{"id":487910,"date":"2026-05-16T15:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/487910\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T15:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:47:11","slug":"public-service-must-embrace-risk-to-deliver-big-projects-jack-chambers-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/487910\/","title":{"rendered":"Public service must embrace risk to deliver big projects, Jack Chambers says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The culture of the public service in Ireland has to change from being risk-averse to focusing on speed and delivery, even if projects do not always go according to plan, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> ardfheis in Dublin, Chambers elaborated on remarks he made earlier this week calling for a greater appetite for risk in the delivery of major infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n

The Minister said senior decision-makers in the public service needed stronger political backing to make difficult decisions and move projects forward more quickly. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a need to back people in senior decision-making positions to take a greater level of risk appetite with respect to infrastructure projects, or indeed other areas of decision-making,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes we\u2019re too process-heavy in certain areas, and we as a political system need to back that. There are risks around that too if things don\u2019t go as planned, but there\u2019s a need to rebalance things in the interests of speed and getting things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chambers said delays to housing and infrastructure projects carried significant economic and social costs, and argued that excessive caution had become embedded in parts of the public sector.<\/p>\n

Chambers said he intended to publish \u201crisk appetite statements\u201d for the public service to give officials greater confidence when making decisions on capital projects.<\/p>\n

The Minister pointed to several big transport projects, including MetroLink<\/a> and the proposed Galway City Ring Road, as examples of projects the Government wanted to accelerate.<\/p>\n

Chambers also signalled that Fianna F\u00e1il would prioritise fiscal discipline in advance of Budget 2027, while seeking measures to support workers.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe have populism streaming around us from the left and the right wanting us to spend more every day. It\u2019s just not sustainable or credible, and that\u2019s why sticking to our fiscal parameters will be really important in planning next year\u2019s budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless<\/a> has said he would be \u201cdisappointed, but not especially surprised\u201d if Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> fails to win either byelection in Dublin Central or Galway West next week.<\/p>\n

With the party polling in single digits<\/a> a week out from the votes, he said the \u201cstatistical evidence over the last 50 years of byelections\u201d show \u201cgovernments traditionally don\u2019t win byelections\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added, however, there were many candidates who did not win byelections but were successful at general elections. He cited the example of Minister of State Thomas Byrne<\/a> who, having lost his seat in Meath East in 2011, failed to win a byelection in 2014 but returned to government two years later.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters at the 84th Fianna F\u00e1il ardfheis on Saturday, Lawless said: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t obsess really on the byelections. I think that they\u2019re important contests for the party and for the candidates involved, and I hope they\u2019ll do extremely well. And I\u2019ll be out again with both of them. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I do think that there\u2019s a risk of reading too much into local contests at a particular point of the electoral cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also welcomed a decision on organisational structures that will give party grassroots a greater say in decisions.<\/p>\n

The party voted to give councillors and full voting members of the party a vote in the selection of a future presidential candidate. <\/p>\n

The motion follows in the wake of Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s presidential election disaster, with candidate selection only by the parliamentary party of Senators and TDs.<\/p>\n

Kanturk councillor Bernard Moynihan, who proposed the motion, said \u201cthe last process was no fault of anybody\u201d but the party \u201cneeds to be agile, moving with the times\u201d and \u201c300 councillors who are really connected into our communities need to be included\u201d.<\/p>\n

Minister of State and Government Chief Whip Mary Butler said they wanted to \u201cre-invent\u201d and strengthen cumainn. <\/p>\n

Delegates also heard that the party had debts of \u20ac1,527,288 at the end of 2024, in line with party projections at this point in the D\u00e1il cycle. The party \u201cwill clear this debt and build an election fund for the future election cycles in this D\u00e1il period\u201d, honorary treasurers Minister of State Niall Collins and Kevin Fitzgerald said in their financial report to the party.<\/p>\n

The party also voted for a greater role for local cumainn by giving them extra delegate votes at ardfheiseanna based on \u201cactive membership\u201d.<\/p>\n

Delegates also backed a move to ensure two ardfheiseanna in every five would take place outside the Greater Dublin area, as a Co Clare delegate spoke of having to pay \u20ac360 for a Dublin hotel on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary said Ireland is the last country in the OECD to introduce pensions auto-enrolment, 20 years after it was first proposed.<\/p>\n

He said 808,000 people have now been enrolled in the MyFutureFund pension enrolment scheme, more than 90 per cent of the target number, and 7,000 had voluntarily enrolled. The vast majority of those enrolled had no savings plan for retirement. <\/p>\n

With the average industrial wage at between \u20ac48,000 to \u20ac50,000, their income would have dropped to \u20ac16,000, the current State contributory pension, he said. \u201cThat is a huge drop.\u201d<\/p>\n

He acknowledged \u201cthis is a cost to employers at a very challenging time\u201d. <\/p>\n

The party also backed a motion to introduce a tax credit for gym membership from the Trinity College Wolfe Tone cumann. <\/p>\n

Proposing the motion, Max Grasso said it \u201cis not about subsidising a hobby. It\u2019s about recognising exercise as a preventive [form] of healthcare\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Newfoundland, Canada, \u201cgym participation increased by 25 per cent after the introduction of similar tax credit\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

More than 700,000 people now use gyms, more than \u201cfootball, rugby and running combined\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The culture of the public service in Ireland has to change from being risk-averse to focusing on speed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,207345,106968,18,13,14,4771,167920,6,19,17,26736,10473,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-487910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-byelection","11":"tag-dublin-central-constituency","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-fianna-fail","16":"tag-galway-west-constituency","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jack-chambers","21":"tag-james-lawless","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116585040931923820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}