the road using real situations”.

“If you want to change an organisation the size of An Garda Síochána, you start with making changes with the 14,000 frontline where even a small change will make a massive difference at the backend, whereas, with 200 senior people will only give you incremental change. Our challenge in the past has been enterprise resource planning, big systems and the senior people knowing what the frontline is doing, but now the focus is on giving the frontline the tools for the job and a by-product of that is

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that the senior people will get the dashboards to see what’s happening.”

“As people in government, we have to be responsible. There is a democratic duty to do things and fear trumps getting actions done. Moving into an agile world, we need to think and engage differently.

We came up with the slogan, ‘from failsafe to safe fail’. So, if something’s not working, pull the plug. Move on rather than trying to continuously invest in something that’s not working.”

One small change in working methods encapsulated the attempts to be constantly progressing for Willoughby: “We went away from proof of concept, where you’re not really proving anything and went to minimum viable product.

That means you’re putting the bones of the thing together and doing the least amount of work possible to show people that it works. Proofs of concept, typically you throw it away and start back from where you were, but minimum viable products mean you are moving and starting a trajectory. It was a mindset and language change to implement that.”

Reform in An Garda Síochána, digital or otherwise, has been happening under the umbrella of the report A Policing Service for the Future, which carried with it 10 principles and 50 key recommendations, the last of the principles being that the force must be “adaptive, innovative and cost effective”.

Recommendations under that principle include the complete overhaul of the digital aspect of the force and the wearing of body cameras by officers. The plan also mandates the acquisition of 2,000 devices by the force before the end of 2019.

“The strategy has endless mentions of where mobile fits in and sets out very clearly the direction we need to go in,” Willoughby says. “Our ICT strategy sets out a vision for mobility and it again puts the Garda at the centre. It’s about the

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Willoughby portrays a digital journey that was enabled as much by his “getting out of the way” as it was by his leadership: “Part of this is the power structure in the organisation. Looking at where the power sits and how you manage your own power; it has to flow and be enabled. You have to step out of the way and let things happen. If everything has to go through you, then nothing will happen.

“If you want to change an organisation the size of An Garda Síochána, you start with making changes with the 14,000 frontline where even a small change will make a massive difference at the backend, whereas, with 200 senior people will only give you incremental change.”

Garda being better connected to have whatever they need and that’s something that’s different for the organisation. If we’re giving a tool to a Garda, a rule we have is that everything that they have to do can be ‘Once and Done’ and finished.

There’s no paperwork afterwards, the members don’t have to back to the station, if they’re doing something on a mobile app.”

Willoughby then moves on to the technicalities of the activities Gardaí can now undertake on the app: “Looking at frontline engagement, we’ve given them the ability to scan things. The way we have written apps is that each app has micro capabilities. For example, we have a service for authentication, so if we decide in the future that we want to change that process, we only have one micro capability to change and all the other apps use that. We have a passport App that not only scans the Machine Readable Zone on the passport, but also unlocks the biometric chip, reads the data and can validate the passport we have in our hands.

“A year ago, we had 50 small stations that weren’t yet networked with traditional broadband, because we have small stations in places that haven’t yet

been covered by the National Broadband Plan. What we have been able to do is use smart technology to put boosted internet signal into those places and use the power of the mobile device to connect the member to the back end. By the end of the year, all of the sites will have connectivity. We have also just closed a tender where the speed gun will work with the app. When it gets a hit, it will automatically connect to the phone, using Bluetooth, and the phone will present the full details of the car and the speed. We have pushed our portal into an app now which means that Gardaí don’t have to go into their stations in the morning and will still receive bulletins.

We have developed a series of smart cars and what we’ve done is put WiFi in the car with a dual sim router, so wherever the car is in the country, it’s connected, and the range is within 150 metres of the car. “ Change is afoot in An Garda Síochána and Willoughby sounds confident and assured as he concludes by looking to the future: “We want 1,000 devices to go out per month next year. We are building dashboards for senior people to see what’s happening on a daily basis. We are changing the way we do things.”

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The future of secure linked data analysis to improve health services in Ireland

The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) have been awarded a pilot project by the Health Research Board (HRB) to design and develop the infrastructure needed to share and link data securely, enabling research to improve the health service.

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Data is one of our most valuable national assets, however, the lack of infrastructure and services in place to share, store or link data safely for research vastly limit the potential benefits of this data to improve the Irish health service. In the Irish health and research ecosystem, hospital data, disease registry data, data from longitudinal studies and surveys, census data, administrative data are routinely collected – but currently little can be done beyond their collection and stated use without being in breach of data protection legislation or ethical guidelines.

The pilot project, led by the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) at NUI Galway, will be the first steps to

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establishing an infrastructure that facilitates linking of multiple sensitive datasets in a safe environment to harness new insights from existing data, enabling research that has proven infeasible or intractable in the past. This will greatly enhance our ability to support health service planning and delivery and provide evidence for policy. Similar infrastructures and services are already in place and widely used across Europe, Canada and Australia, yet each country would have its own unique requirements and environments.

ICHEC will build on a model developed by the HRB called DASSL (Data Access, Storage, Sharing and Linkage; see Figure 1) which outlines the infrastructure and services to ensure:

•

Safe projects (valid research purpose);

•

Safe people (trusted researchers);

•

Safe data and data governance (people’s data protected);

•

Safe setting (security controls); and

•

Safe outputs (disclosure control of outputs).

While the DASSL model provides a high level overview of all the different components required to conduct linked data research in a safe environment, the project will initially re-examine its relevance to the Irish health data landscape since its conception in 2016.

This will be followed by the design and testing of the major infrastructural

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“Gathering robust sets of health data can be expensive and time-consuming, so it makes sense to use them to their full potential. The fundamental question is: how can we ensure data is used

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or shared safely, ethically and legally? This Proof of Concept initiative will create the blueprints for a future infrastructure in Ireland that will ensure safe access to health data and develop ways to share or link existing data responsibly for the benefit of people’s health and patient care.”

Darrin Morrissey, Chief Executive at the HRB. Figure 1. The Data Access, Storage, Sharing and Linkage (DASSL) model developed and published by the HRB in 2016.

elements for safe use and linkage of these different data sets using synthetic data, i.e. fake data that resembles the characteristics of real health datasets.

Research into state of the art techniques in data handling, anonymisation techniques and software that support data workflows will all be part of the project. The prototype infrastructure will also be tested against case studies that are based on real life questions and scenarios, e.g. how to improve on current protocols regarding prescription guidelines.

A key aspect of the project is to engage with a wide range of stakeholders including patient groups to ensure broad awareness and consultation, to build confidence in the approach and to leverage support for the infrastructure at a national level.

“This project is a major step in addressing a real gap for the use of health data for research purposes in Ireland. We will be working with a wide range of partners nationally and internationally to ensure that what we build will not just be to the highest standard, but the design incorporates feedback from the Irish health ecosystem, the general public and the research community to ensure trust in the infrastructure,” says Dr Simon Wong, who leads the projects at ICHEC.

working with researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Working with other national and international collaborators will also be crucial, including those based at the FutureNeuro Research Centre and the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research.

Simon Wong, PhD Computational Scientist, ICHEC T: +353 1 524 1608 (ext 25) E: simon.wong@ichec.ie W: www.ichec.ie

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In addition to the prototype infrastructure, a major outcome from the project will be a final report that lays the foundation for a national infrastructure for data access, sharing, storage and linkage of sensitive health, social care and related data and provides guidelines for the upscaling of the model. This report is expected to be published in late 2021. A further exercise will then be required to ensure the capacity, knowledge and resources are available within our current data

ecosystem to upscale, develop and sustain this fundamental piece of national infrastructure.

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Creating a digitally skilled public workforce Beverley Smith, Academy Facilitator and Head of Digital Faculty for the UK Government’s Government Digital Services (GDS), explains the process by which the UK Government founded its digital learning academy and the teaching strategy implemented thereafter.

“In the UK, we have a Government Transformation Strategy, created in 2017, that outlines the scope and objectives for the UK Government up to 2020,” Smith explains. “It is about transforming the relationship between the citizen and state by exploiting digital to build and deliver services. The way the UK did this was to create Government Digital Services GDS over seven years ago. Our flagship operation is the gov.uk website. gov.uk has been

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copied because it is open code and the GDS model of having this area of expertise has been copied as well.”

The digital strategy carried out by the UK Government comes with five objectives:

4. make better use of data; and 5. create shared platforms, components and reusable business capabilities.

“We fall under number two, developing the right skills and culture among our

1. business transformation;

people and leaders,” Smith says.

2. grow the right people, skills and culture;

“The big word in there is ‘culture’

3. build better tools, processes and governance;

different processes, it’s working in a

because it’s not all about following different way and creating a new culture

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for people to work in. The academy is part of the way the Government are addressing this in the UK. It’s not the only solution, we still have things like Civil Service Learning that we can go to, or job shadowing and on the job training.

The GDS Academy is one arm.

The history of the GDS Academy begins in 2014, and it has delivered to over 10,000 students. It was created in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which wanted to build its own internal digital capability. The academy was set up with the idea to grow digitally equipped talent internally. The DWP digital academy started in a job centre in Fulham, London, with an eight-week

We do this usually in groups of about 15 people. We have to create a very safe environment where people are able to relax and try things without fear of repercussions. They have a go, fail fast and try a different way. This is learning by doing and it’s all about consolidating very quickly on something you’ve learned. We encourage everybody to leave their grades at the door, which is important so that everybody can work on the same level.”

The academy won the Civil Service Building Capability and Skills Award 2015. When Kevin Cunnington, to that point the Business Transformation Director, left DWP for Cabinet Office in 2017, the academy was transformed into a cross-government academy, which now also helps local government and has helped other international governments set up their own academies.

With 10 facilitators across four hubs in London, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle, Smith says that the academy is constantly iterating content, gathering feedback and evaluations in order to tailor their offerings to the changing needs of the students. “We have short feedback loops, so we quite often change courses from week to week. That helps our users to make sure they’re getting the best possible, but it also keeps our facilitators on top of their game,” she says.

“All our offerings are currently in the classroom. We’re exploring other mediums, piloting online self-managed blended learning, putting some of our offerings online. Our unique selling point is the fact that we’re talking about working in an agile way from a government perspective,” Smith explains.

“At the moment, most of our offerings are

“The UK Government decided to embed digital skills throughout government, make sure that digital experts who come in actually understand government, make sure that civil servants of other professions understand digital, strengthen the leadership skills of agile project management and establish a better way to develop policy and deliver services in tandem.” foundation course in digital learning.

“We got lots of feedback, most crucially that eight weeks is too long and too difficult for those trying to scale up,” Smith says. “If you’re running an organisation, you probably can’t let a member of your team go for eight weeks.

We cut down some face to face content and changed the way we delivered some of the training. The course is now 10 working days and we still feel we capture

in the digital part of DDAT but we will start to move into areas such as data and technology. We also offer coaching in organisations after their training and have previously delivered academic masterclasses.

“What makes it different is that it’s not all about sitting at desks and being told how to do things and working through a workbook. It’s experiential learning where we try things out for ourselves.

technology and innovation report

“When the digital specialists started coming into Government around 2012, the thought was that we could upskill all these great civil servants to do some of the digital, data and technology (DDAT) roles. The UK Government decided to embed digital skills throughout government, make sure that digital experts who come in actually understand government, make sure that civil servants of other professions understand digital, strengthen the leadership skills of agile project management and establish a better way to develop policy and deliver services in tandem.”

the essence of digital and cover everything necessary. We were delivering this foundation course in London and Leeds and also started running one-day awareness courses. It became obvious there was a need for courses for training teams and leaders who want to work in this way. People in other departments started hearing about the academy and expressing interest in sending some of their teams to these courses.”

The academy also covers digital in government, user centred design and other digital tools. Their “bread and butter” are courses aimed at different levels of capability, with the strategic aim of building expert capability in the DDAT professions and their leaders and appropriate expertise in the ways of working with digital for non-DDAT leaders.

They are aided in their work by the DDAT Profession Capability Framework, which identifies 37 roles in government, working in a digital way. There are an estimated 17,000 civil servants in the UK working in DDAT roles. The framework splits down the roles and details requirements, skills needed, possible career paths, courses that can be undertaken and information needed in order to swap roles in the course of a career.

“You don’t get any qualifications or certificates when you’ve been on one of our courses. They have recently all been revamped and we will be looking into official accreditation in the future. Senior leaders are telling us that they don’t have three days to go on a course, so we are working on a one-day model for them. We run many day long awareness events because we get some attendees who come along on these courses fully expecting digital to mean they will be upskilled in IT skills like Excel — there is still a real need for general awareness” Smith concludes.

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The glacial pace of the Brexit negotiations has led to the feasibility of a technological solution to the Irish border issue being suggested on more than one occasion. With Brexit set to return to centre stage after the UK’s general election, eolas examines how smart borders actually work.

