I try to be fair in the House and to give both sides of a story. I do not think that basically there is more natural viciousness in Fianna Fáil people than in others but there must be some reason why Fianna Fáil have been so intimately associated with jobbery throughout the history of this State. The problem has been that once the practice started it became a habit. It has corrupted Irish society. I do not accept the term used by Deputy Tully and others, some, perhaps, from these benches and some from the other benches, which suggests that there is nothing to apologise for, that there is nothing wrong with supporting one of one's own and that to vote for those whom one considers could do a very good job is all right and that the fact that they are supporters of one's own party should not preclude one from voting for them, that in fact, one should favour them so long as one is convinced they can do a good job.
This seems to me to involve a concept of distributive justice which does not accord with what I have always understood to be basic Christian principles. If in public appointments there are a number of candidates and if one candidate is better than the others although many may be qualified, failure to appoint that best candidate seems to me to involve an offence against justice. If he is the person best qualified, he is entitled to the job and for one to deprive him of that post would seem to me to be exactly the same in character as taking from him the sum of money that would accrue from the post. If somebody contrives by using his influence with a political party to have himself appointed to a post for which he is not the best qualified candidate, he is depriving somebody else of the remuneration involved for that year and for each year thereafter in which he remains in the post and he will have the same duty in terms of restitution as has anybody who steals money.
I know that that rather harsh Jansenistic view of the practice is not accepted universally but it is one that I have held always. It is one in respect of which I entered politics with a view to pursuing to the point of implementation, recognising, of course, the imperfections of human nature and that it would be impossible to safeguard always against abuses of some kind and recognising that there are some posts in respect of which it would be very difficult to provide adequate safeguards. It is all right in respect of rate collectorships, posts that arise rather rarely, to lay down methods of appointment which involve clearcut practices and procedures that should preclude any question of jobbery but, of course, at other levels, for instance, on the question of appointing a person to do a couple of weeks work on the roads, no similar system of appointment would be workable.
There may be problems also regarding the appointment of directors of State companies. It is difficult to see how these appointments can be made by anyone other than the Government. It is difficult to see what safeguards one can implement in this respect except to establish a convention that would be difficult for future governments not to follow, one that would ensure that such appointments are made on the basis of merit and are not rewards for services rendered to a party as a significant minority of such appointments are today. I do not suggest all because the majority of directors of State companies are appointed as people best suited to the jobs concerned but others are given these jobs as rewards for services to the party. There are several State bodies which, in the not too distant past, at any rate, have been provided predominantly with directors on this basis. The quality of the boards concerned has been suspect. Work has suffered and there have been cases where the Government have had to get rid of boards because of their incompetence which arose from the method of appointment. However, it is difficult to see how one can use safeguards in these cases, but in other cases one can see methods of doing so.
For instance, there is no reason why the appointment of judges should not be based on consultation of some kind with the Bar and the Incorporated Law Society whereby a panel of names would be brought forward. There could be some such system in which the Government would have a choice but where the choice would be between people who, in the opinion of their peers, were qualified eminently. I am not insisting on that system but I am suggesting merely that it is possible to arrive at a system for the appointment of judges which would eliminate political influence and which would go beyond the pure convention that operates in Britain to eliminate political appointments.
In respect of the appointments we are discussing here the job is one that arises rarely, which is at a reasonably high level and which, therefore, is eminently suited for an appropriate procedure of appointment, a procedure designed to rule out the possibility of political favouritism. I have listened to some of the arguments in favour of the procedure outlined in the Bill. I do not see the merit of these arguments but, perhaps, this is due to a certain inability on my part to listen sufficiently receptively to the views from the other side of the House but I do not see what is the merit of giving this responsibility to county managers. The arguments put forward against the appointments being made by the Local Appointments Commission seem to me to be perverse. This Commission was established for the very purpose of making local appointments. It is not as if there were no Local Appointments Commission and that it was being proposed from this side of the House that some remote body, such as the Civil Service Commission, should have this duty. The first Government here established the Local Appointments Commission. They did so precisely to enable these kind of local appointments to be made in a manner that would take account of local needs and at the same time which would ensure that these appointments were made on a basis that would preclude political jobbery or any other form of corruption and to ensure that the best appointment was made. Therefore, to suggest that a system established for this purpose, used for the vast majority of local authority jobs by this very Government, never attacked or criticised by this Government, and rightly so, because it is an excellent system, should suddenly become unsuited to the appointment of a particular local official, in this case, a rate collector is to suggest something which is untenable.
