The Northern Ireland Public Service is likely to have an acting head for as long as a year, the Government has said.
First Minister, Arlene Foster (pictured) said 12 months would provide sufficient time to run a second recruitment process to fill the post on a permanent basis.
Mrs Foster and Deputy First Minister, Michelle O’Neill are to run the process again after failing to find an agreed candidate in the last recruitment exercise.
Three candidates made it through to a final interview stage with the Ministers last month, but Stormont’s leaders were not able to reach consensus on an appointment.
Mrs Foster said she and Ms O’Neill were now urgently moving to appoint an interim head of the Public Service.
Critics have said the long delay without a permanent Public Service head is unacceptable given that the former holder of the position, David Sterling, gave eight months’ notice of his intention to retire.
Giving evidence to a Parliamentary committee, Mrs Foster said the interim head would not be subsequently applying for the permanent position.
The First Minister also said she was not aware of anything that would prevent candidates who were unsuccessful in the first process from applying again for the permanent post.
“It takes considerable time to run a recruitment process for such a job,” Mrs Foster said.
“That’s why we’ve decided that we need an interim head of Civil Service, probably for a year,” she said.
“That gives us the time to have to do all of the work that we need to do to have the new person in place and if they have to give notice in another job or whatever, that they then will be able to start within that period of time.”
Mrs Foster said the Government was “very much aware of the importance of this role… and we hope to be able to have that interim head in place in the very near future so that they can take matters forward”.
Belfast, 9 October 2020