The border between Norway and Sweden has frequently been cited as one of the world’s more technologically advanced borders. Given its status as a functioning land border between an EU member state and a non-EU member state, it is commonly looked to as an example for those who wish to push the idea of a technological solution to border negotiations.

Cars cross the Swedish-Norwegian border through unstaffed border posts that are equipped with cameras using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology. Every entry into either country is logged within the system.

A complex computer system allows goods to be declared to customs before they have left their warehouses, but lorries are still required to stop at staffed crossing points where their goods are physically checked. While the technological system allows for the process to be streamlined, checks take on average 20 minutes and there are approximately 1,300 checks per day by the Norwegian authorities at Svinesund, the busiest of the border crossings.

Given that there are roughly 13,000 crossings of the Irish border by heavy goods vehicles per day, even the relative speed of a 20 minute customs check could cause extensive delays.

Of course, what aids this relatively

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speedy border process is something beyond the technological. Norway may not be a member of the EU, but it is still a member of the single market, meaning that goods and product standards are aligned, creating a trust across the 1,000 miles of border between the two countries. The confusion over the future status of the UK, and Northern Ireland in particular, mean that neither trust nor the alignment of product standards are certain across Ireland’s comparatively small border of 310 miles. Sabine Weyand, at the time EU Deputy Chief Negotiator for the Brexit process and now EU Director General for Trade, has already said that existing technology will not be the solution to issue at the border.

Lars Karlsson, the President of KGH Border Services, former Director of World Customs Organisation and Deputy Director General of Swedish Customs, has speculated that a new, but expensive, technology could be the solution to the issue. Karlsson has proposed the idea of a satellite system linked to the phones of drivers of HGVs could automatically register crossings as they happen. Again, the issue of trust comes into play for such a proposal to become feasible even before the technology is developed.

In a report for the European Parliament on what he termed “Smart Border 2.0”, Karlsson called for the establishment of

free movement lanes for those covered by the Common Travel Area agreement, a cooperative approach between all concerned parties, enhanced driver’s licenses and the use of radio frequency identification technology as well as ANPR. To conclude his report Karlsson listed what he believed to be required for the implementation of a Smart Border 2.0: • A bilateral EU-UK agreement regulating advanced customs cooperation; • Mutual recognition of authorised economic operators; • A customs-to-customs technical agreement on exchange of risk data; • Pre-registration of operators and people; • Identification system by the border; • A single window with one-stop-shopelements; • A unique consignment reference number; • Simplified customs declaration system (100 per cent electronic) with re-use of export data for imports; • Mobile control and inspection units; and • Technical surveillance of the border (CCTV, ANPR etc).

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Education and skills report

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Credit: Fine Gael

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Education: 2020 and beyond Construction of new schools, higher numbers of teachers, a reduction in capital budget but the overall biggest departmental budget in Irish education history and the beginning of negotiations for a new teacher pay deal: 2020 promises to be an interesting year for education in Ireland.

Student performance Ireland’s place among the world’s leading education systems was once again affirmed by the Programme for International Student Assessment, a study of 500,000 15-year-old students across 79 countries that takes place every three years. The 2018 study, released in December 2019, revealed Ireland to be ahead of many OECD counterparts in the fields of reading literacy, maths and sciences.

Ireland impressed especially in the field of reading literacy, ranking fourth out of 36 OECD countries, third out of 27 EU member states and sixth overall, with

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only China, Singapore, Estonia, Canada and Finland achieving a higher ranking.

Irish students ranked 17th out of 37 OECD countries and 11th out of all 28 EU member states in the sciences, while ranking 16th out of 37 OECD countries and 21st out of 78 countries overall in maths.

Ireland had a lower percentage of lowperforming students across the three subjects on average when compared to other OECD countries.

Irish girls were found to be significantly outperforming the boys in reading literacy, but there were no significant gaps in the maths and science

categories, which will come as welcome news to those who have dedicated themselves to increasing the numbers of young girls interested in STEM given the large gaps recorded in boys’ favours as recently as 2015. The study also reported that Irish students are less likely to use computers or tablets for the purpose of learning either in or outside of school.

Worryingly, only 60 per cent of Irish students reported satisfaction with their lives, with a large gap between male life satisfaction (67 per cent) and female satisfaction (55 per cent). Low internet users among the students were found to be less likely to report negative feelings

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and more likely to report positive feelings than heavy internet users.

Second-level curriculum reform

The OECD has also been undertaking an assessment of senior cycle education in Ireland, where it has said that preliminary findings showed that the senior cycle had “a range of strengths including high levels of public trust”. However, the organisation also sounded a warning with some of its preliminary comments on the as-yet-unfinished review.

OECD senior analyst Beatriz Pont has said that stakeholders interviewed have expressed concern about the lack of more “rigorous and attractive” vocational elements within the senior cycle. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment would appear to back up that assertion, saying in October that those they had spoken to as part of their review up to that point had expressed the view that “access to technical, vocational, creative and professional learning could be enhanced, with improved links to apprenticeships, traineeships and employment”.

The CEO of the Council, John Hammond, has said that it is still too early to say when actual changes would be seen, but the President of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland, the country’s largest union for second-level teachers, Deirdre MacDonald, has already criticised the process, saying that groups such as Ibec were being prioritised over teachers in the consultations. MacDonald also said that the union had felt questions asked had been “leading”.

Junior cycle reforms are now slowly being phased into the curriculum, with special status afforded for history and the splitting of the exam for Irish into two strands. Exams are now administered as either Teanga 1, for schools in Gaeltacht areas and Gaelcholáistí, or Teanga 2, for

“

English medium schools. However, teachers have warned that they fear the exams’ focus on literature rather than the actual speaking of Irish will turn children away from the language and lead to more requests for exemptions.

Funding The Department for Education and Skills will have a budget of €11 billion in 2020, its largest ever budget. This is set to include funding for over 150 new mainstream teaching posts and €1.9 billion investment in special education, according to the Minister for FInance, Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD. Donohoe also said that the investment in special education would provide for over 400 additional teaching posts and the addition of over 1,000 special needs assistants.

The Department has issued out to tender contracts worth an estimated €700 million for design and build of the first round of new schools to be built around the country. The first batch being put to tender is seven primary schools, six of which are in Dublin, with the other in Douglas, County Cork. Each project is estimated to be worth between €60 million and €120 million, with each contractor entering the bidding required to prove their capability to deliver at least

”

education and skills report

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is currently carrying out a review of the senior cycle of education with a view to introducing changes to the Leaving Certificate syllabus in the near future. It invited parents, students and teachers to submit their views on the current Leaving Cert in a consultation period that ended in October 2019.

The Department for Education and Skills will have a budget of €11 billion in 2020, its largest ever budget. This is set to include funding for over 150 new mainstream teaching posts and €1.9 billion investment in special education.

four schools in various areas around the country.

The overall capital budget for education has seen a reduction of €20 million for 2020, down to €922 million, but Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh TD has said that this will not affect the building of the schools. McHugh has also said that the Department’s construction projects over the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 will provide 70,000 school places across the country.

A defining year While the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2019 report found that Irish teachers receive above average statutory salaries, it also found that they had relatively long teaching hours and instruction time, with this reflected in the country’s high cost of education per student. The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation and the ASTI will this year come together with government to negotiate the terms of the teacher pay agreement, with the current one expiring in 2020.

With union agitation for the restoration of pay parity escalating once again after the Government claimed to be seeking a “resolution” to the dispute, 2020 promises to be a defining year in Irish education.

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learning works

education and skills report

The future of Further Education and Training “The sector is relatively young. It was only created in 2013 with the creation of SOLAS and the 16 Education and Training Boards,” Brownlee says, detailing his view that we are currently at a juncture full of potential for FET. “The sector has been going through a development and organisation phase, where the priority was getting the organisations up and running, getting their structures right, matching roles and responsibilities to capabilities, getting the systems and processes in place.

“It’s only the last couple of years where a policy agenda has been developed, with an action plan on apprenticeships and traineeships and the agreement of national targets with the Minister of Education and Skills. In 2018, performance agreements were established between SOLAS and the Education and Training Boards. We’re at a place where we have a really strong foundation and there’s so much potential for real reform and performance improvement as we move ahead.”

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Andrew Brownlee, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of SOLAS, Ireland’s Further Education and Training (FET) authority, speaks with eolas about the FET college of the future, the end of the sector’s first five-year plan and why now is an exciting time for FET. 106

Founded as part of the July 2011 Government approved re-structuring of the FET sector, SOLAS works with stakeholders and partners to deliver this reformed FET provision on an annual basis. This reform involves structurallevel change, as well as changes affecting planning, prioritising, funding and the provision of FET programmes and services which are based on an identified need for a more coherent and effective system of provision. Strategic Performance Agreements between SOLAS and each of the ETBs set out “the context, strategic priorities and individual ETB contributions to the achievement of key national Further Education and Training (FET) sector targets over the period 2018-2020”.

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“The strategic performance agreements were a major piece of reform over the last few years,” Brownlee says.

“Effectively what they are, are mini threeyear strategies for each ETB that sets out the unique characteristics of each region they serve, the further education infrastructure and facilities they have available and how they’re going to shape their future direction to respond to the evolving labour market needs of their region.”

Brownlee sees the work being put into the reform of FET as a stepping stone toward Ireland having a more coherent post-secondary education system, one that envelopes both FET and Higher Education. “One of the most important things we need to think about is looking at FET and Higher Education in a more cohesive way,” he says. “Start talking about a tertiary education sector; I know that’s something the Department of Education are very interested in. Over time, we need to look at the balance between HE and FET for the school leaver cohort.

Such reform and a concentrated vision

Brownlee says that creating a wellfunctioning FET sector over the last six years in order to enable that kind of offering has been no small task: “We’ve got a great foundation in place. You had a further education sector, run by countybased vocational educational services and then a national training service, run

by FÁS. Trying to get those together, create new regional structures and change the culture of moving from command and control to shaping and influencing independent autonomous organisations has been a challenge, but we’re in a really good place.

“ETBs have a clear sense of where they need to go to meet the needs of their region. SOLAS has a clear sense of where it needs to invest strategically to get the profile and recognition it deserves. There’s been a lot of good things happening and what we need to do moving forward is focus on pathways and show people that FET can be a route into careers, HE and how it can be a resource you engage with regularly

throughout your lifetime and career.”

Concluding, Brownlee looks to the future and the “three or four key areas” SOLAS are focusing on to develop the next FET five-year strategy. “One is moving away from that training centre/PLC college divide and getting people to identify with an integrated FET college of the future,” he says. “Making sure that there are clear learner pathways; FET in the past has been very complex, we have 26 different programmes. We need to simplify that landscape significantly and make it clear that if you go in to do a course, there’s a clear outcome and pathway to take you wherever you want to go. We also need a consistent support package for learners regardless of what part of FET you present to, so that you know that if you go into FET you’ll have a common base of financial support and access to the same level of guidance and literacy and numeracy support.”

“We need to look at how we start developing vocational options at second level and I think there’s a role for FET there as well. We must also ensure the opportunities are there on the employers’ side so we can ensure that there are large numbers of people going into apprenticeships, traineeships and PLC courses so that FET can take its rightful place as a serious option for young people and lifelong learners.”

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“FET has potential to play a much stronger role for school leavers, whether they want to pursue an apprenticeship, undertake a traineeship or pursue a foundation course that is going to take them into HE without a four-year commitment. If we can develop FET in the way we want, to start looking at what the FET college of the future looks like, it can be somewhere the school leaver or lifelong learner wants to go to and engage with.”

has led to the broadening of the FET sector’s offering for prospective participants. “We have 52 apprenticeship programmes in operation, including a whole series of new exciting apprenticeships available in areas such as auctioneering, property services and technology, hospitality and cheffing,” Brownlee says. “We are in the midst of the generation apprenticeship campaign.

There’s excitement and public traction, we’re getting young people interested in FET and apprenticeships for the first time.”

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“It sets out their contribution to each of the six core national FET system targets.

Those are a nice summary of what we’re trying to do as a FET system: they’re about generating employment outcomes, making sure people progress along a pathway, within FET and onto Higher Education. They’re about making sure that people develop transversal skills that allow them to participate fully in society and in the economy and that they are recognised for developing those skills.

It’s also about making sure that we have a strong focus on lifelong learning and that getting people to reengage in education and training throughout their careers and lifetimes. They’re about getting people to focus on the key critical skills areas that Ireland needs to prioritise in order to succeed in the coming years. They’re about making sure we develop new apprenticeship and trainee programmes that can get people interested in FET as a destination.”

T: + 353 (01) 533 2500 E: info@solas.ie W: www.solas.ie

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Education and the economy The ESRI’s John FitzGerald outlines how policy changes and investment in education has impacted on economic growth on the island of Ireland.

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Discussing divergence in the education systems on the island of Ireland, which FitzGerald believes has heavily influenced the polarised economic outcomes for north and south, the academic points to a turning point roughly 30 years ago when the Republic of Ireland initiated a major change in education policy.

per cent in Northern Ireland, stating his belief that investment in education has been a major factor in the South’s better performance.

