I move the adjournment until Tuesday at 3 o'clock. On Wednesday last I announced the intention of the Government in regard to setting up a Civil Service Commission, and I should like, with the permission of the Dáil, to make a fuller statement in the matter. We have considered very carefully the functions which our Civil Service Commission should have, and we have looked at the functions of Civil Service Commissions in other countries. There is the model of the British Civil Service Commission, the first to be looked at, inasmuch as it was the Civil Service Commission functioning here before the change of Government. The functions of that Commission extend to the recruitment of all officers of the Public Service with the exception of certain special posts with which we are not immediately concerned. The British Civil Service Commissioners have to issue Certificates of Qualification for all officers before they can be appointed to the Public Service; they make regulations, subject to the approval of the Treasury, as to the manner in which persons are to be admitted to the Public Service, and these powers of making regulations extend to temporary posts and to professional and technical posts. The British Civil Service Commissioners are not concerned with promotions occurring in the customary course in the Public Service. In the United States and in some of the Dominions the Public Service Commissioners have power of control of the Public Service extending beyond recruitment into the sphere of promotion, organisation, and even remuneration. In the case of the United States it has to be borne in mind that the system of Government is on a totally different basis from that of the Saorstát. The Ministers there are not responsible to the legislature, and are not dependent on the approval of the legislature for the conduct of policy. The position, therefore, is radically different from what it is in the Saorstát, where Ministers are members of the Dáil, and are answerable to the Dáil for their procedure. It is true that in one or two of the Dominions where Ministers are answerable to Parliament, the Public Service or Civil Service Commission has functions extending beyond recruitment, but, after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that a wider extension of powers than those covering the whole field of recruitment would be unsound in principle. The determination of numbers and scales of salary of the Civil Service is essentially the determination of public expenditure, and as such the Minister for Finance, who is responsible to the Dáil for expenditure, must bear the whole responsibility of sanctioning the numbers of Civil Servants and their scales of salary. It is quite obvious that it will be impossible for the Minister for Finance, who is responsible for the National Budget, and who has to propose measures to the Dáil, to make ends meet, to carry out the duties of his Ministry in this respect if his powers of control of, perhaps, the largest item of Government expenditure were put into Commission in the hands of a body not responsible to him.
There is also the question of promotion and of discipline. The power to promote and the power to take disciplinary measures are, perhaps, two of the most important marks of executive authority. If a Minister is to be responsible for a Department, he must have full executive authority over that Department, and he cannot be held answerable to this House for the doings of that Department, unless this House will give him authority for the administration of that Department. Further, as regards promotion, it has to be pointed out that only the Minister and his responsible advisers are in a position to appraise the merits of the staff working in the Department with a view to the selection of the best men for promotion, and it would be impossible for an outside authority having no actual experience of the working of the Department, of the actual merits as displayed on work of individual officers to attempt the task of saying which officer is the best fitted for promotion. We have, therefore, come to the conclusion that our Civil Service Commission should, as in the case of the British Civil Service Commission, be confined to recruitment, and should extend to the whole body of clerkships, etc., in the Public Service. The British Civil Service Commission is not a body created by Statute. If it were a statutory body the Executive Council could, by an Order under the Adaptation of Enactments Act, create a body of Commissioners to carry out the functions of the old Civil Service Commission in the Saorstát. The British Civil Service Commission was created by Order in Council, and its powers and duties as they at present stand, are derived from Orders in Council. It is, I think, desirable that the Civil Service Commission of the Saorstát should be created by Statute, and I propose to have a Bill drafted providing for the establishment of a Civil Service Commission on the lines proposed. I hope to be able to ask leave to introduce such a Bill in about a fortnight. At the moment we must have somebody to arrange for the forthcoming examination, confined to officers and men of the Army, for posts in the Customs and Excise, and as a provisional arrangement we propose to constitute a Commission as explained in my statement on last Wednesday. It shall consist of the Ceann Comhairle, Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, and the Secretary of the Ministry of Education.