Vol. 276 No. 13
I move:
That a sum not exceeding £937,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the period commencing on the 1st day of April, 1974, and ending on the 31st day of December, 1974, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Public Service and for payment of a grant-in-aid.
I have seen announcements within the last few days of proposals to be implemented in relation to the Department of Transport and Power. As the Minister knows, I am talking about the decision which was made by the previous Government to apply, on an experimental basis, the Devlin recommendation of an Aireacht and an executive body in three Departments. The Minister will recall that in discussing this matter before I raised the question of the difficulties involved when implementing this on an experimental basis, which is what is being done, and overcoming the problem of accountability to, say, Members of this House. In particular the Minister will recall there was a recommendation in the Devlin report as to how this might be dealt with. I will give the Minister a practical example and, perhaps, he would indicate to us how the Government propose to deal with it. In the case of the Department of Transport and Power which is being set up to implement, on the recommendation of the Department of the Public Service, the Devlin report in so far as portion of that Department will be operating as an executive function of the Department, if a Deputy has some query or complaint in relation to the way that particular function is being carried out will the Minister responsible deal with those queries and be answerable for them here in the House and, if he will, does the Minister not agree that that is not a true experimental approach to the problem in which we are involved here?
As I explained previously, until such time as this House and the other House would pass legislation bringing about legal separation then the Minister would remain fully accountable. If and when legislation is introduced to bring about this severance, then the necessary machinery to ensure protection for the individual would need to be built into that severance. If it was not it would be open to very justifiable criticism. For the time being, as we experiment in this field, the Minister would remain fully answerable to the House as he previously was.
I appreciate that that is the provision but the point I am at is whether the Minister appreciates that operating what purports to be an experimental implementation of that recommendation without implementing the recommendation as to accountability does not furnish an adequate experiment and that there is a danger that when the time comes to judge the effectiveness of the experiment it may be decided that the experiment was unsuccessful because this portion of the recommendation had not been implemented.
I can understand the Deputy's fears but I think he will accept that you must creep before you walk and you must walk before you run. We must be on our guard that the situation which Deputy Colley envisages does not occur but I think it is preferable to get the show on the road rather than that we should do nothing while we are trying to work out the ideal system. I think in the light of experience we will be able to produce the right legislation to give full effect to the Aireacht concept.
Could I get an assurance from the Minister that, in judging the experiment, account will be taken of the fact that it was not fully experimented on for the reason I have mentioned?
Yes.
