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The power of the purse

Sean Cromien, former secretary general at the Department of Finance and former chair and president of the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), died in August 2018. Cromien joined the Department of Finance as an administrative officer in 1952. He stayed there for the remainder of his career, rising steadily through the ranks during the period of T. K. Whitaker’s leadership of the department from 1956 to 1969. He became second secretary in charge of the Budget and Economic Division in 1977 and secretary general from 1987 to 1994. During this time he oversaw the production of nineteen budgets and is credited with helping to get the country’s finances under control after the high spending of the 1970s. Cromien was the senior member of a three-man ‘Financial Review Board’, along with his second secretary, Bob Curran, and economist Colm McCarthy, which became known as ‘An Bord Snip’, dictating public spending policy over the following years. These experiences undoubtedly contributed to his assessment of the role of civil servants, those in the Department of Finance in particular, as ‘the last of the small spenders’. He also played an important role during the currency crisis of 1992–3, which led to the devaluation of the Irish pound on 30 January