Historic head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service role may be altered, says Michelle O’Neill

Facing questions from the Assembly committee which scrutinises their department, the first and deputy first ministers said that they wanted to appoint an “interim” official to lead 23,000 civil servants.

Despite knowing from before they entered office in January that David Sterling would be retiring as their top official in August, the first and deputy first ministers did not even advertise the job until mid-July – and then, in a process where they personally interviewed the final three candidates, they rejected every one of them.

Yesterday Mrs Foster defended that delay, saying that “even in quick time the process would take six months”. In this case, it took nine months.

Ms O’Neill said they were “also re-looking at the role of head of the civil service, looking at governance models elsewhere and is there a better way for us to do it”. She added: “Perhaps that maybe then will help in attracting more candidates to come forward as well”.

Ms O’Neill said they were “very keen to move this on as quickly as possible, not least because of the challenges that we’ve already stated...Covid, Brexit, civil service reform, the New Decade, New Approach commitments – all the things we’ve said that we want to deliver on.”

She said that Stormont Castle is working with the Strategic Investment Board (SIB) to find an interim replacement and Mrs Foster said that person would be appointed “probably for a year”.

When pressed by independent MLA Trevor Lunn on whether the rejected candidates could re-apply, Mrs Foster suggested that they probably could do so but said that they did not expect the interim position to be filled by someone interested in the post long-term.

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