This Bill is significant in more than one way. I should like to point out one very significant fact in this area generally; it is that most development since the war in organisation and administration has come about through the direct action of Government initiating action through Government Departments. The theory at least was that Governments and Ministers initiated policies and the Departments involved produced the necessary legislation and schemes to implement these policies. Very largely, however, in the past because of the increasing complexity of society and economics and so on, I rather fear the tendency became one for the initiative to slip out of the hands of Ministers into the administrative machine and many of the proposals for development were logical projections of that administrative machine. That gave continuity but very often it did not give originality and it certainly did not react with sufficient speed to changing circumstances.
The fact remains that much of the organisational development of the State, the introduction of new Ministries and so on, had that kind of origin. The latest example of that kind of procedure that I can quote will refer to one of the three persons within the Tánaiste. He is Tánaiste; he is Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service, all of which functions have become more differentiated and separated as time has gone on. The bisection of the Minister for Finance into the part remaining Finance and the other part becoming Public Service was a natural administrative development. Backed up by administrative investigation and report and now in implementation it is likely to throw up a number of problems which such a bisection naturally brings about. All that was extremely natural and in practice unavoidable as time flowed but, as I said, it has some drawbacks.
This Bill is in strong contrast to that way of thinking. Here we have the result of a definite political lead by a political party, a political lead in the political field designed to meet a political need. While in Opposition, the Taoiseach's party had the various problems examined. Already some Deputies have referred to the programme laid before the electorate in the Fianna Fáil election manifesto, the programme on which the election was fought by this party. One part of that programme, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of implementing policy, was the proposal to have an organ of this nature.
This Bill, therefore, represents something comparatively rare in modern democracy, again because of the complexities of the administrative machine and the complexities of economics, and so forth. It represents direct political action, democratic action, to meet a need. It is action suited to the policy and the programme of the Government and for that reason alone, it shows the possibility of making democracy effective and of restoring balances which had become somewhat distorted, shall I say, by the complexities of modern officialdom. When I use that word I am not referring to the civil service. I am referring to all the organisations necessary for the running of the State. That is just an opening comment on the genesis of this Bill, but it is significant.
There have been criticisms about the contents of the Bill, the role of the Minister and the role of the Department in relation to other Departments, particularly the Department of Finance. Having made the point that the bringing in of this Bill by the Minister, in the circumstances and with its background, is an assertion of the power of democracy, it is no harm to see the proposal in its historical perspective. I am tempted to do this because of some of the remarks made about the relationship of the Department of Finance to this Department when it is set up, and also the remarks made suggesting that some kind of a dictatorship is being set up. Those remarks can best be answered by looking at the proposals against the background of how the State machine grew up in the first instance.
Naturally I do not intend to review the whole development of the State organisations from the beginning, but I think I can summarise it in this way. When the State was set up, in the light of responsibilities conceived to be appropriate to Governments at that time, a political and governmental structure was set up in which we had the national Parliament. That national Parliament elected, for its life in effect, a Government who were the executive power in the land and who governed. In those days the paramount interests were law and order, relations with external matters, taxation and so forth. With these requirements to be met, a limited number of Ministries were established, the executive Ministries, many of them spending Ministries. Of course, there was the Ministry of Finance which controlled the purse and, overall, there was the principle of collective responsibility. The co-ordinating agency was the head of the Government and the Cabinet, the Cabinet as a whole being vested with collective responsibility. Around the Cabinet table it was possible in those days, with the limited burden then existing, to co-ordinate policies and to have concerted action on the part of the Government in the years leading up to a convenient watershed from the point of view of this debate, the war emergency years, 1939 to 1945.
During that period, collective responsibility was very proximate because every Minister in the Cabinet could have a fairly good grasp of anything his colleagues brought to the Cabinet table. On the other hand, there was the control of the Department of Finance. At this stage I want to point out one thing about the Department of Finance. The control of the Department of Finance was largely negative and, somewhat on the pattern of the British Treasury, it continued in that restrictive watchdog control. It was a very necessary control but before the war, and the history of the Department of Defence will illustrate this amply, that control went very far and it was left to Ministers in their collective capacity as a Government to decide what to allow. The problems were restricted enough for that to be a real possibility, every Minister having sufficient grasp of the situation. Even with that the Department of Finance, exercising negative control on expenditure, had as their function to spend as little as possible, to see that there was no waste, extravagance or misappropriation of public funds. All very proper: I do not intend to denigrate the Department in any way.
