Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 25 Oct 1977

Vol. 300 No. 8

Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 1977: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. F. O'Brien

Last Thursday evening I said I had certain reservations about the effectiveness of this Bill which appears to be more of a cosmetic device than a real attempt to contribute to the solution of our problems. The setting up of this new Department by itself makes it appear at first sight as if this Government are dynamic and are about to do something about our economic problems. Looking deeper, this Bill appears to set out to establish a Ministry which can act as a launching pad for the current incumbent of the office to involve himself in almost any activity in the area of Government.

The aims and functions of the new Department as set out in the Bill are at very best very vague and at worst meaningless. They read like a list of platitudes which any politician would not wish to spell out. As I said, this Department looks as if it could turn out to be merely a public relations exercise rather than a Department that can achieve any real meaning in economic planning and development. I admit the Minister may argue at the Cabinet table to make his point and might get reasonable agreement there, but when these matters are referred back to the heads of Departments, changes may be made. This is a weakness in the Bill.

The Minister should be given a great deal more power. Again, it will be left to the Department of Finance to chart the economic course and the ideas of the new Department may or may not be implemented. This worries me and most people on this side of the House. Over the past few years I have called for an economic plan because such a plan is very important. However, in itself a plan does not solve these problems. If we expect that a White or Green Paper brought out by this Department will have any effect on solving our problems, we will be in for a bitter disappointment.

If this Department were given more powers they could and would be a useful weapon in tackling our economic problems. They could be even more useful if Ministers did not rely solely on the advice of their civil servants but had their own experts for developing specific policies. That is not saying that what civil servants have to contribute is wrong or bad but I believe if we are to make progress Ministers should have impartial advisers. These experts could be a liaison group within all Departments and would help in the formulation of policy. As I said last Thursday, the Minister could find himself in a very isolated position, something I am sure he does not wish to happen. That is why I believe outside advisers would be the best means for transmitting ideas into this new Department.

I hope this Department will be successful. I always advocated forward economic planning to ensure job creation and the development of our resources in an orderly way. This can be done only by a Department such as this. The pitfalls here are great because of its lack of power. Time will tell whether the Minister can cope with this or not. On reading this Bill, its powers appear to be rather nebulous with no real authority. It has been said that it will be a vehicle for the Department of Finance to operate and manipulate. It has also come to my notice that some of the staff required for this Department from the Department of Finance were not forthcoming. Does this signal the future of this Department? Will it be in the strangle-hold of the Department of Finance? If it is, it will not succeed. This is where the character of the Minister will manifest itself. If the Minister is a man of strong will and character, he can make a real Department of this. It would be a pity if the Minister failed because basically this is a good idea but, as I said earlier, this Bill appears to be a sort of a cosmetic or public relations exercise to create the impression that the new Government will be dynamic and will solve all our problems by a wave of the proverbial magic wand. It will take tenacity and the best brains available to this Department to make it work and the Minister should not settle for less. If second best is being offered, the Minister should go outside the ambit of the Civil Service to recruit staff which he believes can do the job.

I have very strong reservations regarding this Bill but I wish the Minister and his new Department well. The Bill should be drastically improved to give this Department more authority. I hope the reform in the public service will not stop with the establishment of this new Department. I hope to see fairly radical reform in the public service over the next number of years. In any organisation reform should be an on-going process to ensure that we get the best value for money spent.

Mr. Donegan

There is necessity for more Ministers because of the amount of work that has to be done. There are many things a Minister can do that nobody else can whether it is attending the opening of a factory or work of a more serious nature.

We are all hidebound by the Department of Finance. That is the Department with the purse strings whether we like it or not. No matter what Minister we have in this position, we must negotiate first with the Department of Finance which will decide whether or not a project we want to develop is sound and how it should be developed. If the Minister for Finance is dissatisfied, he can go to the Cabinet and let the Cabinet decide by majority whether or not the business that is to be done will be done and whether the money that is to be spent shall or shall not be spent. That is not to say that the Department of Finance is like Mr. Micawber except that instead of always waiting for something to turn up they are waiting for something to turn down. The Department of Finance has to be of that nature.

We must be progressive and we must look to the future. There is a need for this new Department although I have my misgivings. About 10 or 15 years ago Deputy Blaney is said to have refused such a Department because he felt that it had no teeth. Deputy Blaney did not want the sort of Department we are now talking about. I feel that this Department is necessary but we will have to wait and see how the new Minister will deal with it. We will see whether or not it knits into the whole fabric of Government as covered by the other Departments.

Mr. B. Desmond

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and wish him and his staff every success.

