Sean O’Driscoll’s proposals for infrastructure reform were among the most provocative contributions to IMI’s National Leadership Summit, extending beyond project delivery to how Ireland structures government and approaches leadership, accountability and risk.
Sean O’Driscoll has called for a fundamental reconfiguration of government departments and an increase in Cabinet from 15 to approximately 20 ministers.
Speaking at the Irish Management Institute’s National Leadership Summit, the former chairman and chief executive of Glen Dimplex argued that Ireland’s system of government had not kept pace with the growth and increasing complexity of the State.
O’Driscoll, a member of the Government’s Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, also discussed the causes of Ireland’s infrastructure deficit, progress on the Taskforce’s action plan and the need to change how the public system approaches risk.
Leadership, trust and decision-making
Speaking with Business Post editor Daniel McConnell, O’Driscoll first outlined the principles that had shaped his approach to leadership.
“Leadership means leading from the front,” he said. “Never ask anybody to do something that you are not prepared to do yourself.”
He also emphasised the importance of listening, arguing that leaders should seek to understand the position and motivations of the person speaking before attempting to reach an agreement.
Leadership also requires people to surround themselves with colleagues who are more capable than they are, said O’Driscoll, and then trust, empower and delegate to them.
“They don’t need to love you, but they need to know that you’d be there for them in a time of crisis or a time of challenge,” he said.
O’Driscoll described trust as the most important principle in his leadership. When responsibility is delegated, he said, leaders must be able to trust that they will be kept informed and told when something has gone wrong.
He distinguished between a loss of trust and concerns about somebody’s performance. Performance problems can often be addressed through support and coaching and may arise from circumstances outside work.
“There might be something behind their performance that has nothing to do with work: children who are sick, or problems in the family,” he said. “You have to try to understand what is really going on.”
O’Driscoll said leaders should tolerate genuine mistakes but expect people to learn from them.
“If you don’t, and you get a reputation for not tolerating one-off mistakes, people will stop making decisions,” he said.
Mistakes should also be addressed quickly, he argued, because problems become more difficult to resolve the longer they are allowed to continue.
He rejected the traditional image of the old-school leader, who shouts at or humiliates employees, saying that such behaviour had no place in business or in life.
O’Driscoll also described ‘thinking’ as one of the most underestimated leadership activities. He said he deliberately created time to consider difficult issues and rarely commented on something before thinking it through.
“If you think about where people are coming from, you can understand what the issue may be,” he said. “Thinking is part of the learning process.”
How Ireland’s infrastructure deficit developed
The conversation then turned to Ireland’s infrastructure deficit and O’Driscoll’s involvement in the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce.
He said the deficit had developed over approximately 20 years and had several causes. Capital investment was reduced during the financial crisis, while the State failed to plan adequately for subsequent population and employment growth.
O’Driscoll had previously been one of six industry partners involved in the Government’s 2012 Action Plan for Jobs. Employment growth subsequently went far beyond the targets established at that time, but the country did not build the housing, water, energy and transport infrastructure required to support it.
“We never planned for the success of our economy,” he said.
O’Driscoll said infrastructure concerns had also been played down because of fears that openly discussing them would damage Ireland’s reputation among international investors. The international organisations and companies evaluating Ireland were already aware of those weaknesses, he argued.
He became involved in the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce after being contacted by Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers in 2025.
An action plan, not a report
O’Driscoll said he agreed to participate subject to three conditions. The Taskforce’s work had to be radical rather than incremental; it had to produce an action plan rather than another report; and the final plan had to be approved by Cabinet.
Each action needed to identify the problem, the proposed solution, the department responsible for delivering it and the timeframe for completion.
“That is what gives it the power to move the system,” said O’Driscoll.
He also noted the report and action plan submitted by the Taskforce were approved without amendment.
“Not a civil servant, not a member of Cabinet, not Cabinet itself changed one comma or full stop,” he said.
The report argued that Ireland’s infrastructure delivery systems were broken. One of its central provisions placed ultimate responsibility for each action with the relevant government minister and departmental secretary general.
O’Driscoll said this created a clear line of accountability if an agreed action wasn’t delivered.
The members of the Taskforce have remained involved in an oversight capacity, meeting monthly and engaging directly with state agencies, semi-state organisations and utilities.
O’Driscoll said that, by the day before the Summit, 77 per cent of the overall actions contained in the plan had been delivered. He expected the figure to reach 95 per cent by the end of 2026, with the remaining actions extending into 2027.
He praised the civil servants responsible for implementing the plan, describing many of them as among the most capable people with whom he had worked.
“They’re much maligned, they’re over-criticised, but they do incredible work,” he said.
Recalibrating the State’s approach to risk
The Taskforce also examined the State’s approach to risk.
O’Driscoll said the experience of the financial crisis had contributed to a highly risk-averse culture. Civil servants had been criticised by the public, media and political system and had responded by becoming more cautious.
He said the Taskforce had sought to rebuild confidence and make clear that governments, rather than civil servants, must determine the level of risk the State is prepared to accept.
“You can never eliminate risk except by doing one thing, and that is accepting 100 per cent paralysis,” he said. “Don’t eliminate risk; manage it.”
O’Driscoll said the Government had subsequently issued an overarching risk appetite statement for the State. Government departments and state agencies were also directed to prepare their own risk appetite statements.
The case for reorganising government
The conversation then moved to whether Ireland’s structures of government remain appropriate for the demands now placed on ministers and departments.
O’Driscoll noted that the Constitution established a Cabinet of between seven and 15 members in 1937, when Ireland had a smaller population, a less developed education system and a considerably less complex economy.
Since then, government has taken on responsibility for areas including climate change, digital technology, broadband, renewable energy, migration, integration, equality, research and artificial intelligence.
Ministers must also manage constituency responsibilities and attend European meetings, reducing the time available to oversee increasingly large departments.
O’Driscoll said responsibilities had often been added to departments as part of political negotiations rather than through a logical assessment of how government should operate.
“If you have too many priorities, it’s not a priority,” he said.
He proposed increasing Cabinet from 15 to approximately 20 ministers and reconfiguring government departments around a clearer allocation of responsibilities.
O’Driscoll said he was not advocating an increase in the number of civil servants. His proposal was to simplify how departments are structured and address the management pressures placed on ministers.
He pointed to Denmark, a country with a population comparable to Ireland’s, which has increased the number of ministers in its government as the responsibilities of the State have expanded.
O’Driscoll also proposed restoring local government as a standalone ministerial portfolio. Ireland had a dedicated Minister for Local Government until the 1970s, he said, but those responsibilities had subsequently been combined with a range of other policy areas.
He argued that local authorities needed greater attention but also greater consistency. Different authorities — and sometimes different areas within the same authority — can interpret similar requirements in different ways.
Any reorganisation would require cross-party support and should be approached as a question of governance rather than party politics, he said.
Asked about the quality of people working below the most senior levels of government departments, O’Driscoll returned to his earlier point about leadership and confidence.
He said the Taskforce had worked with principal and assistant principal officers, supported them and given them greater confidence to make decisions.
“The Taskforce hasn’t done it; they have done it, and we’re very proud of it,” he said.
In part two, senior leaders from Accenture, CIÉ Group, Uisce Éireann and Arup examine how those reforms could translate into infrastructure delivery, stronger coordination, long-term planning and the skills Ireland will need for the future.