The important thing for the purpose of this debate is that the traditional control of the Department of Finance in this regard quickly became stereotyped as a negative control, one which at the Estimate stage would pare down, and, in effect, disallow proposed expenditure by Departments. Its continuing control was ensured by the requirement that financial sanction for almost every expenditure not agreed to beforehand be sought. This worked well although approaching the war years it tended to be too restrictive. During the war years in the Supply and Defence fields this bottleneck was revealed and in the emergency situation there had to be some overriding of precedent. After the war the Department of Finance properly resumed and re-established itself in its proper role as a kind of overlord, from the control point of view, of the Departments. As happens after all such cataclysms, after the war a lot of new situations arose for governments. First, governments became concerned and actively engaged in things that were not regarded as proper areas for detailed government control, economically and socially. Governments had to move into certain areas such as housing because they were urgent. Government Departments had to grow accordingly to deal with the burdens growing on Ministers. Furthermore, as the burdens became heavier and as the different areas of responsibility became clearly segregated and defined, more Ministeries became necessary. We had then a multiplication of Ministries with an increase in the size of the administrative machine but we were still left with the old essential control mechanism of the Department of Finance and the Cabinet in its collective responsibility.
It does not take too much imagination to realise that very quickly in a situation such as that it became an impossibility for Ministers, other than the Minister or Ministers directly concerned, to be able to give independent judgments on many matters discussed at Cabinet level. It was often the case of Cabinet colleagues telling a Minister who was pressing a particular line that they were in agreement with him because they were not in a position to argue about the project or vetoing it on the grounds of finance or expenditure. There was little choice open to them. That is not intended as a criticism of leaders of any Government or of Ministers; it was simply that the burden became too much for the individual mind. Naturally in that situation every Minister had to fall back on his own Department to study projects. Effectively one then got government by the administrative machine. I am not saying that the Ministers were reduced to being ciphers but every Minister became so dependent on his Department that in the end many decisions of importance were the result of automatic action in large part rather than critical decision.
Of course I accept that the Minister who initiated the proposal was fully versed with what he was bringing forward and, presumably, his Department would implement the policy he laid down. However, the overall effect, when it came to the exercise of the collective responsibility of the Cabinet, was as I suggested and that was nobody's fault. Various efforts were made to mend that and considerable thought was given to the problem but no original solutions were offered. The last Government set up the Department of Public Service and I have no doubt that my party in Government would have been thinking along the same lines.
The relevance of what I have said to the debate is that while that process was going on we still had the control of the Department of Finance which I have characterised as negative. Even the Department of Finance, with the burden cast upon it by the expanding situation, were forced to delegate general sanction and very often in itself this tended to defeat control. That control, with an honourable history, maybe with overweight in the past, is there and it is necessary that it should remain there but what is needed also is a positive control to balance the negative control of the Department of Finance. That is what this proposal does. It gives the Government of the day a positive control complementary and in no way antagonistic to the control of the Department of Finance. Between the activities of this Department and this Minister and the activities of the Department of Finance and the Minister responsible, both Departments being supervisory Departments rather than executive Departments, the positive control that the new Department can offer will restore to the Cabinet table the power to exercise collective responsibility effectively.
I may be wrong in this concept but approaching this Bill from an historical point of view, I see this proposal as a very significant contribution to making collective responsibility of a Cabinet effective, politically, economically and socially. In other words it is a step restoring to Government the direct control and power governments once had but that practically all democratic governments lost to some extent in the social and economic developments of our time since the last war. To say that is enough to commend it.
There will be co-ordination problems between the three Departments, Public Service, Finance and Economic Planning and Development but these will be at a level that will be easily co-ordinated at the Cabinet table and in a routine way by the head of the Government whereas the co-ordination of the multifarious Ministeries with their sub-divisions, as far as I can see, perhaps is not beyond the control of the Taoiseach and the Government at present, but still it is less in the power of Taoiseach and Governments than it will be in future if this measure is made effective.
