The alternative that you allude to is holding DPOs personally liable for breaches and non-compliance. Again nice in theory but in practice it means that in most cases you’re holding one person responsible for the actions of someone else.

I doubt it’s legal to hold someone personally liable. I know a bar owner who would do a money grab on his bartender’s paycheck whenever he did something objectionable. I don’t think that was legal, nor would I suggest it.

The main purpose of a legal person is to shield natural persons from lawsuits. The DPA would be fining the public agency as a whole.

The public agency should of course internally attribute the DPO’s failures to the DPO. From there, I doubt it would be legal to do an instant money grab on the DPO. But there are of course legally sound corrective actions. If the DPO is an outside agency, it’s simple to outsource to another provider of DPO services. If it’s a direct employee, they can be sacked or reassigned a different role. They could be given a pay cut in the future, like at their next annual appraisal, at which point they can decide whether to accept the new terms. They could be required to attend training. It’s a management issue.

My org had a high impact breach a couple of months ago.

A breach is not in itself an infringement by a data controller. But if the data controller was negligent in their infosec and not up to GDPR standards which is then attributed to the breach, then the negligence would be an infringement.

wouldn’t teach the DPO a lesson - they’ve done everything the law requires.

Without having the details I can only figure that if the DPO did everything the law requires, then a conviction and penalty has no merit in the 1st place.

And without knowing about your org, I cannot judge whether resources are being sensibly allocated. It sounds like GDPR compliance has an low priority there (which actually makes sense if the org is legally immune to GDPR fines anyway).