The ESRI Research Affiliate outlines average growth figures since 1990 which show output per head in the Republic of Ireland of 3 per cent annually compared to 1.5 per cent in the UK and roughly 0.8

“If you look at the EU15’s labour market, there is a low elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled labour and it’s recognisable that a failure to match labour supply and demand leads to

FitzGerald believes that matching educational attainment of the population to the needs of a modern economy is vital and offers some context to the importance of education investment.

unemployment. Ireland and Northern Ireland are part of a much broader EU labour market.”

He outlines that EU15 figures over the previous 15 years show that, even during the recession years, the employment of graduates continues to grow and the unemployment gap remains small. This is in contrast to statistics for those who didn’t complete secondary school for the same period, which portray a recognisable decrease in employment and a big increase in the unemployment gap.

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In the 1980s, a series of papers established the basis that streaming of children, both within schools and between schools, was not beneficial for less talented pupils and that mixed ability teaching was important. These findings seriously influenced policy in the Republic.

In Northern Ireland, the model of grammar and secondary schools has changed little from the original model, despite a move in England in the 1960s to modify its own model. Research conducted by Borooah in 2015 showed that the selection of 40 per cent of children into grammar schools very seriously disadvantages the remaining 60 per cent.

He also highlighted that only 20 per cent of Protestant boys from a deprived background reached the requisite

standard and only 33 per cent of Catholic boys from the same background did so.

The difference the change in policy made on the educational attainment levels of the Republic of Ireland compared to Northern Ireland can be tracked when put in the context of wider European performance. For those born in the early 1930s both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ranked low and behind the EU15 and EU27 averages for secondary school completions. While the early 1950s cohort had improved their levels, they still remained fairly low in the comparative rankings. However, by the early 1980s the Republic of Ireland had moved dramatically up the rankings, well above the EU15 and EU27 averages, while Northern Ireland, though still increasing their rate, had moved little by comparison.

Another comparison outlined by FitzGerald is that of education participation rates at the age of 17.

Following a major policy push in the Republic of Ireland in the 1990s to reduce the number of early school leavers, Ireland ranks best alongside Scotland, the highest UK performing region. In comparison, Northern Ireland has the second lowest participation at 17 rates, higher only than Wales.

The outworkings of differing education policies is evident in a recent analysis of

educational attainment levels for those aged 30-34 done in 2017. Across the UK regions and Ireland, Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of early school leavers and the lowest proportion of graduates within this age bracket. In comparison, Ireland has the lowest proportion of early school leavers and highest proportion of graduates. Outside of London, Scotland is the closest performer to Ireland in this regard.

FitzGerald says: “Scotland’s performance is no accident. The Scottish system of education involves mixed ability teaching and Government policy has given greater attention to education than much of the rest of the UK.”

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Returning to the two differing stories on the island of Ireland, FitzGerald explains that both north and south had the same system of fee paying secondary systems up until the 1920s. In 1944 the UK Education Act and subsequent Northern Ireland Education Act, 1947, provided free secondary education in Northern Ireland on the English model. In this regard, Ireland was left behind.

FitzGerald himself was in the last year of fee paying secondary education in 1967 when, he says, Ireland realised it had “been asleep” in terms of the importance of education to economic performance.

FitzGerald believes that Northern Ireland’s economic problem is compounded further by the fact that almost 25 per cent of its graduates are living in England and Wales, compared to just of 8 per cent of Irish graduates doing the same.

“Northern Ireland is not producing enough graduates and, of those that there are, a large number go to the UK,” explains FitzGerald.

In 2017, 19 per cent of Northern Ireland’s first year students were in third level institutions in Great Britain and statistics suggest that two thirds of those studying in England or Scotland do not return to work in Northern Ireland.

FitzGerald says that these figures are

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Contribution of Rising Educational Attainment to Growth, annual average 3

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evidence that Northern Ireland is “losing at both ends of the educational system”.

Explaining this further, he says that human capital affects the economy through three key channels: productivity; labour force participation and the reduced probability of unemployment.

Highlighting a range of studies done in Ireland which all point to a major contribution to Ireland’s economy over the past 20-30 years being the upgrading of human capital, he points to one in particular by Breen and Shortall, 1992, which showed that keeping children in school so they completed the junior cert. exam, not only reduced the likelihood of unemployability, but also brought about savings to the state in reduced unemployment benefit.

FitzGerald also points to his own research paper looking at the contribution of rising educational attainment to growth between 19922010 which estimated that 2.5 percentage points of the annual growth in the Republic of Ireland can be attributed to the upgrading of the educational attainment of the population.

A similar study focussed on Northern Ireland by Borooah estimates that upgrading education would bring about better returns for the individual and add 0.25 percentage points to productivity growth. A 2019 study by FitzGerald estimated that if Northern Ireland was to

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Labour Force Participation

Productivity

adopt the Scottish education system, it would add 1 per cent a year to growth and another 2019 study by Siedschlag and Koecklin pointed to a significant impact of education on foreign direct Investment (FDI).

FitzGerald says: “In the Republic of Ireland investment in education has played a crucial role in growth. Inclusive education is a vital tenet of this and that does not simply mean third level education. Much of the success in recent years can be attributed to a policy focus on reducing early school leaving and that change in perception that education was important and plays a big role in growth rates.

“In terms of Northern Ireland, a failure to invest effectively in education is crucial in Northern Ireland’s poor economic performance within a UK context. The selective nature of the educational system does serious damage to the economy and society and the challenge will be how best to rapidly evolve to a more inclusive system.”

The academic believes that reform of the education system today would take some 20 to 30 years to impact on the economic performance. However, he believes there is an existing quick win measure that could take earlier effect. He suggests that Northern Ireland should make itself attractive to those young people who have emigrated, highlighting

that a factor in Ireland’s success is that while over one third of all graduates leave Ireland, a large number also return, unlike Northern Ireland.

ESRI research suggests that those who return to Ireland earn 10 per cent more and increase their productivity by 10 per cent as a result of their learnings abroad.

Attracting back a large number of graduates could have a major economic impact,” he says.

FitzGerald believes that Northern Ireland needs to transform its investment in education to sustain real growth, however, he also recognises potential challenges to such a policy switch.

Recognising the rise of English nationalism which is culminating in the form of Brexit, he says: “The North faces huge economic problems which will be aggravated by Brexit, however, economic problems alone are not the only challenge. Northern Ireland depends for over 20 per cent of its income on transfers from London. The rise of English nationalism may threaten the long-term future of those transfers. To that end, Northern Ireland must transition to a more productive economy, relying more on its own resources and less on transfers from London.

“Education is the sector in which I would begin this transition,” he concludes.

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conference report

Speakers: Caron Alexander, Northern Ireland Civil Service; Barry Lowry, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform; Gemma Garvan, St James’s Hospital; K Ananth Krishnan, Tata Consultancy Services and Paul Duff, Tata Consultancy Services Ireland.

Digital Government Conference 2019 Digital Government is over for another year. This fantastic event, attended by 300 delegates, was sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services; DocuSign; Annertech and Acquia. The panel featured expert speakers from organisations including the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform; An Garda Síochána; Health Service Executive and the Defence Forces. Our exhibition area was sold-out, showcasing the very best in companies who are helping to digitally transform the delivery of Ireland’s public services. Stay tuned for 2020! #DigitalGovIRL

Tim Willoughby, An Garda Síochána, asks the panel a question.

Digital Government delegates.

Conor McCarthy, Ordnance Survey Ireland with Michael O’Dwyer, BearingPoint.

Ronan Power, Abtran with Kelan Daly and David Hamill, KPMG.

Anne Marie Conlon and Jacqueline Lynch, Donegal County Council with Claire Hamilton, Workday.

Joanne Walker and Gavin Gallagher, Met Éireann.

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The road to parity (L-R): INTO President Feargal Brougham; Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin; and John Boyle.

April 2019 saw the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) proclaim their members to be in sight of achieving their long sought-after goal of pay parity. Secretary General John Boyle talks to Odrán Waldron about just how close parity is and the importance of that parity in an Ireland that has never been more expensive to live in.

“Back in 2011/12, two different governments unilaterally imposed cuts on new entrants to the public service.

We would contend that teachers were targeted at that time for harsher treatment than other public servants,” Boyle says, beginning from the start of the fight that has defined the 2010s for teachers’ unions in Ireland such as his own and the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland.

Teacher pay was cut by 10 per cent by the Fianna Fáil Government at the advent of the economic crash, with the subsequent Fine Gael and Labour Government stripping teachers of their degree allowances, which amounted to

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€5,000 per annum for teachers with master’s degrees. Credit given for the length of time spent training in universities or colleges was also done away with; having started at the second or third rung of the pay scale depending on the length of their training, all new teachers were put back to the first point of the scale. When the INTO released its statement claiming that parity was on the way, it did so because the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform had, for the first time, used the word “resolve” when discussing the pay agreements of the future, hinting at an end to and a making up for these kinds of measures.

“In the intervening years, through negotiations, protests and lobbying, we have reduced the differential that was expected,” Boyle says. “The differential was expected to be €356,000 per teacher over their 40-year career. Last Easter, when we made that statement, a graduate teacher straight out of college from 2015 on into the future will have no differential going forwards. That €356,000 anticipated loss is back to zero, so they have pay parity in our definition. The teachers who came out from 2011-14 still face future losses.”

“Government officials said that they would work towards a resolution of this issue for certain unions, meaning

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education unions. That’s the first time we got the word resolution used. They gave choices in the statement that it would be worked towards in a review of public service pay or the talks for the next pay agreement.

The Public Services Stability Agreement, which dictates the pay of teachers currently, “was not designed to give pay rises to teachers or public servants”, Boyle says. Calling it the third deal of its kind, he paints the picture of a “gun put to the head of the public service unions” in 2013, when they were told to negotiate with the Government or face unilateral cuts across the board. In the time of the cuts imposed on public service workers, Ireland’s cost of living has skyrocketed. September 2019’s pay restoration of 1.75 per cent failed to keep pace with rent inflation around the country, with the regions of Dublin experiencing year-on-year rent rises in the areas between 3.1 and 5.9 per cent for quarter three of 2019. Fórsa, the country’s largest public services trade union has also warned of a “nightmare scenario” as private sector pay rises continue to streak ahead of public ones.

“It’s a huge worry for us that we’re not going to be returned to our previous pay levels until 1 October 2020. At the moment, the teacher unions will get a 2 per cent restoration, the final restoration of their scales,” Boyle says. “The people who were hit the third time, their allowances were cut and those are also being restored in September. For teachers who are trying to get on the housing ladder or just simply exist in the cities, they’re on an incremental scale and will get an incremental rise most years. New entrants get to skip increments, and their upcoming restoration ranges between €5,000€6,000. For us, as long as there is one teacher in a staff room not being treated equally with their colleagues, we will be battling for pay equality.”

Teacher pay scales currently have 25 pay points, ranging from €35,088 per annum to €64,302. The national listed

average price for property in quarter three of 2019 was €257,000; with mortgages typically given at three/threeand-a-half times annual salary, a single teacher on pay point 25 could not mortgage the average list price in Ireland, while a couple of teachers would require both to be on pay point eight (€44,873) to afford the minimum. This is a problem Boyle is all too aware of: “Now that things have turned on their head and there’s no affordable housing in Dublin City in particular, but in some other areas too, the restoration of teacher pay in itself would not be enough. There are still significant numbers of teachers, particularly those who are single, who cannot afford rent in plenty of parts of Ireland, nor can they afford to get onto the housing ladder.

The idea of a Dublin-based allowance system similar to London’s is put to him, “we take the lead from our membership” he says, but notes that the hypothetical couple both on pay point eight of the salary scale would require almost doubling of their salaries in allowances to afford a property in the capital city. He then turns back to the Government's promise for resolution to the pay parity issue: “We’re now eight months on from the promise that Government made that they would review public service pay. In December, we’re going to have big decisions to make if Government don’t agree to review the payment and we’re left waiting 10 more months to get our last restoration and our new entrants are left again.

“The Government has got to address that in a number of ways and that includes paying people properly. We have the best teachers in the world; the Salisbury Report said that we have either the highest or nearly the highest quality of entrants to teaching, our scores in primary school children reading are among the best in the world, no country outperformed Ireland in the recent PIRLS tests. We have a very high quality education system and the concern is that if we don’t address the pay disparity, housing prices and the lack of a promotional system in teaching, then we will lose that.”

“We would have to consider our options if Government breaks those commitments or, indeed, if another government comes in and doesn’t stick to those commitments. There will be a lot of noise made by public service unions because we are eight years into pay inequality, 12 years waiting for equality for principals and deputies.

There are lots of other public service workers who can’t afford to live in this country anymore. There’s going to have to be some action in relation to these issues if Government don’t stick to the commitments made last Easter,” he concludes.

education and skills report

“Since then, discussions have been happening about public service pay; they’re not finalised, they nearly are but they haven’t been signed off. I don’t know whether that review is going to start or if we’re going to have to wait until the start of the pay agreement talks in May or June 2020. Either way, we have a written commitment from the Department that the parties will work towards resolution.”

