Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 1 Dec 1926

Vol. 17 No. 6

CONSTITUTION (AMENDMENT No. 5) BILL, 1926—SECOND STAGE.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

This is a Bill dealing with the question of extern Ministers, and the proposal is to provide greater elasticity for the President of the Executive Council than now exists in the matter of the selection of colleagues who will share with him responsibility for policy and for administration generally to the Dáil and to the electorate. I take the view that on the day the Dáil elects the President of the Executive Council there is vested in him executive responsibility for the various departments. He proceeds to share and apportion out that responsibility amongst colleagues of his own selection, whose names he submits for approval to the Dáil. At present he is limited to the number of persons whom he can call into the political group, and which has collective responsibility before the Dáil and before the electorate. It is sought in this Bill to increase the maximum membership of the Executive Council from 7, at which it now stands, up to a possible 12. That leaves it open to the President to take into the Executive Council, to call into collective responsibility, as many as 11 Ministers. He is not bound to call in that number. He may leave certain departments unfilled by himself to be filled by the act of the Dáil and to be administered as a matter of single responsibility in the way that four departments are now administered. But what is sought is latitude, elasticity, so that the newly-elected President of the Executive Council may base his decision on the circumstances which he finds confronting him after he has been elected to that position. It may be, too, that our experience of the working of the extern Minister idea has led us to think that it is not as valuable a constitutional idea as we once thought it would be.

It would be the ideal thing in Deputy Johnson's ideal State which is run without money. Where it breaks down is that every Department radiates into the Department of Finance, and that while theoretically one may say this Minister has single responsibility to the Dáil and to the country for his Department he does not share responsibility with the Executive Council nor they with him. Still, inasmuch as every one of them has to turn to the Minister for Finance for the funds to implement— if I may use that horrible word—his policy, collective responsibility comes in there. All Departments radiate into the Department, which must necessarily be within the Executive Council—the Department of Finance—so that this single responsibility of extern Ministers is, I will not say entirely, but largely theoretical, and this aloofness of such Ministers from the Executive Council and its works and pomps is largely theoretical. They have to turn to the Finance Department, and there is collective responsibility for that Department. At any rate, we feel that each succeeding President of the Executive Council, facing the position as he finds it on the day of his own election, should have a free hand to decide how much of the administration of the country, how many of the Departments of State he will make the subject of collective responsibility, to be shared by him and his colleagues of the Executive Council, and how much, if any, he will leave outside that Executive Council as Departments to be administered in single responsibility way by the Ministers whom we have come to call extern Ministers.

At present there are outside the Executive Council some very important Departments—the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Local Government, the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs—and it may be thought it scarcely a wise thing that in a country so predominantly agricultural as this the Department of Agriculture should be administered without collective responsibility on the part of the Government as a whole. Local Government is a very important phase of the life of the country, and there might be much to be said for collective responsibility in that respect, but we are not attempting here to draw straight lines, to say this shall be so or this shall not be so. What we do recommend to the Dáil is a free hand for the President of the Executive Council to decide how large his Council shall be, and for how many Departments he, together with his colleagues, shall assume political responsibility. We recommend that, if he thought fit, he should be free to take collective responsibility within the Executive Council for all the Departments of State, or facing his political exigencies to leave one or two or three Departments outside the Executive Council. We consider that it is a matter the President ought not to be hampered in, and we seek a freer hand for him within the Constitution than he is allowed as it stands.

Mr. WILSON

Would the Minister make a case for the figure 12 as against 11?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

12 is the maximum number of Ministers, I think.

Mr. WILSON

You have only 11.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

And the President.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

took the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSON

I think the Minister might have given us some simple reason why there is a necessity for this change at the present time. Did I hear somebody use certain initials as the explanation? I had the curiosity this morning to read the Minister's speech when introducing this provision for extern Ministers, and I felt after reading it that this experiment, confessedly an experiment, has not been tried, and whatever value was in it has not had a chance of finding expression. The Minister, in proposing the device of extern Ministers, persuaded the Dáil that the extern Minister would make his proposition in regard to a matter of departmental policy to the Executive Council. The Executive Council might be divided upon it, and the views of the Executive Council, majority or minority, would be presented to the Dáil by that department and the Dáil would decide on the proposal. But we have had no occasion that I can remember where a Minister or head of a department has fulfilled the duties, which were presupposed in the Constitutional provision, to come to the House and make a proposal which was not already agreed to by the Executive Council. I am quite at a loss to understand why we should appoint, why we must expect even the head of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, not the present head but any other head, to be a member of the Executive Council. It is a departmental office, a purely administrative office, whose head might be the best administrator in the world and yet not the best man for consultation as a member of the Executive Council. There is a difference between the pure administrator and the political statesman. I really feel that sufficient time has not been given to the experiment, and that we ought to have had a real trial of the proposal which was submitted so eloquently by the Minister for Justice to the Dáil when we passed the Constitution.

