'We were acting on the best advice' – Not true

Letter in today’s Irish Times

Ministers ignored Finance advice

Madam,

So it turns out that the much vilified Department of Finance was providing, better, clearer and higher quality advice than that provided by so-called external experts. This advice was routinely rejected by Cabinet (Breaking News, March 1st).

Is it not time for the media, across all platforms, to offer humble apologies to the many fine public servants, whose years of training and innate skills were so disgracefully thrashed by so-called journalists and pretentious minor celebrities posing as economists?

Maybe now, finally, the incoming government will begin reforming the system at the very top and clear out all advisers, experts, programme managers and gombeens who infest every Minister’s office in every department, soaking up salaries and expenses and believing they are minor deities.

Let the real experts do their job. The civil service has the training and the skills to provide expert advice to this government; they must be listened to. Their only mission, unlike many others, is to serve the State, which they have done unswervingly, in the face of opprobrium, pay cuts, pension levies and anything else a rotten administration has thrown at them over the years. Enough is enough. – Yours, etc,

JG Lacey,

Lough Atalia Grove,

Renmore,

Galway.