“Now that things have turned on their head and there’s no affordable housing in Dublin City in particular, but in some other areas too, the restoration of teacher pay in itself would not be enough. There are still significant numbers of teachers, particularly those who are single, who cannot afford rent in plenty of parts of Ireland, nor can they afford to get onto the housing ladder.”

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education and skills report

Responding to the demands of Industry 4.0 Businesses face significant challenges and opportunities as digital transformation – also known as Industry 4.0 – takes hold, not least of which is attempting to predict the changing face of the workforce.

“This digital transformation will disrupt jobs and indeed, some jobs will disappear entirely, that’s a fact and that’s already happening,” says Healy.

“However, it is also unlocking enormous pent-up potential within our businesses and in doing so that is bringing new jobs, and many of don’t even exist today.”

Skillnet Ireland Chief Executive Paul Healy speaks with Danielle Barron about new technologies, globalisation, the importance of collaborations and the need for immediate responses to the evershifting technological demands of the day.

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“A business’s greatest strength is its people. People are the source of new ideas, of innovation, of productivity, and of competitive advantage.”

These are the words of Paul Healy, Chief Executive of Skillnet Ireland. He believes that we are living – and working – through an era of unprecedented disruption. This disruption is being driven by a multitude of forces, not least of which is technology, but Healy stresses that the human factor remains the most important component in overcoming the disruptions.

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These changes are necessitating new ways of working, new jobs, and new skills. Healy says that for businesses to adapt to this new reality, and indeed thrive and prosper, they will need to place the development of their talent and the upskilling of their people centre stage.

“New technologies, globalisations, new ways of working, changing demands from the consumer and a whole range of competitive forces and geopolitical forces are combining to disrupt the workplace and business to an extent that is unprecedented in modern human history,” says Healy.

This is where Skillnet Ireland comes in.

By working with Government, educational institutions, and industry groups they help businesses identify their training and skills needs. This “triple helix” has Skillnet Ireland at the centre, enabling collaboration and expediting the development of new initiatives that meet business needs.

“It’s about getting the three stakeholders to collaborate on meeting the complex challenges of today’s workforces,” Healy explains.

Skillnet Ireland works in collaboration with over 50 different industry groups, from industry associations to representative bodies to enterprise clusters. This approach gives business owners and managers the opportunity to be heard, and to directly shape and influence the responses to the demands of Industry 4.0.

“We work entirely in partnership with industry to enable them to determine for themselves the workforce development and innovation that they want to undertake on behalf of their members.

With Skillnet Ireland, industry itself is in control. We don’t centrally provide any training or administer training schemes, it is entirely determined by businesses and

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they are in control of the process,” Healy says.

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Upskilling people can be an expensive process but Skillnet Ireland operates on a cost-sharing basis – new programmes are part-funded by Government but also part-funded by businesses. “This approach provides an incentive for businesses to upskill and develop their people and it also reduces the cost burden, particularly on small businesses, making it very accessible and affordable for them to engage in training for their team,” explains Healy.

Unsurprisingly, as this approach is closely aligned with the needs of businesses, it tends to produce highly innovative and responsive programmes and actions. Such a model is almost unique across Europe, although Healy says it is now starting to be replicated in other jurisdictions.

“We supply solutions,” he says. “We work with businesses to understand the challenges and opportunities that are in front of them and work with them to determine how to solve the challenges in a flexible and agile way. Businesses collaborate with us year on year and we work together on a cost-sharing basis to make it happen.”

It's clear the model is a successful one – independent evaluations of each Skillnet Ireland funded programme are carried out each year, and the results are always overwhelmingly positive. Healy attributes this to Ireland’s “open culture of collaboration”, which he says is an immense strength.

“Skillnet Ireland is at the heart of that, bringing businesses from across the country together to address shared challenges and opportunities. Each year we work with about 17,000 businesses and each of those businesses is afforded a really unique networking opportunity by partnering with us,” he explains.

“We are not just servicing the talent and skills demands from businesses and enterprise in the ‘as is’ but also the ‘to be’. It’s not just about managing the downsides and the risks, which is critical,

Healy offers a concrete example of how Skillnet Ireland recently facilitated a rapid response to an immediate industry need.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been identified as a priority by the Government, yet Ireland – or anywhere in Europe – lacked a postgraduate or master’s qualification in the area. This was despite significant demand from industry.

“It could be assumed that that it is a simple thing for a university to come up with a master’s degree in AI but it isn’t – number one, it is a hugely complex field but number two, it is changing all the time. No one university could do it alone as it requires deep integration with companies,” explains Healy.

Skillnet Ireland stepped in, providing seed funding to industry to develop the specific requirements for the programme.

Forty-five of the most cutting-edge tech companies operating in Ireland were involved in shaping the proposition in conjunction with three universities – University of Limerick, NUI Galway and Dublin City University.

“They went on to collaborate in a hugely integrated way with the industry bodies that were associated with Skillnet Ireland to develop the master’s,” continues Healy.

The timeframe of this entire process? A staggeringly short eight months. An expected 500 students will complete the

Master’s programme over the next four years, which will bring Ireland into the top 10 countries worldwide in terms of leadership in AI. “This gives an indication of the agility and speed that is possible and how something like this can be achieved in an expedited fashion through the Skillnet Ireland model.”

AI, blockchain, robotics, cobotics, automation, big data and Internet of Things; these technological advances promise a whole new universe of possibility for Irish businesses, but unlocking that potential is hugely predicated on talent, Healy stresses.

“It is about the ability of the system – the government, educational institutes and industry – to produce that talent and if we can do that, we will add an immense competitive strength to Ireland,” he asserts.

Ireland’s agile and skilled workforce has long been an integral part of its USP abroad, and Healy says avoiding complacency is an “absolute priority”.

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A significant amount of Skillnet Ireland’s work is in the area of horizon scanning and thought leadership on the future of work. Emerging skill areas and technologies will generate gaps in expertise, and Healy says funding decisions are often made on this strategic basis.

but it is about seizing opportunities,” he explains.

“It’s all about boosting the skill base through upskilling and professional career development. These challenges require really brave responses and innovative actions.”

To find out more about Skillnet Ireland, visit www.skillnetireland.ie

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education and skills report

DE IS prog ramme un de r re view w it h ex pa ns io n po ss ible

With Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh TD announcing in November that the Government was “in the middle of a review” of the DEIS — Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools — programme, eolas looks at how DEIS schools and students are currently faring in the larger context of Irish education.

As he discussed the status of the review, Minister McHugh announced that an audit had been undertaken and that an extension of the scheme to incorporate more schools was possible, although it was dependent on the resources available.

The Minister’s comments came just weeks after the Higher Education Authority published their Higher Education Spatial and Socio-Economic Profile for the academic year 2017/18.

The profile revealed that those from better off financial backgrounds are still more likely to go to college, but that progress had been made towards “delivering on the national priority of increasing access to higher education”.

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The study, which examines the student bodies of all publicly funded institutions except for Trinity College Dublin, found that: • 19 per cent of the overall student body and 36 per cent of medicine education enrolments come from people who qualify as “affluent” while only 15 to 16 per cent of the general population are considered “affluent”; • 15 per cent of the second-level student body qualify as “disadvantaged”, yet only 10 per cent of the third-level student body and 3.5 per cent of medicine enrolments were classed as “disadvantaged”; • Dún Laoghaire IADT had the highest proportion of “affluent” students, 35

per cent, while University College Cork, University College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland had the lowest proportion of “disadvantaged” students, 5 per cent.

Letterkenny IT had the highest proportion of “disadvantaged” students, with 24 per cent; • Most institutions reflected the socioeconomic profiles of their locations; • Medicine, business, finance and engineering degrees and courses all had high proportions of “affluent” students, while agriculture, environmental, social work and childcare degrees and courses all had high proportions of “disadvantaged” students; and

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• The socio-economic profile of Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown — now part of Technological University Dublin — had most closely mirrored the socioeconomic profile of the nation.

Fee-paying schools, which are subsidised by the State to the tune of €90 million every year, sent 100 per cent of their students to higher education on average. The DEIS

Rates of attendance at third-level institutions from students in counties without an institution have also dropped, most likely as a result of rising accommodation costs for students in the cities that typically play home to these institutions. For example, attendance rates in Cavan and Longford dropped to 69 and 66 per cent respectively, while nearby Galway, home to National University of Ireland, Galway and Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, boasted a rate of 82 per cent.

It must also be noted that these feeder school tables do not include data or figures for students who have progressed to apprenticeships or further education institutions, most likely to the detriment of the figures of DEIS schools more than any other schools. This is because the relevant education authorities have not released the

education and skills report

The latest of the Irish Times’ annual feeder schools tables, which show the proportion of students progressing on to third-level institutions, show that 57 per cent of students from DEIS schools progress onto third-level education, a figure that has remained the same since 2013. However, there have been individual DEIS schools who have shown improvement in that time, such as Adamstown Vocational Colleges in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, which has seen an almost 50 per cent rise in those progressing to third-level in those six years.

progressed to these institutions, with just 15 per cent of Dublin 17 students doing so.

Minister for Education and Skills, Joe McHugh TD

whom it was found had left school by the age of 16. 66 per cent of the students had answered that they hoped to progress to third-level education, but the study found that “lack of confidence at the prospect of progressing to higher

“A recent study found that two thirds of DEIS students desired to go to college but lacked the confidence in their ability to do so. The study also found that social barriers, including a fear of not being able to fit in with collegiate peers, stood in the way of progression for DEIS students.”

education” and “concerns about territorial stigmatisation” and a “sense of not being ‘good enough’” all tied in with a wariness of the financial cost of attending such educations and a sense of guilt for placing their families under financial burden had led these students to believe a future of third-level study was not possible.

55 per cent of the students agreed with the statement “I don't know if I will be able to find enough money to pay for

programme, which covers 185 secondary schools, receives roughly €60 million per year in order to fund additional teachers, schoolbooks, school meals and other necessary supports.

There was also found to be a huge disparity in third-level progression rates based on area, with more affluent areas showing much higher proportions of progress than more deprived areas.

Dublin 2, 4 and 6 all achieved third-level progression rates between 90 and 100 per cent, while only 15 per cent of students in Dublin 17 progressed on to third-level education. In terms of “higher points courses”, defined as courses in universities, colleges of education, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland or Technological University Dublin, 88 per cent of students of Dublin 6 students

relevant data and figures.

fees and living expenses” and while the young people were said to be excited

A recent study published in August 2019 by the academics Margaret Scanlon, Hilary Jenkinson, Pat Leahy, Fred Powell and Olive Byrne found that two thirds of DEIS students desired to go to college but lacked the confidence in their ability to do so. The study also found that social barriers, including a fear of not being able to fit in with collegiate peers, stood in the way of progression for DEIS students.

and intrigued by the prospect of college life, “this was countered by a lack of confidence in their own ability to access and participate fully in higher education”.

However, with the feeder tables coming with value added analysis for the first time this year that shows the dominance of fee-paying schools disappearing from that angle and the possibility of more

“‘How are we going to do it?’ An exploration of the barriers to access to higher education amongst young people from disadvantaged communities” interviewed 70 DEIS school students from across Dublin, Kerry and Cork, along with 25 parents, the majority of

extensive DEIS funding aimed at countering the social divide, perhaps a future in third-level institutions will begin to appear more believable and achievable for these students and those who come after them.

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New Legal Powers for QQI What is QQI’s role in combatting academic cheating?

Credit: Robbie Reynolds

education and skills report

Clamping down on academic cheating in Ireland

Quality and Qualifications Ireland is the independent State agency responsible for promoting quality and accountability in education and training services in Ireland. Our broad remit includes responsibility for the QQI award, the National Framework of Qualifications, and quality assurance of education and training institutions and programmes.

In short, we aim to give people – learners, educators and employers – confidence in the Irish education and training system and the qualifications they get from it.

Dr Padraig Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Quality and Qualifications Ireland and Ms Mary Mitchell O’Connor, Minister of State for Higher Education.

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Technological developments have driven a change in both the nature and sophistication of academic cheating and in the level of detection rates, both nationally and internationally. Contract cheating often consists of companies, regularly referred to as “essay mills”, selling learners bespoke assignments, essays and even theses which learners then submit for assessment as their own work.

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The changing face of academic cheating

Threat to the reputation of Irish education

Companies advertising such services claim that their products are “plagiarism free”, that they are original pieces of work and reassure learners that they are not breaching plagiarism restrictions by using them. Risk of detection is lower as such assignments are harder (or even impossible) to detect by the antiplagiarism software commonly used by education and training institutions. A recent UK research study found that as many as one in seven recent graduates may have paid someone to undertake an assignment for them.

The facilitation of learner cheating by

Following representations by QQI to the Department of Education and Skills, a new provision was included in the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) (Amendment) Act which was enacted in July 2019.

This provision empowered QQI to prosecute the facilitation of academic cheating.