The question whether the Executive Council should consist of more than seven touches a somewhat different aspect. If you have an Executive Council of twelve you are almost certainly going to have a much smaller number as the real acting Executive. You are going to have a Cabinet within a Ministry. That was intended by constitutional provision as a thing to be avoided, that you should have a small acting cabinet of five or seven men, with collective responsibility, each equally responsible and powerful, presided over by the President. Now we are proposing to make it possible to have twelve Ministers of equal responsibility, equally powerful theoretically, but inevitably leading to the development within that larger Ministry of a small Executive. There are people who are ungenerous enough to think that, even with an Executive Council of seven, you have a small Executive which acts irrespective of the views of the outer circle. This proposition is going to make that method of conducting the business of the State a certainty in the future. I think it would have been very much better if we had allowed the extern Minister proposals to have a trial before we made any change. I will admit the case the Minister makes, that this is not a mandatory proposal at all, but one which will give elasticity, and allow the minor Ministers to become members of the Executive Council according to the wishes of the President of the time. In stating the case, the Minister told us that that is the intention of the present Ministry if they have the opportunity again of forming an Executive Council.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I did not say that.

Mr. JOHNSON

I would much prefer to have given a fair trial to the proposals of the Ministry of 1922. I think it is too soon to turn down the proposals of that Ministry and that Dáil. They were fairly well considered, and. I think, very well considered by the Constitutional Committee. Undoubtedly they were well considered by the Provisional Government, and more or less considered by the Provisional Parliament. They have excited a good deal of attention, but the extern Ministers have forgotten the conditions of their appointment and have preferred to be responsible to the Executive Council rather than to the Dáil. I think it is a pity. We would have done well, I think, to have had, say, the Minister for Lands and Agriculture, or the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, who was not a member of the Executive Council, directly answerable to the Dáil for the conduct of his affairs. While nominally Ministers are in that position, in fact that has not been so. To suggest now that all these Ministers, the Minister for Fisheries, or the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, must always be in the same position as political leaders at the will of the President is, I think, retrogressive. It is an undesirable change, until we have had more experience. I recognise that it is quite experimental, and I am not at all dogmatic about the value of it. I think the experiment should have been tried before we changed it.

Mr. HEWAT

This Bill, further amending the Constitution, comes up with a recommendation to alter the basis on which the Executive Council has been formed. I think I can only say in its favour, that the provision embodied in the Bill and recommended by the Government, gives latitude. If the problem to be considered was: Is it going to take twelve Executive Ministers to run the country, it would be necessary to recall the old complaint, that there are too many Departments of State. The Government, I presume, are best able to judge of that. They have had experience of what in practice has been found best as regards the Government benches. Deputies who are not on the Government benches do not appreciate, possibly, the difficulties that have confronted the Executive Council in the administration of affairs.

It seems to me that it is an exaggeration of the responsibilities that rest on the Executive Council to say that twelve good and true men are required to run the country. The Bill does not indicate that the Executive Council is to consist of twelve, but simply gives the President latitude, so that he can nominate eleven others to take responsibility within the Council. I agree with Deputy Johnson when he criticises the results that are likely to ensue following a decision of twelve as compared with a smaller number of Ministers. We have seen from time to time in the past that there was not agreement in the Executive Council when it consisted of a lesser number.

A considerable increase in the number seems to me to extend the likelihood of differences among themselves which would react on the administration of affairs. In considering this Bill we, on benches other than Government benches, feel considerable difficulty as to our criticism of it. After all, we are a new legislature, with very little experience, and we have to gain our experience, presumably, as we go along. On this particular subject we can only form a general opinion as to what is taking place towards establishing the Constitution and legislature. This proposal alters the present state of things in the direction of bringing into the Executive Council departments which, perhaps, some of us think would be better outside it. It is not, on the other hand, mandatory that they should be brought in, and therein lies the discretion which is in the hands of the President. I remember when I came to this House first, the general construction sought to be placed on the appointment of extern Ministers was that they were to be appointed by the House, and I think I remember various occasions when the President was inclined not to take personal responsibility for these appointments.

Now, in explanation of this Bill, the Minister for Justice formulates the idea that the President is the one and only person who is responsible for the formation of the Ministry. I think that is right, and that the ultimate responsibility must rest on one individual. In the case of the Executive Council I think it must rest on a smaller number than twelve members, and I think it will work out in that way in practice. As to the inwardness of this proposal I do not understand the position. Undoubtedly the Government has very good reason for bringing in this Bill which is going to alter the Constitution in a certain direction, and my only criticism is that that alteration increases the area of distribution of responsibility. That, I think, is wrong, especially if the latitude given to increase the number were exercised.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

To a certain extent, this Bill meets with my approval. I have always felt that this situation of having an extern Minister responsible to the Dáil was always unreal. It is only a pretence at having in existence a state of government which really does not exist and that, in fact, extern Ministers were not responsible to the Dáil, and, so far as I am aware, have not shown in any way that they were responsible directly to it. It seems to me that undoubtedly in practice extern Ministers must have been all the time responsible to the Executive Council, and must have received authority from the Executive before they took any independent action in regard to policies concerning their Department. I take it that that is what happened in all cases. What is the use of pretending to have in existence a state of affairs which does not exist? Like Deputy Hewat, I see that there is a difficulty in regard to the size of the Executive Council, if all extern Ministers are to be included in it in future. I recognise there is a possibility of a small cabal having the real power and really controlling policy. In order to reconcile the two ideas the only way out of the difficulty, so far as I can see, is the abolition of certain Ministries.