I have never heard anybody suggest that the Civil Service Commission should not appoint staff to the Revenue Commissioners, that they should be chosen as people who are known to get on well with taxpayers and who would know, as Deputy Hussey suggested, that there was money in a house at any particular time. I should like to think that when the Revenue Commissioners seek tax from me they would have regard to my immediate family situation, that they would have personal knowledge and consideration in respect of my position but they do not and nobody here has ever suggested that they should. I do not see why other forms of tax collection should have to partake of this special characteristic either. Rate collectors should be appointed by the Local Appointments Commission in the same way as other appointments are made. No case has been made for their appointment by county managers and a case has been made against the county manager system. That is a system which already gives excessive authority to one person. We must reconsider our present position and realise that the diminution of the role of local elected representatives which, no doubt, was designed for very good reasons was, nevertheless, a retrograde step. Perhaps we are more mature now than we were 40 years ago and that whatever reasons there may have been then for taking so much power away from them should be reconsidered. Modern methods of control over expenditure should make it possible to introduce new budgetary methods and to establish standards of performance and behaviour which could be controlled by spot checks that would enable the democratic system to operate properly.
This is not the moment to give further powers to county managers. Of course, county managers are involved locally and are subject to local pressures. Their own appointments may have been influenced by political considerations. I do not know whether that can be the case but it has been alleged by people on this side of the House that many of them have a Fianna Fáil complexion. Perhaps that is simply a paranoia of Opposition. The appointment of rate collectors should not be a matter for one person. We have an established procedure for such appointments that has stood the test of time and despite criticism in this House it is a procedure which, by and large, seemed fair. Whatever individual criticisms there may have been the commission never came under attack here on a general scale as being in any way lacking in impartiality.
In those circumstances it is clear that appointments should be left to the Local Appointments Commission. It is not surprising that the Minister's reluctance to adopt this obvious procedure has met with scepticism from this side of the House. When one hears Deputies who appear to be defending the present system and who regard it as having worked well telling the House, as we have heard from Deputy Hussey, that their initial opposition dissolved once they heard the work would not be done by the Local Appointments Commission and that it would be done by a county manager, then one wonders why the Minister has proposed this particular course of action which, in fact, commends itself to those who like the present corrupt system and which is opposed by those who are seeking to improve that system. That is a method at which one should look twice and the Minister cannot expect to emerge from this debate without some mistrust of his motives and without some criticisms of his attitude if he persists in proposing a method of appointment which is so suspect and so far removed from the method which commends itself to those who are seeking to clean up the system and to ensure that distributive justice applies in this area.
I should like to say, finally, that we are tackling here only the tip of, I will not call it an iceberg, but a large block of ice, because the iceberg was dissolved in the twenties largely by the creation of the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission by the first Government. But when that dissolution took place the iceberg unfortunately did not totally melt. A few ice floes broke away and one of these is now coming under the heat of criticism in this House today. But there are others and although, as I have said, there are certain areas in which there may be practical problems about eliminating political jobbery, it should be the first requirement of this House to get rid of this cancer, because it is a cancer. The fact is our people are corrupted by it.
Throughout the country there is a belief that no one can get a job without political influence. We know in this House that this is not true. Most jobs are awarded on an impartial basis and the political jobbery has been, by the action of the first Government, confined to specific and limited areas —sub-postmasters, rate collectors, judges, guides at the Rock of Cashel, et cetera. There are a few of these particular categories and these are unfortunately sufficiently obstrusive in the public mind and in each locality people are sufficiently aware of the cases where flagrant jobbery has taken place, where people involved in politics have secured the appointments not merely of their friends but, disgracefully, of their relatives.
There is enough of that going around to convince many that the whole system is corrupt and that jobbery is prevalent throughout the whole system. The fact that it is not true is not, unfortunately, fully realised and there are enough politicians going around pretending that, in fact, they can influence jobs that they cannot influence to add to this false impression. This has corrupted the body politic of this country and has created a situation in which politicians are fawned upon, on the one hand, by those who want favours from them and, on the other hand, are the subject of mistrust and cynicism of the kind that can only corrode democracy.
It is the duty of this House, starting here, and doing a more thorough job than the Minister proposes and extending its work to other areas, to put an end to that and, on this side of the House, that is our determination and that is what we have put in our party policy and that is what we will do if we get into power. No doubt, in this, as in other parties, there will be people who will regret the fact that we are determined to clean up the system. There will be individuals who will see that they might benefit from the present system continuing. No party is perfect. No party consists entirely of angels and there are bound to be people with some element of self-interest and, in fact, the unfortunate thing is that the persistent practice of jobbery by Fianna Fáil over the last 40 years has in some degree besmirched and, to some minor degree, corrupted the other parties as well, so that within them people are to be found—not many, because for those who want jobs it is easier to get them from Fianna Fáil—who think in these terms. In our party they are a minority, a small enough minority for us to ignore them and, in government, to set them to one side and to eliminate jobbery wherever it exists and to create in this country a public administration in which when parents have a child going forward for a job they will know he will get the job if he merits it and not if he does not and, no matter who they talk to, if he is not the best person for the job, he will not get it. We want a public administration in which the people will have both trust and confidence. We have not got that now because of what has happened to the perpetuation of jobbery by the party in power in the past 40 years.
