It was that a certain number of part-time State servants, who work a couple of hours a day, should be put on the established list and given not only reasonable remuneration but decent pensions. That would be a nice little bill. It is a pity Deputy Blowick did not suggest that that be done for the farmers as a whole—to put them all on the established list, give them all reasonable remuneration and give them all pensions. Deputy Blowick himself is on the list as one of the proposers of that resolution to single out those who work a couple of hours a day, put them on the established list, with reasonable pay and pensions as well. That would cost a lot and would cost something in administration as well.
Not Deputy Blowick this time, but Deputy Donnellan, who sits beside him on the Farmers' Bench, and Deputy John Beirne also have a little suggestion here on the Order Paper that the local authorities should be empowered to do certain things, which would cost money. Deputy Cogan and Deputy Halliden have another pretty idea here, which would cost another £1,000,000 or so— complete derating of the first £20 of the poor law valuation of each farm, further total derating of each additional £15 of the poor law valuation in respect of each adult worker employed on the holding, and that the deficit be made good from the Exchequer.
Deputy Blowick wants me to lighten the burden of taxation. Where does he think I am to get the money from to enable the Government to carry on ordinary administration? Where does he think we could get the money from if we were to carry out Deputy O'Donnell's suggestion about a water supply? If Deputy Blowick and Deputy Cogan are in earnest about reducing the burden of taxation, I think they should bring forward suggestions here as to how expenditure could be cut down rather than bring forward proposals which would mean increasing expenditure. I suggest Deputies should not bring forward suggestions to decrease the expenditure of one Department only, and that is the Department of Agriculture.
Deputy Cogan referred to 30,000 civil servants. He said that they were all established, and he calculated the number per thousand of the population. In the 30,000 there are, of course, part-time postmen, gangers and other people of that description, and it is a wrong thing to make a calculation and say there are so many civil servants per thousand of the population without taking into account that there are large numbers of Post Office workers of the type I have mentioned.
Deputy Corry suggested that during the war there were inevitable increases in various Departments to cope with the emergency situation. That is true. The number of civil servants taken in to deal with various emergency problems was very great. A new Department was created to deal with the procuring and distribution of supplies on a fair and equitable basis. That was an expenditure that could not have been avoided in the circumstances. There was, in the Department of Agriculture, increased expenditure in connection with compulsory tillage. A new branch had to be created in order to administer that particular scheme which was necessary if the nation was to survive.
Deputy Corry made a good suggestion, one of which I thoroughly approve, when he said that now that the war is over an examination should be made in order to see in what way our expenditure can be cut down. That is the Government's job; it is the responsibility of the Government; it is the responsibility of each Minister and I hope, now that the emergency is nearly over, that each Minister, assisted by his secretary and by the establishment officers, will pay particular attention to reducing the cost of administration and see that any costs that were inflated because of emergency conditions will, when the conditions allow, be deflated.
Deputy Cogan said that any ordinary businessman would have appointed somebody to ensure that no waste occurred. So has the Government. In every Department there are establishment officers whose duty it is to see that the staff is kept to a minimum and that it does its work. In the Department of Finance there is a central establishment branch whose duty it is to make sure that every proposal for an increase of staff is justified. The establishment branch in the Department of Finance can send its representatives to the other Departments concerned and they can inquire on the sport into the justification for a proposal to increase staff, or to keep staff if the staff is deemed to be redundant by the central establishment branch and a demand is made for the shifting of particular officers to another Department.
The establishment branch in the Department of Finance is in quite a different position from a committee which might be set up and which might call before it an odd civil servant and ask him to justify the cost of administration in his branch. There is a much more effective check on the work of the Departmental establishment officers when an inspection group can be sent directly from the central establishment office to a Department to sit with the various officers there and inspect them for a day or a week or a couple of weeks, or whatever length of time is necessary, in order to see whether the staff they ask for is justified or whether they can do without the staff demanded back from them.
I trust, now that the emergency is nearly over, that great care will be taken not only by the establishment branch in my Department, but by the establishment officers in all other Departments, to have a close observation of the staffs in the various Departments in order to see that there is no waste and no over-staffing. I can quite understand that during the emergency no establishment officer, either Departmental or in the central office, would hold up too long a demand for additional staff when the Department or the branch concerned could plead that additional staff was necessary to deal with a difficult and urgent emergency situation. Quite possibly in the new situation numbers of staff distributed in that way might be reduced or made available for other work.