Legal powers This new legislation provides QQI with the statutory powers to prosecute those who: •

assist learners to cheat by completing, in whole or in part, any piece of work required of the enrolled learner for their programme of study, or sit an exam or facilitate the sitting of an exam by someone other than the enrolled learner or provide answers for an exam;

•

advertise cheating services; or

•

publish advertisements for cheating services.

"essay mills" has been recognised by Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) as a growing threat to the integrity of Irish education. A number of significant exposures of academic cheating in other jurisdictions have come to light in recent years, drawing attention to this new and growing form of cyber-crime which presents a significant threat to academic integrity, risking reputational damage to the entire Irish education system, at home and abroad.

The legislation applies to academic cheating in further and higher education and training. Penalties can range from fines of up to €100,000 per offence and/or prison sentences of up to five

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years, depending on the nature of the offence.

Partnership across borders

Dr Padraig Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of QQI, highlights the national systemic benefits of adopting a collaborative approach to tackling academic cheating: “We welcome the commencement of this important new legislation which allows QQI to tackle an area we have identified as posing a significant risk to the reputation and integrity of the Irish education and training system. QQI will engage in an extensive programme of collaboration with key stakeholders to help them understand their respective responsibilities in this area – students in understanding the damaging effects of cheating to the integrity of their qualification; institutions in creating a culture which deters cheating and developing robust systems and student supports to counteract cheating; and publishers and advertisers in navigating their new legal obligations in relation to advertising content for these, now illegal, services.”

Walsh continues: “This is a global problem from which no institution is immune, and QQI will work closely with international counterparts, in countries such as the UK and Australia, in sharing information and best practice to achieve the best outcomes for the reputation of Irish education and training.”

QQI staff have presented recently at a European conference focused on the extent of academic malpractice in Europe and the steps taken by different countries to prevent and detect it. The delegates reviewed a draft Council of Europe policy framework Countering Education Fraud intended to promote ethics, transparency and integrity in education. QQI is also

Dr Padraig Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) and Mr Anthony McClaran, Chief Executive of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), Australia.

Other Changes for QQI The Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) (Amendment) Act 2019 has brought other significant changes for QQI and its work which will ultimately provide benefits and protections to national and international students.

Allow professional bodies or international awarding bodies to include their qualifications in the National Framework of Qualifications, the 10-level system used to classify qualifications in Ireland.

This will create more and better qualifications pathways for learners, enhance learner mobility and their progression opportunities, and promote fair recognition of learning achievements.

Allow QQI to examine the corporate fitness of private education and training providers, including their compliance with national employment law.

Experience of past college closures and difficulties with providers can be linked directly to failures in corporate governance and financial management. QQI can now evaluate a provider’s corporate fitness, including the bona fides and financial status of a provider and their capacity to engage with quality assurance processes.

Introduce an International Education Mark (IEM) for the higher education and English language education sectors.

The International Education Mark (IEM) is part of a national strategy to strengthen Ireland’s reputation for international education. The IEM will ensure that international learners can expect a high-quality educational experience from enrolment to completion of a programme of education and training.

Establish a national scheme for the protection of enrolled learners in the event of the sudden closure of an education or training provider.

This measure will ensure that learners who commence a programme can be confident that they can complete their programme or receive a refund of fees paid, where a provider ceases to offer their programme or ceases to trade.

Certain new functions for QQI contained in the amending legislation will require ministerial regulations or statutory instruments to be enacted by the Minister.

contributing to the development of policy in this area at EU level. A coordinated international effort is critical to the success of responses to this global problem.

National Academic Integrity Network As an initial step, QQI has established a National Academic Integrity Network representing public and private higher education and training providers, and learner representatives to identify good practice in dealing with cheating and

develop ways to report and penalise instances of cheating within HEIs.

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In this respect, QQI recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with its Australian sister agency, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which will see the two organisations share information and offer professional advice about academic fraud and contract cheating.

education and skills report

While QQI has been equipped with robust legal powers to tackle those who provide cheating services, international research suggests that a co-operative approach between regulators such as QQI, and education and training providers as well as students, with a greater focus on detection that deterrence will reap rewards.

This network will address higher education in the first instance as international research has identified this sector as particularly vulnerable to contract cheating. This initiative will be extended to the further education and training sector in 2020.

T: +353 1 905 8100 W: www.qqi.ie.

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‘Invisible’ cuts impact rankings Universities have once again called for the State to provide additional resources following a decline in their world ranking standings but no action is expected until at least mid 2020.

An almost 50 place fall by Ireland’s top rated university in the world ranking standings has brought fresh pressure on the Government to resolve the need for a clear policy on the future funding of Ireland’s higher education sector.

Times Higher Education rankings, which less than 10 years ago listed Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin in the top 100 of its world university rankings, have moved Trinity down some 40 places to 164th place.

The drop marks an almost decade long decline in the reputations of Irish universities when compared to their counterparts and has been largely

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attributed to government underfunding in the sector.

The Times ranking, which places universities outside of the top 200 in bands of 50 or more, placed the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and UCD in the 201st–250th category. Both NUI Galway (251–300) and Maynooth University (301–350) moved up a rating bracket, while University College Cork (301–350), University of Limerick (501–600) and Technological University Dublin (801–1,000) retained their places.

Dublin City University fell in this year’s rankings from 401–500 to 601–800.

In 2018, Peter Cassells authored a

report that set out three options for the future funding of Ireland’s higher education sector. Last year, the Government avoided taking a decision on policy by asking the EU to carry out an evaluation. An outcome is not expected until close to the end of 2020.

Cassell’s three options centred on: a state-funded system; increasing government expenditure in the sector; or an income-contingent loan system.

The EU’s Structural Reform Support Service has awarded the contract for the evaluation to a consortium, including a Dublin-based financial management consultant company. However, terms of

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Country

2019

2020

University of Oxford

UK

1

1

California Institute of Technology

US

5

2

University of Cambridge

UK

2

3

Trinity

Ire

120

164

RCSI

Ire

201–250

201–250

UCD

Ire

201–250

201–250

Queen’s University Belfast

NI

201–250

201–250

NUIG

Ire

301–350

251–300

Maynooth University

Ire

351–400

301–350

UCC

Ire

301–350

301–350

University of Limerick

Ire

501–600

501–600

DCU

Ire

401–500

601–800

Technological University Dublin

Ire

NR

801–1,000

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University

*16th annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings

reference for the consortium are broader than the Cassell’s recommendations and include balancing higher education funding with other options such as education and apprenticeships.

factor identified by the OECD in 2018 which found that Ireland was one of a small group of developed countries to have student-teacher ratios of more than 20 to one in third level.

Austerity cuts to third level institutions following the financial crash have not been reversed despite strong evidence that university incomes are largely linked to their position in global rankings. It’s estimated that daily running costs in Irish institutions are some 43 per cent below 2010 levels.

“As a small open economy which is heavily dependent on FDI and on the employment of highly educated staff, we cannot afford to fall behind our competitor countries in terms of investment in higher education,” they said.

The issue is long-standing, in 2016 the President of UCD and the Provost of Trinity felt compelled to issue a joint statement calling on the Government to address the “funding crisis” in higher education following a fall for both universities in the QS World University Rankings.

The pair pointed to the impact of decline in standings on investors, employers, prospective international students, academics and research and warned about the impact rising student numbers was having on student/staff ratios, a

The most recent decline is also worrying in the context of Ireland’s long-term development plans. The National Development Plan and the National Planning Framework have raised questions around whether Ireland will retain the skill capability necessary to deliver on its ambitious plans.

In June, the QS World University Rankings painted a similar picture to those which have emerged from the Times Higher Education rankings. Trinity slipped further out of the top 100, down four places to 108th. However, UCD improved in stature, climbing eight

places to 185th. NUI Galway (259) and UCC (310) both improved, while DCU (429) and University of Limerick (524) fell slightly. Both Maynooth University (724) and Technological University Dublin (788) remained in their previous positions.

The Department of Education has pointed to a 25 per cent increase in funding for the third-level since 2015, with further commitments under the ‘human capital initiative’, however critics say that the investment is not additional and is being used to meet rising student numbers and public sector pay increases.

Speaking to the Irish Times, Trinity’s Dean of Research, Linda Doyle said that while the college’s performance was steady, this was not good enough in a world where competitors are benefitting from sustained investment by their governments.

“There is no denying that continuing underinvestment in university education and research in Ireland is catching up with us,” she said.

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eolas europe

A ‘Geopolitical’ Commission The European Commission’s class of 2019–2024 began work in early December, a month later than expected, under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen. Von der Leyen’s 27-strong team, which she named the “geopolitical commission” was supported by 461 MEPs against 157 who opposed and 89 who abstained.

Von der Leyen is the Commission’s first female President and she has included 12 women in the new Commission, three more than the first team brought forward

by Jean-Claude Juncker. Her genderbalanced team is dominated by Brussels experience and ranges in age from the youngest new commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius of Lithuania (29) to Spain’s Josep Borrell (72), a former European Parliament President.

The appointment of the former German defence minister’s Commission was not all plain sailing, of the first 26 proposed commissioners (excludes Britain), three were rejected.

Supporting von der Leyen, she has appointed three senior Executive VicePresidents to take the lead on three core

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eolas europe

areas of ‘an economy that works for people’, a ‘European green deal’ and a ‘Europe fit for the digital age’.

Climate, digital and industrial policy will be key areas of focus for the new commission in the five years ahead and are prominent within the six priorities outlined by von der Leyen: • a European Green Deal; • an economy that works for people; • a Europe fit for the digital age; • promoting our European way of life; • a stronger Europe in the world; and • a new push for European democracy.

Within these priorities, two of the largest and most contentious projects will be

ambitions to get all member states to go carbon neutral by 2050, a much more costly affair for those member states who still rely heavily on fossil fuels, on pay and on the “human and ethical implications” of artificial intelligence.

However, such lofty ambitions face curtailment in the face of disagreement between member states around the costs of implementing priorities. Any hopes that the EU’s budget out to 2024 could be agreed in 2019 are gone and could be pushed out to as late as the second half of 2020.

Brexit is the main cause of member states such as Germany arguing for the budget to be held at a lower percentage of the EU’s gross national income than proposals by the Commission and the Parliament. The FT calculates that Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Austria finance about half of net payments to the EU budget in 2020. The prospect of this rising to three-quarters by the end of 2027 is seen as disproportionate and member states recognise difficulties in their citizens accepting such figures.

However, the Commission views a focus on net contributions to the budget as “seriously flawed”, believing such a view fails to measure the single market benefits and collective action.

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eolas europe

Ursula von der Leyen President

Valdis Dombrovskis Executive Vice-President An Economy that Works for People

Frans Timmermans Executive Vice-President European Green Deal

Margrethe Vestager Executive Vice-President Europe fit for the Digital Age

PROFILE:

Ursula von der Leyen, President Von der Leyen is the first female to be elected to the Commission’s top job and the first ever German President. The former German defence minister was narrowly approved, just nine over the minimum threshold required and beneath the 400 votes required to make a majority. Up until 2019, von der Leyen was the longest-serving member of Angela Merkel's cabinet. Born in Brussels, her father was one of the earliest European civil servants and in the 1970s she studied economics at the London School of Economics.

The Commission: Executive Vice-Presidents

Josep Borrell Fontelles

Maroš Šefčovič

Věra Jourová

Dubravka Šuica

High representative/

Vice-President

Vice-President

Vice-President

Vice-President

Vice-President

Interinstitutional Relations

Values and Transparency

Democracy and

Promoting our European

A Stronger Europe

and Foresight

Demography

Way of Life

Margaritis Schinas

in the World

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Commissioners

Johannes Hahn

Phil Hogan

Mariya Gabriel

Nicolas Schmit

Paolo Gentiloni

Budget and Administration

Trade

Innovation, Research, Culture,

Jobs and Social Rights

Economy

Education and Youth

Janusz Wojciechowski

Thierry Breton

Elisa Ferreira

Stella Kyriakides

Didier Reynders

Agriculture

Internal Market

Cohesion and Reforms

Health and Food Safety

Justice

Helena Dalli

Ylva Johansson

Janez Lenarčič

Adina Vălean

Olivér Várhelyi

Equality

Home Affairs

Crisis Management

Transport

Neighbourhood and Enlargement

PROFILE:

Phil Hogan

Jutta Urpilainen

Kadri Simson

International Partnerships

Energy

Former agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan has been appointed to a new position in von der Leyen’s Commission with responsibility for trade. While Hogan’s remit will not be solely Brexit-focussed, negotiations on a future trading relationship with the UK will undoubtedly be his main body of work.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described Hogan’s new role as a “definite advantage” for Ireland in the face of Brexit and ‘big Phil’, as he is known, will be required to use both the ‘bruiser’ and ‘wily negotiator’ traits he has been accredited with both domestically and in Europe.

Hogan is well liked in Brussels, evidenced by a recognised strong relationship with outgoing President Jean Claude Juncker. His known ability to network and build relationships stretches throughout his long political career which began as a local county councillor at the age of 22.

