Northern Ireland's top civil servant Jayne Brady should not be making the headlines

​Civil servants have a reputation for being dull back room figures for good reason – they are there to serve elected ministers and get a job done for the public.

And that’s how most of Stormont’s top mandarins have been perceived down the years – as suits getting on with their work in the background.

But the current Head of the Civil Service (HOCS) is a much more public figure. The story in today’s News Letter that she was driven around Washington while elected ministers used public transport puts her back in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.

It could even be argued that top civil servants should be away from the public eye entirely. Yet Jayne Brady has been happy to be in the limelight. Questions were raised internally and externally about the wisdom of the civil service (NICS) launching a political strategy in the absence of ministers.

She travelled to the USA in 2023 to promote the ‘Our Giant Ambition’ strategy – drafted not by politicians but civil servants. While much of its content was bland clichés about post-agreement Northern Ireland, it also sold the concept of ‘dual market access’ under the Windsor Framework – a contested claim at the heart of the dispute keeping the institutions down.

Eyebrows were also raised when she attended a picket line with striking workers and marched in a Pride parade waving a controversial flag.

Now ministers are back, HOCS is still making headlines for reasons which have nothing to do with the Executive’s aims. They include stories on removing a top official without telling ministers, doubling her office staff and now her grandiose travel arrangements. Frustration within NICS at the situation is easily remedied if Ms Brady realises she is not a third wheel of the Executive Office, but there to serve the two elected ministers.