Now that the war is over, I am sure there will be an increase— indeed, I hope there will be an increase—in other activities of the Government. There is the Land Commission to be got going again at the speed at which it was working when it had to slow down in 1939 on the outbreak of the war, or when the staff was taken from it for various emergency services, such as tillage inspection and other emergency activities. That Department was gutted of officers and left in the position that it could not carry on its work at a normal rate. Emergency branches of various kinds got these officers, and, now that the war is over, some have been returned. I hope every effort will be made by establishment officers to send back to that Department any officers still withheld from it. But the immediate and detailed inspection necessary to get back officers of that type is work which can be done only by men who go in and live in the Department concerned for the length of time necessary to enable them to discover what is going on.
I hope that the establishment branch of the Department of Finance will be able to pay more attention to that work and will be able to give assistance to the establishment officers in the various branches to do whatever reorganisation is necessary. I am quite prepared to make such officers available, and, if they want outside technical assistance of any kind to advise them on modern methods, I am prepared to ask the Government to approve the expenditure required. I know that we cannot look for any great reduction in expenditure by displacing clerical officers of various kinds by machines, but in some cases, as in the Departments of Lands, for instance, the introduction of machines, though it does not replace staff, has had the effect of getting the work done much more accurately and efficiently, and, in the long run, making savings for the State and the community. Similarly, the Post Office in some cases has introduced modern machinery and their methods were so efficient in dealing with some branches of their work that we have had visitors from other countries to see how they did their work.
I do not know that we can, as I said, reduce very much the cost of administration by that particular type of approach, but whatever could be done in that way will be done to the extent to which it is desirable. I am quite prepared to get for the various Departmental officers any outside advice they require in that regard. If we are to take a given bill for services, the bill presented in the Estimates, and if we are to take for granted, as unalterable, as I think it should be, the procedure we have of the Government being responsible for every penny of money spent and answerable to the Dáil in detail by way of debate and Parliamentary Question, I doubt whether we can cut down very much our costs of administration. If the Dáil were to say to me: "Here is a sum of £50,000,000 to do something for agriculture or to look after the Post Office, the Department of Industry and Commerce and the other Departments. Do what you like with it. Do not account for it to us," I am perfectly certain that I could cut down the administrative expenses by half and still give the people the same service. But would the Dáil be satisfied with that, or should the Dáil be satisfied with it? I do not think it should.
If we are to continue the system of each Minister being answerable for every detail of the deeds of his Department, then that system inevitably entails administrative expenditure in the neighbourhood of the magnitude of the amount we have in the Book of Estimates. Take any Parliamentary Order Paper on any day on which there are 40 or 50 questions. You could not ask a business man questions of that detail about his business. The businessman makes his decision. He pays his money, and it is a mistake or it is not a mistake. He has to account only to himself. If he were subject to questions in regard to every act of his in his business in the same fashion as a Minister is answerable to this Dáil, his administrative expenses would be bound to go up.
We have the system established as a tradition that not one penny of State money can be misspent or misappropriated without the Minister in charge of the Department being called to account. I think it is a good system, but it has to be paid for. We could run another from of Government—not the democratic responsible Government we have—at perhaps less administrative cost, but, in the long run, I think it would be dear buying for our people. Our present system, though costly, is, in the long run, cheaper and more conducive to the general welfare of the community than alternatives which could be suggested and which would work at a cheaper over-all expense.
In the last analysis, no matter what system of control the Dáil exercises and no matter what system of control the Minister for Finance and other Ministers exercise, over their Departments, we have to rely very largely for the economical expenditure of public money on the honesty of the average civil servant. I hope they realise that, if they waste time, they are doing something more than wasting their own time, that they are wasting time paid for by a lot of people through the country who can ill afford to pay the seven-eight of a penny on sugar and the other taxation which has to be imposed in order to pay them their salaries. I hope that every civil servant realises that, and will, by his own volition, do an honest day's work for the pay he gets from the community.
We are all accustomed—I am afraid the Dáil gives no good lead very often in this regard—to regard the State as something apart, from the community, and State funds as something apart from the purses of the people; but it is from the purses of the people that the State gets its funds, so that whenever Deputy Blowick or Deputy Halliden has a bright idea about expending money it is not some cold, unearthly being he is asking it from, but from the State, that is, from the various individuals in this community. Similarly, when a State servant wastes time, or in any way misspends public money, it is not from some cold, unearthly being that he is taking the money, but from Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. McGrath and all the rest of them throughout the country. I rely upon civil servants to co-operate and see that no money is misspent, and that no time is wasted: that when they enter the Civil Service, they do so in the spirit that they are going to do a decent job of work for this people.
