Sinn Féin against civil servant involvement in negotiations
Sinn Féin has been against the involvement of civil servants in mediating or attending some of the government formation negotiations.
The Green Party has requested that the civil service be involved with negotiations to provide expert advice on different ministries, including finance, and provide independent mediation services as talks continue.
The involvement of outside staff has been a request of the Green Party throughout government negotiations, as is protocol with other European Green parties when forming coalition governments, who found that it worked well and recommended it be rolled out in other jurisdictions.
“We find it really helpful to have that expert advice there,” a Green Party source said.
“We can defer to them on different subjects, and there have been queries that they have offered expert support on, especially for finance and regarding Brexit.
“We’ve requested that all parties we meet with, that we have members of the civil service there. Different parties have had different reactions, Fine Gael and Fiánna Fail have been a lot more open to it, however, Sinn Féin were not as much, whatever their reasons are.”
Some of the meetings between Sinn Féin and the Green Party in the last week, were facilitated by civil servants from National Economic and Social Council (NESC) in the Department of the Taoiseach.
The assistant general secretary in the Taoiseach’s Department also attended some of the discussions. However Mary Lou McDonald’s party has not been open to the involvement of the civil service in every meeting due to their political nature.
The Green Party met with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin this week, and yesterday’s Fianna Fáil meeting saw Robert Watt, secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, involved and provide a presentation to representatives from Micheál Martin and Eamon Ryan’s parties during discussions on finance.
Finance policy briefing documents were given to each party at the beginning of negotiations on how much scope is available in the €11bn worth of public spending that any future government would be allowed.
Mr Watt, who has been in the role since 2011 and since had his contract extended, was not present during the Sinn Féin meeting.
A Sinn Féin spokesman stressed that the party had been comfortable with civil servants’ involvement in some of the discussions, before adding: “The Green Party did ask for further civil servant input but we said it would be better to call them in if and when this was needed as this was predominantly a political meeting. Both parties agreed that additional information on certain subjects is required from some departments.”
Mr Watt has come under fire for referring to members of the Oireachtas PAC as a “mob” as he prepared to appear before them to answer questions on the spending overrun in the National Children’s Hospital.
