Stormont Castle doesn’t deny two people said no to top civil service post before Jenny Pyper said yes

Despite having known since they arrived in office in January that the head of the civil service was retiring in August, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill waited until mid-July before even advertising for the post - and then could not agree on any of the three final candidates for the job.

In further evidence of dysfunctionality at the top of the Executive, that has meant that for three months the civil service has been leaderless, a situation which has led to disquiet within civil service ranks and a call from the union which represents senior civil servants for ministers to remove themselves from the process.

However, in a statement issued after office hours on Friday evening, the first and deputy first ministers belatedly announced that they had finally agreed on the interim appointment of Jenny Pyper with the job “intended” to be for eight months.

Ms Pyper said she was “delighted and honoured to have the opportunity to lead the NICS and progress delivery of the Executive’s priorities”. Ms Pyper’s appointment means that for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland there is an all-female triumvirate at the top of Stormont.

Ms Pyper, who recently retired as chief executive of the Utility Regulator, was hand-picked by the Strategic Investment Board – which operates as a quango under Mrs Foster and Ms O’Neill’s department – rather than having applied for the job in the traditional way.

However, four weeks ago UUP MLA Rosemary Barton asked the deputy first minister in the Assembly if some candidates had declined approaches to take up the post.

Ms O’Neill responded by not answering the question, saying: “I will not get into HR issues...everything was done according to the rules and regulations as they are laid out.”

At the time the News Letter asked Stormont Castle if it was correct that two individuals had been approached for the job and turned it down.

The department did not answer that question but instead said that the post would be filled “in accordance with relevant NICS policies and the requirements of the Civil Service Commissioners. It is intended that the post will be filled on an interim basis for up to nine months.”

Yesterday a source told the News Letter that at least two individuals – one of whom was a serving permanent secretary – had been approached and turned the job down.

When asked about that yesterday, The Executive Office offered no comment.

One source with extensive experience at the top of Stormont and who has worked with Ms Pyper spoke effusively of her abilities and suitability for the role.

Ms Pyper, who has been a civil servant for more than 28 years, is steeped in the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

Her father, Bill Hodges, was a permanent secretary and she served as private secretary to Sir David Fell when he was head of the civil service in the 1990s.

In a doctoral thesis at the National University of Ireland Galway two years ago, Gerry McAlinden described Mr Hodges as someone who “in many ways embodied the break with the past”, noting that “one of the features of his career track that distinguished Bill Hodges from all his Permanent Secretary peers at the time was that he had entered the civil service at the most junior Administrative Assistant grade and progressed all the way to the top”.

Pyper had senior energy role under Foster before RHI began

When Jenny Pyper arrives in Stormont Castle today it will not be the first time that she has worked closely with Arlene Foster.

Early in Mrs Foster’s ministerial career, Ms Pyper worked under her as a senior civil servant.

Ms Pyper served as head of energy division within Mrs Foster’s then Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) – the department shown by the RHI Inquiry to in large part be profoundly dysfunctional.

Although she was not called to give evidence in person, Ms Pyper featured briefly at the RHI Inquiry where it emerged that in 2008, four years before RHI was launched, Ms Pyper was reminded by a subordinate that they had removed from a submission to Mrs Foster a paragraph which said that the department “cannot hope to develop this area of work with current resources’. Mrs Foster later said she was not given sufficient warning about the need for more resources, something which contributed to the RHI disaster.

That past senior role in energy policy may also become significant as in coming weeks the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee begins an investigation into another major energy project with which Ms Pyper and Mrs Foster were heavily involved – the Northern Ireland Renewables Obligation (NIRO) which involved huge wind subsidies.

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