Modernising Irish Government presents the major historical turning points in the development of Irish public services with a particular focus on the civil service, covering the mid-nineteenth-century reforms, the foundations of the State and the Lemass-Whittaker economic initiative. It introduces the Strategic Management Initiative, its origins and its impact, discussed in terms of efficiency, responsibility and democracy.

Authors Neil Collins, Terry Cradden and Patrick Butler examine the current, key issues within the Civil Service, including the contentious issue of decentralisation. Providing reviews of the institutional framework for regulating monopolies in such sectors as telecommunications, aviation and retail competition, they present a critique of the new kinds of relationships between government and the people by reviewing Social Partnership, the Citizen Charters of government departments and other similar instruments.

This textbook at once examines the scale, scope and structure of the delivery of services to the public and their relationship to the civil service, government departments, commercial semi-state companies and other public bodies, while identifying a number of significant failures in service delivery in detail and offering an analysis for their reasons.

Neil Collins is Dean of Faculty and Professor of Government at University College Cork.