Public Sector Reform in Ireland

Muiris MacCarthaigh is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Administration, Queen’s University Belfast, UK.

• Introduction.- Chapter 1: Political and Administrative Contexts.- Chapter 2: A Ministry for Public Sector Reform.- Chapter 3: Through the Window of Reform.- Chapter 4: Shrinking the State: Organisational Reform and Rationalisation.- Chapter 5: Re-negotiating the ‘Bargain’.- Chapter 6: Public Expenditure Reform.-Chapter 7: Culture Reform: Civil Service Renewal.- Chapter 8: Political Reform.- Conclusions.

“This book contributes much to the academic analysis of state retrenchment. In fact, it also contributes much to studies of government growth – not in terms of spending but in terms of bureaucratic size. … Public Sector Reform in Ireland documents and analyses the complexities of whole-of-government reform to counter the financial crisis using the single case study of Ireland.” (Yao Han, LSE Review of Books, blogs.lse.ac.uk, June, 2018)“This is a book which needed to be written and Muiris MacCarthaigh has done us a great service by describing and analysing, in great depth, the public sector reforms which were initiated in the period 2011–2016 … . I have no hesitation in recommending this book. It is a tremendous contribution to the existing literature in this field and I know that I will be using it extensively in the classroom.” (Aodh Quinlivan, Irish Political Studies, February, 2018)