Over the years, as a relatively junior member of the Dáil, I have repeatedly called for the reform not only of our Parliamentary structures but of our Governmental structures. I have felt that no man is capable of the kind of mental gymnastics required in the isolated role of the Taoiseach in relation to the other Cabinet members, but particularly in relation to his capacity, no matter how competent he or she may be, no matter how good he or she may be in the general economic sphere, to assimilate the multifarious strategies and dilemmas which the Cabinet may frequently face. There-fore, if the Taoiseach wants to have a Minister who can take a longer view and can evaluate the respective merits of the different strategies put forward by competing Ministers for the common breadbasket held by the Minister for Finance, he is perfectly entitled to have such a Minister.

Was this ministerial portfolio shaped for Deputy O'Donoghue or did the Minister finish up with a portfolio specifically here for him? One is not quite sure which part of the egg comes first but we can rest assured that in Ireland, no matter what part comes first, we politicians tend to predict gloom and failure and we almost relish the prospect that some Department particularly a new Department will not succeed. I hope none of us in the Opposition or in the media will fall into that trap in relation to this Department. It is a national malaise; many of our people almost relish the prospect of failure.

In the long term it remains to be seen whether the Department will prove to be an innovative and dynamic segment of Cabinet strategy. We do not know and we can only hope that the decision taken has been the correct one. In the remainder of this year and as the budget strategy unfolds it will become evident what real muscle or influence the new Department will exert on its shaping. That will be the first criteria of assessment of the Department's role and influence.

I welcome the fact that there has obviously been a desire for a change and an improvement in parliamentary structures. When one considers this Department, together with the proposed Ministers of State, one can see an effort being made to restructure the framework of Cabinet decision-making. However, some people seem to be of the impression, particularly those in the media, that the act of restructuring of itself brings about dynamic policies. One has to distinguish sharply between structure and its purpose.

I remember in 1965 being at a function with the new Minister when the question of investment in education was being discussed. I remember well some of the points made then for a restructuring of education. Somebody asked: what was the very purpose of education, when many of us had to sit back and think precisely what we were talking about. There-fore, one has to ask: precisely what is the purpose of the change proposed? As yet it is rather vague. One can only hope—and one can do so with goodwill and with a sense of co-operation from the Opposition— that that sense of purpose will become evident. Anybody can create a sense of change by running round the country making speeches. I have been doing that for approximately eight or nine years and I have seen nothing very much happen or change in terms of my influence. Indeed, one could imagine the new Minister spending the rest of his portfolio time analysing the state of the nation in various parts of the country but it is the reality or actual degree of change that counts. Therefore, I sound that cautionary note. Likewise, I would urge it in relation to the obsession or pre-occupied concern of the Tánaiste in relation to the concept of the Aireacht.

One can swallow Devlin and re-gurgitate it in half a dozen forms. Yet one might not necessarily succeed in changing anything because what matters are the actual decisions taken by the Cabinet in the framework of policy. That brings me back to a man who did not have very much time for the concept of the Aireacht or for the concept of a new Department for Economic Planning and Development, a former Taoiseach, Seán Lemass. He got things done in no uncertain manner. He transformed our economic and social structures without having to resort to a paraphernalia of structures many politicians seem to regard as a panacea for actual decisions in relation to alternatives open to them.

I congratulate my constituency colleague on his elevation. I can assure him that we welcome the decision of the Government in that respect. We were not then quite sure of the precise strategy in terms of the functions and role of the Department. However, as an act of good faith and goodwill we were quite prepared to see the new Department emerge. There is no doubt that any politician looking through the detailed functions of the new Department in the Bill will find it evident that there has been some interesting by-play, power play and political shenanigans between the various Departments as to the precise formulation of the chapters and sections of the Bill. That is inevitable; in the long term I do not think it is that important. For example, a lot might depend on the extent to which one might draw one analogy.

The new Minister for Economic Planning and Development spoke recently about the cost of the health services. If I know the Minister for Health and Social Welfare he will have his hands full influencing the strategy of the delivery of the health care of this country. The Minister for Finance is not a man who brooks being told about the strategy he should follow in relation to Government expenditure. As such one can only wish the Minister well in term of, say, influencing the cost/benefit of our health expenditure. Likewise I can imagine other Ministers having battles royal with the Minister, in the future, in his evaluation of their respective performances. This is the stuff of Government. It is the function of a Cabinet. At least the new Minister has one important asset, one I notice he has already committed to the Tánaiste in relation to the future leadership of the party—he has got his vote in the Cabinet and in the Parliamentary Party. Perhaps that is more important than structure in terms of the Bill itself because he is one of 15 members of the Cabinet who will take final decisions and, in that respect, I wish him well also.