We here have the job ahead of us of endeavouring to promote the welfare of our people, and of increasing their standard of life. To do that job of work, we want not only the co-operation of the Civil Service but of the Dáil as well. Now that the war is over, and that various emergency branches are coming to an end, I hope that the Government and the Civil Service, every member of it, will pull together to see what can be done towards cutting out, first of all, any waste in the Departments and, secondly, towards improving the standard of life of our people. Again, I want to repeat that I am not against expenditure of a kind which would promote the happiness and welfare of our people, but I do not agree with Deputy Blowick in picking out the Department of Agriculture for cutting. We want wise saving, but we also want wise spending. If we are going to be content merely with cutting down— we should cut down expenditure wherever it is possible—this country could not improve. It could not develop. We want not only saving on the part of the State and of the community, but we also want spending, wherever spending is necessary, in order to develop the national economy.
There was one particular point that I mentioned, though as Minister for Finance possibly I should not do it, and that was that I think that we are not spending enough on agricultural research. I say it again that, now that the war is over, I hope that every Department, every secretary, every administrative officer, and every other officer down the line, will do his utmost to cut down any expenditure that he can, and, at the same time, put up ideas for wise expenditure that will add to the national income of goods and services. I grant you that, in the days to come, with the way the world is wagging, not only will we require more and more decisions from the various Government Departments, but if we are to do our job well we will want to get them more quickly. I would appeal to civil servants to see that, as far as possible, decisions are taken as low down the line as possible.
Inevitably, of course, there are a number of decisions that will have to be pushed right up to the Minister who has parliamentary responsibility, but, as far as possible, executive officers should live up to their name and be executive officers and take decisions themselves, even though an odd time they may make a mistake. As Minister for Finance, I would rather be hauled before the Dáil for an odd mistake by an individual than have inordinate delay on the part of civil servants. However, one could easily go too far with that, too, because in the last analysis it is the Minister who is responsible to the Dáil. If the Dáil insists on the Minister knowing every fiddle-faddle as regards the administration of his Department, it will be necessary for files of various kinds to come up to the Minister for his decision, seeing that he has to take final responsibility in the Dáil for it.
One other branch that Parliament has set up is the Public Accounts Committee, which in itself is an excellent institution. That system is a safeguard of Government responsibility to the Dáil. The Public Accounts Committee, while in itself a good thing, has the effect of putting up the cost of administration of the State, Judged as a business, when compared with any other type of business. The Public Accounts Committee rightly insists that the accounting officers come before it, prepared to answer in the smallest detail for the acts of their Departments. The system, however, has grown up—I do not know how long it has obtained, but I think myself it is not a good thing for getting work done: this is my own personal opinion—that the Secretary of each Department is the accounting officer. Now, the Secretary of a Department is the man upon whom the Minister has to rely, not only for knowing the general running of his Department but for advising him. If we could free the Secretary to a Department in some measures from the duties of accounting officer it would have the effect, I think, of speeding up work generally, with the Minister having a more satisfactory adviser, an adviser with more free time on his hands. I should like to see a system operated in some one or two Departments of State whereby the Secretary would not be the accounting officer but some officer equivalent to an Assistant Secretary, who would consult the Secretary only on matters of grave importance.
I think I have taken up enough of the time of the House, and I am sure Deputy Blowick wants to reply, but again I want to repeat that I think the only committee which the Dáil should set up to go into the preparation of Estimates is the committee it has already appointed. It has appointed the Government as the executive authority. The Dáil would be foolish to allow the Government to set up another authority and to throw the blame on to that authority if the administration were not efficient. At the present time the Government has accepted the responsibility of controlling the Departments of State. Each individual Minister is responsible to this House. If a question of maladministration or wasteful administration comes up, the Minister has to answer here, and give a reply that is not only satisfactory to the House—sometimes he cannot do that—but is satisfactory to the people. That is a big safeguard. It would be utterly foolish for the Dáil to put itself in the position that, if I came in here and somebody said: "There is a waste in your Department; such and such a thing should not have happened", I could say: "Oh well, has not the Dáil a committee for that work?" That would be very foolish, and would lead I should say to very much greater waste than could possibly occur under the system of having each Minister responsible and giving him authority to control the activities of his Department.
Deputy Dillon rose.
