The government’s assessment system of its own staff has been branded “a joke” as 99 per cent of civil servants’ performance was rated as meeting expectations, of a high standard or exceptional.

Less than 1 per cent of all civil servants were rated “below average” with only 15 receiving the lowest rating.

So how does the Performance Management and Development System utilised by the civil service compare to systems of assessment in the private sector?

Peter Cosgrove, Director of Recruitment company CPL Resources spoke to Newstalk Lunchtime today about the review.

He stated: "The word average is, if you're in a room, 50% of the room are below the average intelligence, that's the word average. It means half way.

"If you're saying 99% are above that, that means you've the most remarkable unit of all time or that somebody is probably differentiating what the word average means in the department."

He went on to say: "The reality is, I'm sure there's no pay review for anyone who isn't getting a rating of a certain degree or there's a challenge around why they would give this. But if there's no reason for somebody not to rate someone that way, that's what you probably have to look at.

"If you don't have those structures in place, why would they give lots of people poor ratings if they don't have to?"

You can listen to the Paper Review here: