Recycling

Brian Cowen, today presenting the awards for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence in the Public Service –

It will be a challenge, and equally an opportunity – an opportunity to dramatically accelerate the pace of change in the Public Service, to the benefit of all stakeholders. And an opportunity to ensure that the Public Service continues to contribute to our return to economic prosperity. These are opportunities that we need to embrace with, to borrow from Seamus Heaney, “a compound of energy and artifice”.

 Brian Cowen, giving one of his early-Taoiseach speeches to the Institute for Public Administration conference on “A Public Service for the Future: The OECD Challenge” (remember that?) in May 2008 –

I want the Irish Public Service to be an exemplar of success; ‘fit for purpose’, performance-focused, integrated, and citizen-centred.  Perhaps the most challenging of these attributes is ‘integrated’.  In the words of Séamus Heaney, I believe this will require ‘a compound of energy and artifice’.

 The man sure loves that Seamus Heaney quote.  At least when the topic is transforming the public service.

More seriously, at which speech did he announce that his task force on transforming the public service had hit the ground running so well that it had already had its first meeting?

Both of them.