Virginijus Sinkevičius Environment, Oceans and Fisheries

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Hogan was a key player in both the EU-Mercosur and EU-Japan talks, two of the largest trade deals that the EU has ever negotiated and his reputation undoubtedly helped him secure one of the most sought after positions in the Commission. Hogan will be responsible for representing the EU at the WTO. Hogan will not directly head up negotiations with the UK after Brexit but will be heavily influential in the process.

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Energy institute annual dinner Sponsored by

its annual dinner in The Energy Institute held ton Road, Dublin. the Clayton Hotel, Burling

by Nephin Energy The dinner was sponsored tion of senior and attended by a cross-sec Irish energy managers from across the sector. ech by Will Sadler There was a welcome spe and an opening from Energy Institute London Chair of Energy speech by Owen McQuade, . The keynote Institute, Republic of Ireland O’Brien, Chief address was given by Tom Executive, Nephin Energy.

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1. Tom O'Brien (Nephin Energy), Nicola Murphy (Energy Institute), Matt Collins (Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment), Mandy Johnston (Irish Offshore Operators' Association), J Owen Lewis (Energy Institute), Will Sadler (Energy Institute) and Owen McQuade (Energy Institute). 2. Jerry O’Sullivan (ESB) and Eamonn Confrey (Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment). 3. Will Sadler (Energy Institute). 4. Tom O’Brien (Nephin Energy). 5. Chelsey O’Doherty, Blathnaid Martin and Andrew Davis (Matheson). 6. Nicola Murphy (Energy Institute), Rory Monaghan (NUI Galway) and Cian Moran (NUI Galway). 7. Elaine Gallagher (EirGrid), Rikki Lloyd (Matheson) and Kadija Duiri (EirGrid). 8. Jerry O’Connor (Irish Offshore Operators’ Association) Loughlin Deegan (Byrne Wallace) Thomas Hibben and Caroline Crawford (Irish Offshore Operators' Association).

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Byelections increase Fianna Fáil standing As the possibility of a general election in 2020 hangs in the air, the pressure on the Fine Gael minority government was turned up another notch by four byelections held on 29 November to fill seats vacated by former TDs elected to the European Parliament in May. Held in Cork North-Central, Dublin Fingal, Dublin Mid-West and Wexford, the byelections delivered boons for Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and Sinn Féin, who all finished the day with one more TD to their names. The votes also saw something of a recovery for Labour, but no seat as reward. It was Fine Gael

Turnout was low across the board, ranging from a low of 25.6 per cent in Dublin Fingal to a meagre high of 35.3 per cent in Wexford. Overall, of the 372,198 people eligible to vote across the four constituencies, only 111,027, or 29.8 per cent cast a ballot. Some 1,065 of these ballots were spoiled, roughly 0.96 per cent of overall votes cast.

who were the losers of the day, failing to hold the Dublin Mid-West seat vacated

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by Frances Fitzgerald and failing to pick

Cork North-Central

up any of the other three seats.

Previously held by the Fianna Fáil TD

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Billy Kelleher, now an MEP, the Cork North-Central byelection saw the balance of the 2016 general election generally kept to for Fianna Fáil, whose Cork County Councillor Pádraig O’Sullivan topped the poll with 28 per cent of the vote, almost identical to Kelleher’s proportion of 27.92 per cent in 2016. O’Sullivan was elected on the 10th count, eventually eliminating Sinn Féin’s Thomas Gould to ensure that Fianna Fáil retained their seat in Cork North-Central, where they have held at

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Overall first preference vote share across all four constituencies

Dublin Fingal now consists of a TD each from Sinn Féin, the Green Party, Labour and Fine Gael.

Dublin Mid-West

0%

5%

10%

The Green Party

15% Labour

20% Sinn Féin

25% Fianna Fáil

Rivalling O’Brien’s victory in Fingal for shock factor was the victory of South Dublin City Councillor Mark Ward for Sinn Féin in Dublin Mid-West. Ward’s victory will come as a blow to the Government as the seat he filled had been vacated by Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald. The victory gives Sinn Féin a second seat in Dublin Mid-West, with Ward joining party spokesperson for housing Eoin Ó Broin TD. The other two seats in the constituency are occupied

by Solidarity-People Before Profit and Fianna Fáil.

30% Fine Gael

November 2019 byelection turnout 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Cork North-Central

Dublin Fingal

Dublin Mid-West

Wexford

Overall

Ward topped the poll with 24 per cent of first preference votes, slightly higher than the 22.69 per cent Ó Broin secured when he topped local polling in 2016.

Despite being expected to lose out on transfers once the initial surprise of his top billing had worn off, Ward hung on to win on the ninth count after transfers from the independent Paul Gogarty pushed him over the line ahead of Fine Gael’s Emer Higgins.

Wexford

least one, and sometimes two, seats since the creation of the constituency in 1981.

The Fine Gael Government’s position was further weakened by events in Cork North-Central a week after the byelections when sitting TD Dara Murphy resigned his seat after it was uncovered that, despite working full time in Brussels in the administration of the European People’s Party since 2017, the TD had been drawing his full Dáil salary and allowances. It is said that Fine Gael were unhappy with Murphy’s decision not to resign before the byelection as the belief in party headquarters is that the party would have had a better chance of winning a seat on transfers in a two-seater byelection rather than what amounted to a straight race on 29 November. The constituency now

consists of one Fianna Fáil TD, one Sinn Féin TD, one Solidarity-People Before Profit TD and the seat vacated by Murphy.

Dublin Fingal Dublin Fingal, vacated by the former Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly, delivered what could be described as the most shocking result of the day. The Green Party’s Joe O’Brien, who polled at 4.61 per cent of first preference votes in the 2016 general election, topped the poll with 22.9 per cent to continue the party’s return to national prominence.

O’Brien was elected on the eighth count after transfers from Labour’s Duncan Smith eliminated Fianna Fáil Lorraine Clifford-Lee, sealing a first ever byelection victory for the Green Party.

Fianna Fáil gained a seat in Wexford with Wexford County Councillor Malcolm Byrne claiming the seat vacated by former Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace. Byrne’s total first preference share of 31.2 per cent increased the party’s overall in Wexford in 2016, where they peculiarly ran three candidates, who split 26.66 per cent of the first preference votes, ending with only one, James Browne, getting elected.

The constituency now consists of two TDs each from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and the Labour leader, Brendan Howlin TD. The Labour candidate George Lawlor had polled at 20 per cent of first preference votes, higher than the 14.76 per cent that saw Howlin top the poll in 2016. While he was the last to be eliminated, his vote share will be wellreceived in Labour headquarters as a sign of recovery in what has traditionally been a strong Labour constituency.

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Coalition and unity A reunification referendum in five years, openness to coalition government and a subdued Vice President contest were the main talking points at this year’s Sinn Féin Ard Fheis held in Derry. David Whelan attended.

That Sinn Féin was on election footing was never so obvious than its choice of venue for this year’s two-day Ard Fheis.

Sitting MP Elisha McCallion was a prominent figure during the event, both on stage and on numerous walls and lampposts around the city as the party sought to build on the momentum that saw McCallion become the party’s first MP for the city and fend off the challenge posed by the SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.

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however, such was the activity outside of the main room, it was difficult to gauge whether attendance was up or down. Unsurprisingly, the room was packed for the keynote speech by President Mary Lou McDonald but other topics, tackling climate breakdown for example, had far fewer attendees than may have been expected.

However, while Westminster may have been at the forefront of minds, it was far from the sole focus. Party members were well aware that a general election in the South is likely before they meet again and positioning the party for a role in a new government was discussed heavily both within and outside of the main hall.

MLA John O’Dowd’s contest for Michelle O’Neil’s position as Vice President, an unprecedented challenge to the sitting leadership of Sinn Féin, had been highly anticipated when first announced.

However, much like the run up to the contest itself, the announcement of the final result was subdued. O’Dowd had his airtime as a spokesperson for the party noticeably reduced and the party opted against any hustings for each candidate to offer their case.

That main hall appeared smaller than previous venues in Belfast and Dublin,

In an address to the Ard Fheis, O’Dowd said: “media reports of my demise have

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been much exaggerated”. Indeed, it appeared they had been. While many suggested O’Dowd’s contest would see him ostracised by the party, that was far from evident as he moved through the conference venue shaking hands and chatting freely.

With no hype or build up, the outcome was announced to delegates in a benign fashion and well before the room started to fill up for the final sessions. No vote numbers were given. No victory speech.

Nothing to see here, or so we’re led to believe. An early motion at the conference calling on the ard chomhairle to review how the leadership team is elected may be a sign that the party’s grassroots require change. Pressure to change, or pressure from the media, eventually led the party to u-turn on the decision not to publish the final result, albeit almost a full week after the event.

Michelle O’Neill: 493, John O’Dowd: 241.

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In two-days of motions ranging from topics on unity to health, housing, social justice and climate change, the drama was in the detail. Sinn Féin’s place in the future government of Ireland was a particularly contentious issue and a motion calling for the party to only go into government coalition “as the largest party” brought a number of senior figures to the stage to voice their opposition.

MEP Matt Carthy offered a passionate rebuke, stating: “We will decide when to go into government based on our ability to have the power to deliver on Irish unity, on health, and to deliver a better deal for ordinary people. We will only contemplate government on those terms.”

The motion fell, however, a proceeding motion ensuring that any decision relating to entering government will only be made by a special Ard Fheis, did pass.

“I stand ready to form a credible executive,” said Vice President Michelle O’Neill in an address on day one of the conference. Describing the “current political impasse” as “unsustainable and unacceptable”, O’Neill added: “Sinn Féin remains fully invested in and committed to the Good Friday Agreement. The commitment to a referendum on a united Ireland is within this Agreement. It cannot be cherry-picked.

“The Agreement also requires an Assembly that works for everyone.”

Much like other Sinn Fein figures who peppered reference to Stormont within their addresses, O’Neill offered little in way of a solution to getting Stormont back up and running. The party would deny it but an Executive in Northern Ireland is on the long finger while Sinn Féin jockeys for position in the South and seeks to progress its unity ambitions in the face of Brexit.

Unity President Mary Lou McDonald set out her case for a redefined Ireland by declaring “the old ways have not worked”. Boldly, she said: “This new decade is the one in which we will finally end partition to achieve a new, united Ireland.”

Sinn Féin Vice Presidential challenger John O’Dowd MLA.

The Dublin TD set out an envisaged ‘new deal’ from Sinn Féin, spanning workers’ rights, housing healthcare, education and childcare and the environment. Among the headline pledges were pledges to introduce a legal standing for the living wage and to deliver the largest public house building programme “that Ireland has ever seen”, while increasing the supply of affordable homes and reducing rents.

On healthcare, McDonald called for an Irish National Health Service and in education she foresees making childcare a public service, while also pledging to scrap third level fees.

On the environment, McDonald’s detail was scarce but instead talked up proposals for a ‘green new deal’ to be published by the party. “A Green New Deal for Ireland means zero emissions targets; a just transition, sustainable jobs; state investment in infrastructure and skills,” was as much as the TD would say on the ambitions of the party’s new policy.

McDonald quickly returned to unity and unmistakably singled out Brexit as a catalyst in heightened ambition.

“Brexit has changed everything. Many people, for the first time, are now considering their future in a United Ireland. The Irish government and all who say that now is not the time to speak of unity are wrong. A referendum on unity will happen, as set-out in the Good Friday Agreement. It is not a question of if, but a question of when,” she said.

The President went on to call for the convening of an all-island forum to map out the “transition to a united Ireland”,

declaring “the referendum must happen in the next five years”.

Much like O’Neill the previous night, McDonald said of Stormont that Sinn Féin negotiators “stand ready”, however, she offered little in way of a solution.

“There is no contradiction between working for Irish Unity and seeking the restoration of the northern institutions,” she stated. “There is an immediate challenge to restore government in the North… Sinn Féin has never been the obstacle to power-sharing or good government or doing a deal. I challenge the DUP and both governments to step forward. To resolve the issues and get government back in action.”

McDonald blended North and South policy well and comfortably switched between the two. She addressed the coalition question head on by stating: “There are some who believe we should never talk to other parties about government. Those fears are understandable but I believe the housing crisis will only be solved with Sinn Fein in government… Following the general election, we have a choice to make…

After the election, we will talk and we will listen. Our preference is for a left-led government.”

Concluding McDonald said: “The past was for those who seek to divide. The future is for those of us who seek to unite. The old guard can have yesterday.

Tomorrow is ours.”

“This is the decade in which we will deliver this new Ireland. In which we will unite our country. This is the decade in which we will win the republic,” she added.

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Politics in action Students from St Columb’s College, Derry and Limavady Grammar School came together as part of the Politics in Action programme, a cross-community, cross-border initiative to acquaint them with the mechanisms of government in Belfast, Dublin and London.

Odrán Waldron reports from their visit to Leinster House.

The students may have gotten an even better initiation into Dublin politics than they had bargained for when they found their entrance into Leinster House delayed by 30 minutes due to the traffic backlog caused by a farmers’ protest against beef prices, where tractors were driven into Dublin City centre and as close to the Dáil as Gardaí would allow.

