Tending the Public Garden - Accountable for today, Stewarding for tomorrow - Remarks by Deputy Governor Colm Kincaid to the DPER Management Conference

Good morning everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you here today in Croke Park – a place that embodies what can be achieved in Ireland. As the children return to school and the rain settles in, Ireland’s extraordinary summer has finally begun to turn. And it really was extraordinary – the driest on record and certainly the hottest of my lifetime. Anyone who tends to a garden will have enjoyed the growth and the long evenings but will also have felt the strain. The limitations on water use accentuated the need to decide what to protect and at times, what to cut. This, I think, is a useful metaphor for public service leadership. A garden needs daily attention, but it cannot be understood one day at a time, and sometimes it must brave extreme events. Gardens have immediate needs, annual cycles and often outlast the people who tend to them. Certain parts of the garden need to be managed differently, and stewardship means responding to today’s conditions while maintaining the capacity for the whole garden to flourish over time. The institutions we lead face the same challenges. We operate through changing priorities, annual budgets and extreme events. We are also custo...