When a new US President takes office, he or she gets to hire over 8,000 new people to run the federal government. The ability of these officials to shape every aspect of what an administration does is why Ronald Reagan’s Director of Personnel Scott Faulkner famously said that “personnel is policy.” In Ireland, beyond fifteen Cabinet members, a similar number of ministers of state and around fifty political advisors, a new Taoiseach doesn’t necessarily get to hire anyone else to implement the programme for government. That task falls to our independent and impartial civil service. Whether or not a government…

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