While schools from Belfast, Newry, Bessbrook, Newtownhamilton and Crossmaglen all also participated in the Politics in Action programme, the visit of the two schools from Northern Ireland’s north west to Dublin bore special significance given their proximity to the

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border between Derry and Donegal. St Columb’s, situated in the Derry suburbs on the Buncrana Road, is less than five minutes, roughly three kilometres of a straight road, to County Donegal; Limavady Grammar being roughly 30 minutes, or 18km, away on the A2 road.

Given their border constituency status, it was perhaps fitting that their first speaker of the day was a representative of a border constituency in his own right.

Fianna Fáil’s Brendan Smith, TD for Cavan-Monaghan since 1992 and parliamentary party chairman, as well as Chair of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade and previous holder of

four separate ministerial positions was the first to speak to the students.

He explained his everyday work as a parliamentarian and the work undertaken to represent his constituents, which naturally now extends to discussions around Brexit, a topic that hung in the air throughout the day. Smith said that the decision of the UK electorate to vote to leave the European Union “was one with profound implications that I was absolutely opposed to” and that “our political system has been consumed by Brexit”.

The long-serving TD spoke of visiting

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delegations from other EU member states and accompanying them to border areas in order to show them “the reality of the interdependence of our economies”. He also recalled the days before the Good Friday Agreement, long before these students’ births, and having to navigate security and customs checkpoints while campaigning due to the roads of Cavan and Monaghan intersecting with Fermanagh so frequently.

Before moving on to the questions and answers section, Smith lamented the fact that the North South Ministerial Council, which he has participated in, can no longer meet, calling its absence a “huge deficiency in what was happening in terms of north/south co-operation”.

When asked in the Q&A if he feared for the future of north/south relations, Smith said: “I don’t fear for the future, but we could be strengthening them. We’re too small a country not to be collaborating.”

When asked forthrightly if he desired a united Ireland, Smith answered: “I’m a person that wants to see a united Ireland but through the mechanism of the Good Friday Agreement. All-Ireland bodies are working well. We should work the institutions.”

Following Smith was the Labour Senator Aodhán Ó Riordáin. Ó Riordáin began proceedings by regaling the students with his political history, beginning with his awakening as primary school teacher in Sheriff Street in Dublin’s inner city, where he was the first male teacher in 150 years.

Exposed to the poverty of Dublin’s north inner city for the first time, Ó Riordáin went on to become a Labour Party Dublin City Councillor in 2004, a TD in 2011 and after losing his seat in 2016, a member of Seanad Éireann. Ó Riordáin, of course, discussed Brexit with the students, saying that victory for the leave side of the vote had been the “classic example of what happens when you’re not watching”.

“Brexit was the result of a 30-year propaganda war by sections of the Conservative Party against the European Union,” he told the students. “The Good Friday Agreement has been ripped up and thrown in the bin by the Brexit process.”

Cavan-Monaghan Fianna Fáil TD Brendan Smith fields questions from the students.

Ó Riordáin also spoke of his work in the areas of drug law reform and the protection of employment rights, two areas particularly relevant for the Derry City and Strabane constituency, which has Northern Ireland’s lowest employment rate, 61.6 per cent and highest economic inactivity rate, 34.1 per cent. After referencing recent heroinrelated deaths in Belfast, he called the UK’s drug policy “really regressive” and note that Ireland has the third highest overdoes rate in Europe. He detailed the struggles to secure planning permission for a safe injection centre in Dublin and said that that there was “massive inequality” placed on the value of certain lives in both Ireland and the UK. Speaking to a Catholic boys grammar and non-denominational co-educational selective grammar, Ó Riordáin stressed the importance of shared education and placed the blame for the lack of shared education in the Republic of Ireland, where one third of secondary schools are separated based on gender, at the door of the Catholic Church. During the Q&A section that followed his talk, he claimed that the “Catholic Church has had far too much influence in Ireland” and decried the fact that the Department of Education “doesn’t have a hands-on role in education”. “I would like to have a change in the Irish Constitution to get

religion out of schools,” he told the students, saying that a referendum was necessary as the Church would never willingly give up their “vice grip on the education system”.

In another robust and forthright Q&A session from the assured and engaged students, Ó Riordáin was asked who he blamed more for Labour’s downturn in electoral fortunes, former leader Eamon Gilmore or his now-deposed successor Joan Burton. Neither, he answered: “The easiest thing in the world to do is to not go into government.”

When asked about the impending climate crisis that will ignore any borders, Ó Riordáin, a former Labour spokesperson for the environment, said that “hard questions need to be asked of people”. “People have to be discommoded,” he told the students.

“The farming community needs to be brought on board. They’re quite a powerful lobby group who can make or break a politician’s career. Nothing can ever be the same again and we can’t pretend that things can be the same because the stakes are far too high.”

Following the meeting with Ó Riordáin, the students were treated to lunch in the Leinster House canteen before watching Leader’s Questions and then going on a tour of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

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Labour Party Senator Aodhán Ó Riordáin speaks to the students.

“The experience of bringing students to this institution, along with Belfast and Westminster, makes the institutions that we study in class a lot more tangible not just in their academic settings but as they become first-time voters in the next few years.”

lives in Dublin. The experience of bringing students to this institution, along with Belfast and Westminster, makes the institutions that we study in class a lot more tangible not just in their academic settings but as they become first-time voters in the next few years.”

This sentiment was echoed by Boyle: “It’s getting them different perspectives constantly and seeing what the powerbrokers do and work at. Seeing what people actually do and how it affects them in the long terms is what this does for them.”

On Brexit, the teachers said that they had seen a change in attitude amongst students following the result of the 2016 referendum. “I think it has gripped them more and they want to ask more questions about why Stormont isn’t up and running,” Cartwright said. “It’s the impatience in the youth, particularly because the north west feels like we play second fiddle to county Antrim. There is that impatience of asking ‘why not us?’

“We thought, in terms of crosscommunity work that this was very important,” St. Columb’s teacher William Boyle said afterwards. “I know our school is very keen on getting people from all across the divide to work together.” Melanie Cartwright of Limavady Grammar agreed: “We also wanted to give our Politics A Level students this experience with students from a different background so that they

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might understand the challenges of working in politics.

“It’s really important for children from border communities in the north west to engage with the southern political system,” said Cartwright. “Whatever shade of political opinion you have, the decisions made in Dublin will impact our lives in the north west, the same as decisions made in Stormont will impact

“Last week we were talking about Brexit and the opportunity of studying in the north west, but so many of the young people, and my generation before them, felt that you had to go to Belfast if you wanted to stay in Northern Ireland.”

Boyle agreed with that contention, concluding: “Brexit is really acting as a shining light to those other issues. It has been a catalyst for young people getting involved actively. There’s been a huge increase in the number of first-time voters within the UK. The knock-on effect has to be a good thing.”

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Labour at the crossroads Howlin outlined Labour’s five core policies that cover the areas of work, housing, healthcare, children and climate:

Ireland is at a crossroads, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin TD told the party’s annual conference in November. The same could be said of his own party, who face into 2020 with the goal of recovering their pre-2016 position firmly in their sights.

“Our country is at a crossroads,” Howlin told the conference to open his leader’s speech. “Labour wants everyone to share our country’s wealth.”

The Labour Party is itself at a crossroads, still looking to recover from the decimation of its voting base that started in the 2014 local government elections and carried on into the 2016 general election. After losing 81 council seats around Ireland and falling 7.5 per cent in vote share in 2014, Labour replaced Eamon Gilmore as leader with Joan Burton, who oversaw the loss of 30 Dáil seats and a drop in vote share from 19.5 per cent to 6.6 per cent. Howlin, Burton’s successor, was then made leader to halt the party’s slide, which he has to some extent. In 2019’s local government elections, the party gained

six seats nationwide, but suffered a further drop of 1.4 per cent in vote share.

Since May 2019’s local and European elections, Labour have found themselves fifth in every major opinion poll, sixth when others/independents are incorporated, behind Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the Green Party and oscillating between 3 and 6 per cent of the projected vote. Yet, with the polls so finely poised at the top end, it is possible that they could still play the role of kingmakers. Howlin was definitive in his position on the possibility of Labour joining the next government: “Labour will not support any party to form a government, including from opposition, unless they agree to implement our core policies.”

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a living wage for all workers;

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a cap on rents and rent freeze until more homes are built;

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the redirection of health funding into local communities;

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the creation of a Childcare for Working Parents Scheme; and

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a €2 billion climate fund to “drive the necessary economic change using the power of our state enterprises”.

On prospective partners in government, Howlin was equally scathing with regard to both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, saying neither could be trusted on housing or wages. After saying that neither were “progressive parties”, he accused Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of “either incredible ignorance or else serious contempt for science” following the Taoiseach’s comments about the potential benefits of global warming.

Howlin also said that there was a need to “revisit some of the decisions forced on Ireland during the economic collapse” and pledged to stop the rise of the pension age to 67 for the lifetime of the next government, saying that there is “no need for Ireland to have a higher pension age than other European countries”.

After pledging a total ban on political advertising on social media during elections, the removal of carbon from Ireland’s economy and to “properly fund public service broadcasting”, Howlin finished on an outward and upward looking note: “Let’s create an economy that delivers for everyone. Labour is committed to an economic model that creates enough wealth to be shared by all. European social democracy offers a real alternative. It works best in the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden. Let’s add Ireland to that list.”

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Always rising A split in the Socialist Party, the launch of the new ecosocialist group RISE and a High Court action against the Ceann Comhairle: it has been a busy second half of 2019 for Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy. He talks to Odrán Waldron about these events and the challenge of building a broad left movement in Ireland.

“Those who consider themselves on the left and want fundamental change will look at more division as a bad thing,” Murphy says from his Dublin South West constituency office in Tallaght. Division has become a cliché regarding the left in Ireland and while Murphy says that he agrees that it is not a good thing to have more division on the Irish left, he sets out his reasoning for leaving the Socialist

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Party to start his own endeavour: Radical Internationalist Socialist Environmentalist (RISE).

“Hopefully the existence of RISE changes the landscape of the radical left and creates more potential for left unity and taking a broader left initiative that all the various parts of the left could be part of,” he says. “A central difference [between the eventual founders of RISE

and the Socialist Party] came down to the relationship between building a distinct Marxist force and building a broader movement of parties on the left.

Those who went on to form RISE placed more emphasis on the broader movement. We think it is important to create a distinct Marxist force, which is what RISE is trying to be, but we think the best way to do that is by

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participating in broader movements and trying to build a broader left party.

“The opposition is very hamstrung in this

“RISE are revolutionary socialists and we don’t hide from that, but we are interested in working with those who don’t consider themselves revolutionary socialists but agree with us now about the environment, public transport, wages, whatever. We are trying to mobilise people into struggle and trying to turn that into a broader left. It hasn’t been a good couple of decades for the left but there are openings developing.”

Dáil. You can put forward a motion, which

Yet, in Ireland’s nearest neighbour in Britain, there has been the example of the Labour Party, where a leadership and membership trying to foster a broad left movement have found themselves at odds with the majority of their parliamentary party. “There’s no question now that the active membership of the Labour Party is to the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP),” Murphy says. “As a democratic party, their PLP should reflect that. I think if RISE was transposed to Britain, we would do what we could to be in the Labour Party to argue the consistently left line and push Corbyn further. That’s where the struggle is taking place in the left and you have to be connected to that.”

standing orders, which at the moment are

The question remains that if a party such as Labour cannot command a fully coherent broad left movement, how could RISE do so in Ireland, where the more diverse party system means that those who are sympathetic to the idea of a broad left coalition are even more fractured across parties such as Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and the Green Party, where individual feelings amongst members or candidates might not be mirrored by the leadership or the plurality of members?

“Sinn Féin are clearly angling to get into government in the south, whether the traditional establishment parties will let them in is another question. Basically, they’re going down the similar road of betrayal that the Labour Party have gone down before,” Murphy says when the question is put to him. “The Green Party is very determined to repeat past experience despite the very obvious negative consequences. Their commitment to managing capitalism

can be ignored, or you can put forward a Private Members’ Bill, but over 50 of those bills are now being blocked by the money message. The way to reform it is to amend more restrictive than the Constitution, to bring them out to the limits of the Constitution.” doesn’t stack up with the urgency of climate catastrophe.

“We accept that there are good people who turn to Sinn Féin and the Greens who do so for good reasons. I think it’s definitely the case that the majority of Sinn Féin’s urban voting base would be similar to that of Die Linke in Germany or Podemos in Spain. It’s a leftward looking anti-austerity vote, for which Sinn Féin seems the biggest and most credible vehicle. We think we need to intercept those people. If your dialogue is simply telling the truth about what those parties are, it’s not a very effective way of speaking to these people.”

If these voters are there to be intercepted and Murphy doesn’t simply want to snipe from the sidelines, how then does he propose that RISE begin to peel them away and win them over to their side? “I think the approach of placing demands on these parties is more effective than just denouncing them en masse. Saying to Sinn Féin that if they’re serious about fighting water charges, then they should call for no payment, for example,” he says.

