Stakeholder engagement and the future of Irish public–private partnerships

Abstract

Building on recent works that stress the importance of stakeholder engagement in partnerships, we propose a novel benchmarking framework for the evaluation of public–private partnerships. This framework describes mutuality and the preservation of organisational identity as the ideal characteristics of partnerships because they, in turn, encourage stakeholder support for public–private partnerships. Applying this framework to infrastructure public–private partnerships in Ireland, we note that mutual accountability has been weakened following the financial crisis. Meanwhile, consultation with clients such as key public–private partnership stakeholders, which would help articulate organisational identities, remains patchy across the education, justice and health public–private partnership that we investigate. Nonetheless, there are sectoral differences. In education, consultation centres on school principals while ignoring teaching staff and trade unions. In justice, attention is focused primarily on judges. Similarly, in health sector public–private partnerships, there is a strong focus on clinicians. Overall, private sector-driven consultation efforts are primarily pragmatic, with a focus on preventing delays and the dissatisfaction of key clients who could prevent future projects from materialising. We suggest that the combination of this calculated approach to consultation, together with the delegation of public–private partnership contracting to an arm’s-length government agency, is likely to promote a similar depoliticisation of Irish public–private partnerships as has been observed in other countries. We argue that the potentially harmful stakeholder disengagement that this might encourage can be addressed through a concerted set of measures focusing on improved transparency of decision-making, as well as frameworks that mandate client and public consultation. Points for practitioners Research has highlighted the importance of mutual accountability and the preservation of organisational identity in ensuring that public–private partnerships attract public participation and receive public approval. We investigate public–private partnerships in education, justice and health in Ireland, a country that is widely considered an exemplary public–private partnership practitioner. We observe that consultation by private sector public–private partnership participants with client organisations in these sectors is largely motivated by a desire to prevent hold-ups and secure future business rather than seeking to engage with a broad range of users and stakeholders. Together with the existing lack of evidence of benefits from public–private partnerships, this situation is likely to lead to dissatisfaction with the policy. Indeed, political parties critical of public–private partnerships have been able to significantly increase their share of the vote in a recent national election. Our conclusion is that such dissatisfaction is avoidable if the Irish government improves transparency around public–private partnership decision-making while strengthening requirements for public and client consultation.