I have no intention of repeating everything the Minister said when introducing this Bill. My point is that this Bill is significant because it is the fruit of genuine political initiative by one of the political organs of the State—if you regard political parties as political organs—in contrast to the administrative way many other developments came about. It is a control element complementary to existing control.
The last point, which I need not labour but which has been the subject of most of today's debate, is one which fills a void from the point of view of integrating the economic activity of the community at present. These points in themselves are sufficient to commend the Bill. When one finds in addition to these points that the person who is to assume this office has made a deep study of and been actively involved in the political initiative that brought about this proposal, and furthermore when it is the fruit of the labours of experienced leaders, experienced in Government with the full realisation of the machinery and responsibilities of Government, then these facts augur well for the future of this institution and at least are reassuring when one examines the contents and genesis of the proposal.
One speaker emphasised the social aspect and Deputy Bermingham was very eloquent on the vital social question of the provision of employment. It is elementary to say that you cannot separate the economic from the social or vice versa. No matter what system of Government or political philosophy you espouse, it has been amply demonstrated here and in other countries that although your heart may be in the right place, if you do not have regard for the economic realities, everything you do with the best social intentions seems to work out wrong.
One of the criticisms of the Coalition Government might well be this: in their emphasis on social desirability and social aims they had not sufficient regard for the compulsion of economic realities and as a result the community which they hoped would benefit socially by their actions, were the very people to suffer. That stemmed from the fact that there was a failure to understand the realities of life. Whether we like them or not they are there. If they were not, there would not be problems.
The problems are not altogether economic; there are social problems too. You can bring a horse to water but often, unfortunately, you cannot make him drink and likewise in economic planning, the provision of opportunity, the organisation of economic activity, may all be nullified by a human factor if the necessary co-operation of the community and the interested elements, individual or collective, is not forthcoming. This is a social problem. The two cannot be separated but that does not mean that one throws one's hat at it. A Department like this will clearly identify the problems and will raise the issues in tractable form, and there will be an opportunity for political leads from the Opposition, the Government and anyone else in the community interested in getting concerted action towards the desired end. Collective action can be taken under war conditions as was shown between 1939 and 1945. In times of prosperity it seems impossible to get co-operation. The worse matters become the more likely is co-operation. That is a sad thought. I hope that thought has been brought home sufficiently to people, so that in future the maximum degree of co-operation will be available to make rational economic plans tie in with social requirements. The emphasis placed on the social aspect appeared to be placed in a way that suggested that economic and social matters were not complementary but conflicting.
I join with those who have congratulated Deputy O'Donoghue on his appointment to this Ministry, knowing that he will undertake his responsibilities and will provide a much needed link within the Cabinet Chamber. Before his appointment, the Minister was very much involved in the formation of the plan in conjunction with the Taoiseach and the Ministers. When this Bill becomes law it will be immediately effective. The real problem was how to make the collective responsibility of Governments effective and how to co-ordinate the various Ministries into one coherent group. This need was only too evident in recent times in democratic governments. The circumstances under which this Bill will become effective guarantee us a good start. Provided general social co-operation can be obtained in relation to the implementation of the co-ordinated policies that will emerge in the programme of this Government we can look forward to an improvement in our standard of living, in the social structure and in the economy. No Government can succeed in this unless there is a basic consensus. There will be differences of policy, but I hope the Opposition with their experience in Government, will emulate their predecessors in Opposition, in getting down to details of policy rather than ad hoc criticism as the spirit moves and the opportunity offers. If that comes about, this Parliament will become an effective instrument behind an effective Government, and when the time comes to change Government the impetus could continue.
We received co-operation in emergencies before and that co-operation is required for the future. There must be constructive analysis of policies. In addition to its primary role, as I have conceived it, and as the Minister has outlined, this Department could also be an agency to enable every Member of the House to be part of an effective Parliament and not of a type of institution that we sometimes appeared to be, particularly where financial matters were concerned in previous years. In other Dáils I referred specifically to these matters. This Department's activities will enable the Ministers and other Members of the House to see that Parliament is effective in backing the Government of the day to serve the people as a Government should.