I believe that we have too many Ministers. In a State of the size of ours the work of administering the different Departments cannot be as great as similar work would be in States of much larger size. There is reasonable ground for asking that consideration be given to the question of amalgamating certain Ministries. There are many people who will say that we have not yet had any real cause for this change, and there are many people who will say that there are reasons other than those given by the Minister for Justice for this change. There is one aspect of the matter that appeals to me and it is this: I believe that all Ministers should belong to the Executive Council so that they may have a collective and an individual responsibility for the policy of the Government. I think it is reasonable that people should expect that they shall get from the Government in power some indication of a unified policy. There are some matters of vital policy upon which Ministers have shown distinct differences of opinion. I think that that is a state of affairs that should not exist.

If the Government has a policy it should be the policy of all its Ministers. It is unfair to the people and, in fact, ridiculous to have one Minister expounding one policy and another Minister, perhaps in another place, expounding a totally different policy. For that reason I think we should have collective responsibility for policy and also individual responsibility. I would like to hear something said about one aspect of this question, concerning which I do not know a great deal. My idea of extern Ministers was that there was an intention, when the Constitution was drawn up, that certain extern Ministers should not necessarily be members of the Dáil but heads of Vocational Councils, that we should build up gradually certain Vocational Councils and that their nominees should be extern Ministers. I do not know whether that idea has been completely dropped or whether there was any intention of carrying it out. Personally, it is an idea which I view with a great deal of doubt myself, as to its expediency, but I think there was some intention in that regard. However, I would think that the intention of the Bill as it stands of leaving it optional to the President to appoint or not to appoint certain members on this Council is not sound. I believe myself that all Ministers should be members of the Council with the proviso, which I wish to put forward, that the number of Ministers in existence at the present time is excessive.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I do not know, that, arising out of the discussion, I have to add very much to what I said in moving the Second Reading. Deputies spoke of the failure—Deputy Johnson in particular spoke of the failure—of extern Ministers to envisage their position as being responsible only to the Dáil. I wonder was there failure anywhere else? Would the Deputy not agree that amongst the electorate and, to some extent, amongst members of the Dáil also, there was a definite refusal to discriminate in the matter of Government responsibility for affairs that came definitely within the purview of the Executive Council, and affairs which were outside the scope of the Executive Council and within that administered by the extern Ministers? It seems to me that the popular mind never adjusted itself to the conception that what is called the Government should not be responsible for the entire sphere of legislation and administration. Whether that would come in time or not, I do not know. I doubt it very much. If people objected to something, say, in the sphere of local government, that was a sin to be borne by the Government. Similarly in the matter of agriculture, whether it was the refusal of a certificate to a scrub bull or delays in the administration of the Land Purchase Act of 1923, it was the Government too, and I feel certain that much the same applies to the Post Office.

The Deputy did not deal with my point that in fact all Departments impinge on the Executive Council in the very important matter of finance, and that consequently you cannot effect a watertight division between the responsibility of an extern Minister and the collective responsibility of the Executive Council as a whole. Almost all policies require funds to carry them out. If the Minister for Fisheries has a far-reaching scheme calculated to benefit areas in fishery districts, he must look to the Minister for Finance for the necessary funds; the Minister for Lands and Agriculture likewise; the Minister for Local Government and Public Health likewise. You cannot divorce the Executive Council from the extern Minister in such a way that the extern Minister can be entirely free to go before the Dáil and the electorate, claiming that he could make the country blossom like a rose only for Mr. Blythe. He would not put up the sinews of war, so to speak; he would not put up the necessary funds to enable them to do that.

Mr. JOHNSON

Now it is out.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

In any case there is that radiation of all the Departments into the Executive Council, and that fact pretty well obtruded itself on our attention during the course of the last four or five years, so that we saw that the responsibility of the extern Minister was more theoretical than practical. This Bill does not necessarily mean that there is going to be an Executive Council of twelve—there might not be an Executive Council of more than eight or nine—but it asks for latitude for each succeeding President of the Executive Council to take his own course, based on his own political exigencies. We have proportional representation in this country. That may lead to numerous groups in the Dáil, to forced amalgamations, coalitions of one kind or another. and the circumstances will vary after each General Election. We feel that no President of the Executive Council should find himself with his hands tied, with one body of Ministers who are called into collective responsibility, and with another body of Ministers administering Departments which the State has to finance, but for whom the Executive Council has no responsibility. It may suit him better to have an Executive Council of seven or eight members and to leave other posts for the Dáil itself to fill. I think it is not necessary, in considering this matter, for people to burrow down and in their quest for some secret, unstated reasons for the Bill, to try to attribute the introduction of this Bill to the personality of this or that existing Minister. The arguments can be advanced quite in the abstract, and I think the arguments are sound.

Question—"That the Bill be read a Second Time"—put and agreed to.

Committee Stage fixed for Tuesday, 7th December.