“The argument from the Socialist Party would be that by doing that, you’re in danger of sewing illusion with regard to these parties, but when you place demands on forces that have a base in

the working class, it’s a win-win. Either they don’t agree to mobilise, which exposes them to their base, or they do, which is great. There is a contradiction between [Green Party Dáil candidate] Saoirse McHugh and [Green Party leader] Éamon Ryan and if you dismiss that contradiction, I think you’re missing an opportunity.”

Parliamentary procedure has been at the centre of Murphy’s second half to the year, with his change in party status leading to questions about his status as a Solidarity-People Before Profit TD. Would Murphy stay with the six-strong cohort of himself, Mick Barry, Bríd Smith, Gino Kenny, Ruth Coppinger and Richard Boyd Barrett, a relatively strong Dáil showing for the left, or would he become the Dáil’s lone RISE TD? He is still a member of the two-party electoral alliance, he explains, except it is now a three-party electoral alliance.

“From the point of view of parliamentary procedure, there is no change of status.

Solidarity-PBP is a registered political party with two components, Solidarity and People Before Profit. We get a certain amount of time, leaders’ questions, etc. That’s still the case, I’m still a member of Solidarity-PBP,” he says.

“In a formal sense, Solidarity-PBP has now gone from something that had two

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Murphy and Solidarity members during the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

components to something that has three components, Solidarity, People Before Profit and RISE. What we were trying to do was minimise the sense of the Socialist Party breaking apart. We left the Socialist Party, but we’re all still in the same parliamentary party and will cooperate in the Dáil to minimise that sense of disruption. We’re all about building a mass left movement and the closest thing to that today is SolidarityPBP, it’s very far from it, but at least it has the cooperation of two of the main parts of the radical left.”

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50 of those bills are now being blocked by the money message,” Murphy says.

“Our interpretation is that this blocking is based on a wrong reading of Article 17.2 of the Constitution, to basically give the Government a veto. The way to reform it is to amend standing orders, which at the moment are more restrictive than the Constitution, to bring them out to the limits of the Constitution.”

It was a more high-profile aspect of parliamentary procedure that saw Murphy and his colleague Smith hit the headlines in November. Frustrated by the Government’s use of the money message, the controversial measure by which they can halt the progress of a Private Members’ Bill by claiming that it would require the appropriation of public funds, over which Government retains ultimate control, Murphy and Smith tabled an amendment to amend Dáil standing orders.

The amendment was deemed unconstitutional by the Ceann Comhairle, and Murphy and Smith challenged that ruling in the High Court. “We didn’t get an injunction to force him to not block our amendment, which didn’t surprise us because courts are hesitant about stepping into the realm of the Dáil like that,” Murphy explains. “What we did get was acceptance that there’s an arguable case that the Government has an overly expansive interpretation of Article 17.2 and that it’s using it in a way to block legislation that it doesn’t agree with and that there’s an arguable case that the Ceann Comhairle shouldn’t have blocked our amendment like that.”

“The opposition is very hamstrung in this Dáil. You can put forward a motion, which can be ignored, or you can put forward a Private Members’ Bill, but over

With a judicial review of the matter due to take place in January and over 50 Private Members’ Bill that have passed the floor of the Dáil but fallen victim to the

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mechanism, this is certainly not the last we have heard of the money message.

Considering the mechanism’s effect, Murphy concludes: “It suits the Government to portray this as a very technical, legalistic argument, but there are Bills that have passed law at the second stage and have majority support, that would make a big difference to people’s lives. A few good examples are the Anti-Evictions Bill, which would strengthen the rights of tenants and stop landlords using the fact that they’re selling as a reason to evict; the Climate Emergency Bill, which would stop the extraction of further fossil fuels; the Objective Sex Education Bill, which would say that every student has the right to objective sex education regardless of the ethos of the school that they are in; the Occupied Territories Bill, which is saying that we should have an effective ban on imports of goods from the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These Bills have majority support in the Dáil and the Government is able to block them no matter how many votes they lose. If we were to win it would free up these bills to proceed and that would be very important.”

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Following the closure of the Bernard Shaw, eolas asked art collective SUBSET to react to the closure and the larger theme of the erosion of Dublin’s cultural hotspots.

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Political Platform Anne Rabbitte, TD

TD for Galway East since 2016, Anne Rabbitte is spokesperson for Children and Youth Affairs for Fianna Fáil.

Outline your background/career to date A native of Portumna in County Galway, I’m a busy mother to three equally busy children Fiachra (17), Caoimhe (16), and Aoibhínn (14). Like many families, I try to balance the demands of home and worklife and at times, it can be hard.

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childcare, child safety and protection, mental health, cyber security, and gambling addiction.

What inspired you to get into politics?

Before entering politics, I worked in the banking sector in Galway for over 25 years, offering support and advice to a range of clients – from individuals, young families and those planning for retirement, to start-ups and established businesses.

I’ve always had an interest in politics, and it was a topic often discussed at home growing up. I distinctly remember we had one of those JFK commemorative plates in my house when I was a child. He always tried to do his best to fight for the underdog and it’s something that’s always struck a chord with me and informs how I navigate political life as well.

I also ran a childcare facility for three years, and this experience and knowledge of the sector has greatly helped in my role as Fianna Fáil’s front bench Spokesperson for Children and Youth Affairs – a position Micheál Martin appointed me to in 2016. This experience, as well as being a parent, has really helped focus my energies on a range of issues such as affordable

I was first introduced to politics in a real way in 2014 when I was elected as a member of Galway County Council and there were a few motives behind that, one of which was the rise in crime in the locality. It just seemed like another death knell for rural Ireland. I was also concerned about the decline more generally around towns across the county where businesses were closing,

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young people were leaving, and the building of houses stalled. Towns were essentially being stripped of their soul. I wanted things to change and decided to try and tackle the issues at a council level.

Once elected, I was able to grasp a greater understanding of the vast array of issues facing people across the county, and indeed at a national level. It was clear that some of the issues emerging would be better tackled at a parliamentary level, which propelled me to run for a TD’s seat in the Galway East constituency. I was elected to the Dáil in 2016, and it’s something I’m eternally grateful to voters for.

Who do you admire in politics or public life and who are your political role models?

In recent history, I genuinely believe that the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, is a very admirable person. It was his vision that saw the smoking ban come to fruition, even when the odds were

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stacked against him. Sometimes, when you upset the apple cart, there can be a lot of push back but to have the perseverance to fight on, knowing that, ultimately, it’s for the betterment of society, is an admirable trait.

On an international level, JFK, to mention him again, is someone I admire for the sheer determination and vision he brought to his political life, which is something I also admired about Obama’s presidency. They both were fighting for the underdog, offering people hope and the belief that things can change and be better.

I’m often asked about women running for office too and it’s great to see an increasing number of women putting themselves forward for election. By simply putting yourself forward, you’re empowering other women and inspiring them to consider a role in politics too.

It’s so important that we support and help each other. But we must also remember that while we are a voice for women, we’re a voice for men too, and we need to ensure that we reflect all of our constituents.

How best can Ireland meet its citizens’ childcare needs amidst TUSLA’s deregistration of 27 crèches?

Unfortunately for parents, childcare costs are crippling family finances from month to month. The core of the problem, to put it simply, is that parents lack childcare options because demand is outstripping supply. There is undoubtedly a capacity issue and what’s needed is increased capital investment in the sector.

We’ve seen in recent weeks that several crèches have closed around the country, and parents are left in limbo, seeking alternative options and they’re just not there. This could become a major issue in the next 12 months if not addressed in a serious way. This is also in the context of parents being left in the dark as to the registration process that crèches go through, often finding out very late that their crèche isn’t up to scratch. It just adds to the stress parents already endure when it comes to securing childcare for their loved ones.

This, of course, needs to be balanced

Anne Rabbitte (right) with Maria Hickey.

with the fact that crèches are adhering to important health, safety and welfare regulations that are in place to ensure children are safe and are being cared for in an appropriate manner.

What are your key priorities for your constituency and the key issues facing your constituency?

Being a rural constituency, farming is a vital part of the lives of many families in Galway East. Many farmers are caught up in the ongoing beef crisis that sees farmers underpaid for their produce and that’s simply unfair. It’s brought many families to the edge when it comes to their finances, with livelihoods on the line. It’s crucial that the Department of Agriculture, through the Beef Task Force, can find a sustainable model that fairly rewards the work and effort farmers put into producing beef to such a high standard.

Families across Galway, and indeed nationwide, are under severe pressure when it comes to childcare. There is a suite of wrap around services that need to be developed and invested in, such as Family Resource Centres, which would go some way in addressing the shortfalls in services offered at present.

I’m a huge advocate for women in sport and firmly believe more could be done to encourage women to participate at all age levels. The amount of money

invested in men’s sport outweighs women’s and if we want to see a continued increase in young women getting involved, the issue of under investment needs to be addressed.

When girls see people like Katie Taylor, hockey captain Katie Mullan, or Galway camogie captain, Sarah Dervan, it encourages them to get involved and we need to make sure there’s more coverage of such role models.

What are your interests outside of work?

My children occupy most of my time outside of work. From camogie matches, to rugby matches and music lessons, like any parent, I’m frequently out and about dropping them to the next event.

I’m chairperson of Portumna Camogie Club and I love being on the side-line and watching the girls improve from game to game and seeing their love of the sport increase too. Unsurprisingly, I’m a big fan of the Galway hurlers and footballers. It’s always a treat to see the skills on show from people like Joe Canning.

I’m also a big fan of amateur drama, and I try my best to get to as many shows as I can in the locality. Sadly, I don’t have the time to take part in any plays myself at the moment, although there’s always plenty of drama to watch unfold in Leinster House.

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Northern citizens look to Dublin for protection The North now looks to Dublin to safeguard citizens’ rights and the Good Friday Agreement, writes Emma DeSouza.

“The people of Northern Ireland remain British citizens even if they identify as Irish.” This was the ruling of the Upper Tribunal in Belfast on 14 October 2019, the culmination of years of appeals, adjournments, and failed attempts from the British Home Office to overturn a previous decision which ruled that I am an Irish national only.

The government department invested untold time and resources into pursuing a case that negatively impacts the peace process, and at long last was granted the ruling it was hoping for. As the impact of the court’s decision reverberated across Northern Ireland, the Home Office released a statement expressing that they “...are pleased that the upper tribunal agrees that UK nationality law is consistent with the Belfast agreement”.

The nationality law to which they refer is the 1981 British Nationality Act which predates the Good Friday Agreement by almost two decades.

I am an Irish citizen; it’s not a choice, it’s not a decision – it is simply who I am. I haven’t held a British passport or claimed British citizenship and yet I’ve found myself in an unprecedented situation. In 2015 when I married my American husband Jake, I discovered that through the UK Government’s failure to give domestic legal effect to the birthright provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, my lifelong Irish identity was evidently considered secondary to an unclaimed British identity. This additional and entirely imposed citizenship deprives 140

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me of my rights as an Irish citizen and an EU citizen.

This legal challenge has consumed the first five years of our marriage. For the first two years, we lost our Freedom of Movement. The British Home Office retained Jake’s passport with no legislative authority or policy to do-so.

Through this process I’ve had to outline every moment in my life that my Irish identity has been evident, in order to prove that I am Irish. I’ve had to face the repeated exertions from the Home Office that I am in fact British and that until such times as I accept that I am British, declare myself as British and renounce being British I cannot be accepted as exclusively Irish. This is not my understanding of the Good Friday Agreement.

A key objective of the peace talks was to establish equality between the two main communities and to establish a shared society based on the principles of parity of esteem and mutual respect. Yet I’ve witnessed first-hand the negative impact and emotional trauma caused by expecting Irish citizens to declare themselves as British in order to access their rights.

We’ve met families that have lost years in court fighting against this conferral, families that cried whilst renouncing British citizenship, and families that simply moved away from their homes, families and livelihoods. No one should be forced to adopt or renounce a

citizenship they’ve never held in order to access rights which were meant to be granted at birth but that is what’s happening. From my experience and correspondence with British officials I can confidently say there is no intention within the British Government to find a solution that is consistent with the Good Friday Agreement.

Identity in Northern Ireland is delicate; it was at the centre of decades of violence and conflict. The Good Friday Agreement sought to respect an identity balance between two opposing communities and by doing so, remove identity as a source of antipathy. Reducing an integral right to choose one’s own national identity – in this case, to identify as and be accepted as Irish – into a right to merely “feel” Irish sets a dangerous precedent.

If the British Government can arbitrarily disregard rights guaranteed to the people of Northern Ireland under an internationally binding peace treaty, what safeguards are in place to prevent further diminution of rights? The uncertainty and lack of legal protections seems certain to get worse with the onset of Brexit. Which raises the question of what can the Irish Government do? With the British Government abdicating its responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland responsibility now falls on Dublin to safeguard citizens’ rights and to uphold the Good Friday Agreement. An unenviable task.

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