In the Service of the State

I am at heart a public servant. I haven’t always worked in the public service, and am currently seconded from it to a charity, but my values and ethics are in essence those that underpin everything that is good about the sector. Hard work, diligence, remembering what you’re here for (to provide a service to the public) and balancing the drive and need for innovation with the importance of good governance and value for money.

We have all witnessed the very best of these principles in recent weeks. We’ve all heard the stories about frontline health care staff working endlessly and uncomplainingly; I know of highly trained speech therapists who without hesitation, took up important covid-related roles to help the national drive; homeless services doing everything they can to ensure that families in vulnerable situations are supported and know how to get help; public health nurses phoning patients on their days off, just to be sure their patients get to speak to someone every day; shopkeepers (albeit not public servants but doing a public service nevertheless) ensuring our shelves are stacked and doing their best (often amid incredibly rude customers) to enable safe distancing and speedy exits.

And then there are all those people working behind the scenes, who we probably don’t think about when we stand at our front doors to applaud the frontline staff. The managers and administrators; the grey suits and black dresses; the people whose planning and negotiating has helped us to manage this crisis in what I believe has been admirable, awesome, amazing. 

So many of us applauded when the decision was taken to utilise private hospitals for covid patients. I’m sure most of us cannot even begin to imagine what that took; how many meetings; the hours of discussion and debate; the massaging of egos; the deals and promises that had to be made.

Bringing in PPE from China and South Korea – oh yeah, we might say. Sure, why wouldn’t we? But have any of us any sense of the logistics behind that? How would you even begin to know what to order and how much?  My mind certainly boggles at the layers of detail surely required to get this kind of operation moving. But that’s why we have strategic planners and I am thankful for them.

Next time we want to criticise the HSE, let’s think again; next time we think our public services are overly bureaucratic and top heavy, let’s remember how agile and responsive they’ve been; and the next time we hear others giving out about how our public servants are overpaid and underworked, call to mind the photos we’ve all seen of people working around the clock, over and above the call of duty……. and challenge them!