Got a rare firsthand insight into the scarily static world of the Irish civil service at a conference the other day. I say rare because it is so seldom that our bureaucrats ever leave the safety of their official bunkers. I attended a workshop on migration in which the first speaker was a chap from the loftily titled ‘Office of the Minister for Integration’. I assume this guy was a principal officer or an assistant principal. Let’s face it, anyone below these grades are generally not trusted by their masters to be able to speak and yet say almost nothing. Our friend had employed a tried-and-trusted civil service Plan ‘B’, now that Plan ‘A’ (never to have to account for yourself or your Department/Office to anyone) had patently fallen through. The chap was to speak on the work of this Office of the Minister for Integration but ‘unfortunately’ had to leave almost immediately afterwards. This is Plan ‘B’. No need to worry about engaging in any real discussion or debate once you’ve said your piece. Sweet.
The chap probably had the crowd on his side to begin with. After all, the Minister for Integration is none other than the politician whom many would nominate as being least qualified and suited to the role. Conor bleedin’ Lenihan. This is the arrogant boyo who bawled at Deputy Joe Higgins in the chamber of the last Dáil to ‘stick to the kebabs’, a reference to Higgins’s support of Turkish building workers. This is the guy who fell asleep whilst waiting to be interviewed over the phone by TV3. I’m still convinced the ministerial appointment was a sick joke on the part of Bertie. Clearly, an Taoiseach places immigration and integration issues near the bottom of the political agenda.
Anyway, back to our friend. What a performance. For twenty minutes we listened patiently to…….well, nothing actually. The Office are doing ‘a lot of thinking, a lot of reflection’. ‘Studies’ have been commissioned. That old corker. There’s been a lot of meetings, lots of consultation. A few quid handed out here and there. These elements of the Office’s work, which seem to be pretty much all of it, were conveyed several times over, just in case we were missing the point. We don’t have any policies on integration in Ireland and its clear from this representative that we shouldn’t expect anything anytime soon. I nearly burst out laughing when this vacuous state-of-affairs was justified with some guff to the effect that some countries have been dealing with immigration for fifty or sixty years and they still haven’t got their policies in order. I think he was getting confused between policy evolution through the decades and actually having any policy at all. I’d say Lenihan has fallen asleep a few more times since taking up this particular office.
One question that I wish I knew the answer to is the following: Is there even one employee in the Office of the Minister for Integration that is a member of any ethnic minority group? I’ll eat my hat if the answer is yes.
Unfortunately the Office of the Minister for Integration has no dedicated website I can provide a link to, so you can make do with this instead.
Postscript: The Minister for State should really get himself a website. A few days after I published the first draft of this particular item, I googled `Office of the Minister for Integration´ and guess what was the first search result? Yes, yours truly!!!!!
Tags: Assistant Principal Officer, Bureaucrat, Civil Service, Conor Lenihan, Irish civil service, Joe Higgins, kebabs, Office of the Minister for Integration, policy, Principal Officer, Today FM, Turkish
