Yesterday I explained that, in my view, while the idea of having an ombudsman is a useful one here, the reasons which were decisive in the adoption of the idea elsewhere did not seem to me to exist here. I said I did not think that there was any serious degree of maladministration here of the kind which produced demands for such an office in Britain. I said that, even for the minute percentage of actual maladministration, it might nonetheless be well argued that we ought to have such an official as an ombudsman in order to give the public the assurance that this minute percentage of cases, small though it was, would not go unremedied.
It seems to me that the main burden of the case for the ombudsman must rest in a country like this on somewhat different grounds. Moreover it seems to me, as I said in concluding yesterday, that the limitations placed on the Parliamentary Commissioner in the United Kingdom, namely, that he can act only if the inquiry is instituted by an M.P., and that local government and matters of total discretion are excluded from his view, would make him completely unsuitable for adoption here. It is exactly in the field of matters which are discretionary and in local government matters that difficulties for the citizen can arise. I do not mean difficulties resulting from maladministration but difficulties in the sense that the citizen finds himself up against a machine by which he is baffled and feels himself unequipped to attack or to challenge.
I want to talk for a few minutes about another matter. I hope I will not be accused by Deputies on any side of the House of trying to reform an entire system to which I myself am a relative newcomer, and of finding fault with a system which others have lived under quite happily, and prosperously, and usefully for many years before I was heard of. I am not trying in any way to lecture people who have spent very useful public lives. I should like to make a point of view heard which very seldom surfaces in this House, I suppose, because the people who are in this House find that it is difficult to utter this point of view without invalidating some of the planks on which their own political existence is built.
The main large scale problem which the Irish people and their politicians have to deal with in the area which Deputy O'Brien has so wisely and so admirably driven us into yesterday and today, is the problem of divorcing the dispensing of administrative favour from the achievement of political support. Administrative decisions at absolutely all levels from the highest to the lowest, from the awarding of a contract for the building of a £5 million underpass, or bridge, or tunnel, down to the simplest and humblest appointment in some kind of a local setting or the simplest and humblest according of a medical card, ought to be made on entirely objective criteria. While there is no point in my denying that all sides in this House have been excercising their governmental powers when they were in office in a way which conflicted with these criteria and while there is no point in my denying that patronage has existed here since the State was founded, someone must say here sooner or later unambiguously that essentially it is wrong and that ideally we ought to be without it.
I do not want to take a high and mighty attitude towards this. I must confess that I have become a great deal less high and mighty about it since I was elected to the other House six years ago and since I have seen at close quarters exactly how the political world works and, in particular, what the people expect of the political world. I do not want to be high and mighty on this theme. I do not feel that way about it any longer. One ought not to lose touch with and sight of the ideals with which one started out. It is important to say, and keep on saying, and keep as an ideal in front of one, even if it is only an ideal of perfection such as a human being never can attain, that anything like patronage is wrong.
It may be that the expectations which the people have of us—and we are responsible to them and we have to reflect their points of view and their wishes in a large degree—force us, whichever side is in question, to ride along with this system up to a point. It may be that there are strong human reasons for going along with it, and that these human reasons would outweigh, and would outweigh even in the sight of the most just and the best man who ever lived, the ideal textbook reasons against patronage.
I do not underestimate these reasons at all. For example, very shortly after we took office I began to notice through the volume of post on my table that a very large number of people who support my party and the Labour Party were anxious—I will not call it for promotion I do not mean promotion in the sense of stepping up one rung of the ladder in a particular setting—for some kind of appointment or dispensation of which their known political affiliations had in the 16 previous years deprived them. I hope gentlemen on the far side of the House will not think I am being contentious about this. I do not mean to be. I am trying to state it as fairly as I can and no doubt they will interrupt me if I go beyond the bounds of fairness.
I noticed in these representations, which I passed on to the people concerned—some of which were successful and some of which were not—that the people who were making these representations were not so much concerned with getting jobs; they were not so much concerned with putting money in their pockets; they were not so much concerned even with having status; what they were concerned with was something more humble and more radical than that. They wanted recognition.
They wanted recognition from their friends that their years—and at times it seemed they would be endless—of slaving thanklessly in a hostile political climate watching plums, favours, recognition of all kinds, going to their opponents, going to people with whom they did not politically agree and could not bring themselves politically to agree with, were now at an end. They wanted reassurance that they would be seen to be at an end by the smile of Government favour, a Government favour which was at the disposal of the people whom they had helped into office, for what were undoubtedly at the time entirely unselfish and public-spirited reasons. I could not bring myself to despise a man who feels that way. I am certain that the Deputies opposite, if they were to remain in Opposition for 16 years as we did, would feel the same way about it when they got in. There are those who now work for them, and I recognise that there are members of the Fianna Fáil Party who do not mind doing this. Although it is not a good moment to be a member of Fianna Fáil I hope no ruthless discrimination is being exercised against them. I recognise and applaud people who feel that the interests of the Irish people are served by supporting a democratic Opposition, and they should not be discriminated against for doing so. If they pass 16 years and find at the end of that period that their political affiliation has debarred them for membership of this board or that committee I could not blame them for expecting that when Deputies Dowling and Moore are over on this side of the House, they would bestow favour on them which we had not bestowed.
That lengthy introduction to what I want to say is only meant to exonerate me from the charge of taking a high-line about this. I do not take a high-line about it at all. We are all one people and we are similar enough, particularly in the roots from which we sprang, and there is no sense in trying to hammer into our neighbour or a 100 of our neighbours a point of view which one may have learned only through the fortunate experience of never having had to go begging to anybody for anything. I do not, accordingly mean these remarks in that way.
We must acknowledge on all sides of the House that patronage is wrong. There may be extenuating circumstances of the kind I have described, there may be all kinds of human circumstances which make the fault for the seeking or the exercising of patronage diminish to vanishing point but it remains wrong. It would be a poor day if we found ourselves as a House constructing casuistic excuses for the continuance of a system which we know is wrong.
There is a distinction between the Fine Gael and Labour Parties on the one hand and the purses of the people of Ireland on the other. Three years ago there was a clear distinction, or so it seemed to me, between the private concerns of the Fianna Fáil Party and the purse of the people of Ireland. It seemed to me then and it still seems to me that whatever benefits whether great or small or whatever work, jobs, favours or recognition of any kind dispensed in the name of the people of Ireland ought to be done on objective criteria irrespective of the political affiliation of the people concerned.
When we were in Opposition I watched that principle being flagrantly ignored, although to a lesser extent I see it being ignored now, but to a much lesser extent for a reason I will explain later.