The Bill, of itself, is not very enlightening. We must await the emergence of the precise role of the new Department in the future. We must also await the extent to which they will recruit staff within other Departments or indeed from outside and the emergence of outline plans in the New Year. Then in a more sober, rational and objective sense we will be able to come to a conclusion as to whether this much thought of exercise is producing the goods. As the changes in economic investment and social policy unfold we will be in a better position to ascertain whether this exercise has been one of cosmetic politics, which I sincerely hope will not be the case. I am not suggesting it will be. But we must let time determine whether it will constitute a real contribution to the quality of our lives.

Mr. Callanan

I have listened to a couple of speakers already. I am delighted to note the way this Bill has been received by the Opposition. I have always had the feeling that, when something good is done for our people, the attitude taken is that it does not much matter who does it. I have been very pleased to hear the good wishes extended to the new Minister and his Department. However, I can sympathise with the Minister also because his will be an enormous task.

In my four years in this House the biggest fault I had to find with the former Government was that there was insufficient forward planning in their day-to-day decision-making, something which is absolutely essential today. That will be the job of the new Minister. I heard remarks passed here some evenings ago about their being too many Ministers. There is a certain amount of work that any man can undertake. I have said this about previous as well as present Ministers— any Minister holding a certain ministerial post has an enormous task to perform. A man cannot be expected to look after everything. He will not be able to do his job if he has too much on his plate. Since we entered the EEC the Ministers who are involved in Community work have too much on their plate. They cannot give enough time to solving problems which the ordinary man who is not so much involved can see some way of solving.

The Department for Economic Planning and Development will have the most important task, namely, they will have to see what can be done to solve the huge unemployment problem. They will have to see where we are going in Europe and they will have total responsibility in matters of economic planning. All of us should wish the person in charge of this work all the luck in the world. Some people have commented on the back-up services. The important thing here is that the person in charge of the Department is a Minister of State. He is not a faceless man, the Department are not a faceless Department. They are being set up to do a certain job and if the person in charge does not do it, he puts his head on the block in this House. It is a big challenge for any person and I am glad to see that it has been received very well here.

I have confidence in the future. I know it is important that those in charge should not be over-loaded with work. Since I became a Member of this House, and especially in the short time that my party have been in government, I have realised that Ministers are overloaded with work. No matter how talented or good a person may be, only a certain amount of work can be done. Everyone in this House should give the Minister for Economic Planning and Development and his Department every encouragement and help in their important work. I was glad to hear Deputy Desmond say that people should not prophesy failure. Let us look to the future and let us hope that the Department will not be a failure. Let us hope they will get employment for young people and that they will be able to tell us where we are going.

The Minister has an enormous task facing him and there must be complete co-operation between him and the Minister of Finance. I have no doubt that co-operation exists and with goodwill between them I have no doubt that we will produce the goods which we promised.

Mr. Clinton

I should like to make a few comments on this legislation arising from my personal experience as a Minister during a very short but also a very difficult period and at a time when I believe almost every Minister was overloaded with work. I welcome this legislation on two counts. First, I welcome the idea of a planning and development unit of some kind and, secondly, I welcome the proposal to provide sufficient people to do the job that has to be done.

It is not generally understood that an enormous extra load has been placed on the backs of certain Ministers as a result of EEC membership. It is just not possible to do the job as it should be done and carry that extra load. The Government are right in providing relief. I think it would have been done during our period in office were it not for the fact that we were asking all the people to tighten their belts and to work harder during a very difficult period and there was a danger that it might be misunderstood if we provided extra help for our Ministers. However, that was not a good enough reason not to have done what is being done now.

I should like to wish the new Minister every success in his important Department. It is vital that we plan ahead. As a former Minister, I want to make it clear that there was no shortage of plans in my Department. I worked very hard to produce plans and I was aware that the industry had reached only 50 per cent or 60 per cent of its potential. I brought in all the people who could advise me. A Minister cannot be inspired himself, he cannot do the job of planning and deciding what should be done in the interests of the industry for which he is responsible, unless he brings in people who are in a position to help him. I did just that. I had all the plans in the world and the best advice available in an area where we knew there was an enormous development potential but there was simply no money to do it. There was a limited amount of money and that had to be spent in the best way possible in the interests of the country as a whole. No matter what we say, that will be the limiting factor in this instance also.

If I were asked what was the right thing to do, if I would do as the Government are doing, namely, setting up a new Department, quite frankly, I would not do that. Recently we set up an extra Department that has been shown to be a further road block to development. I am referring to the Department of the Public Service. The Minister for Finance in his statement on the legislation before the House said this will give him more time to spend on the task of reforming the public service. If I had that task in mind, the first thing I would do is abolish the Department of the Public Service. It was just setting up another expensive unit and it never appeared to me to be anything but a further road block, interfering in the work of other Departments. A Minister should not be in charge of a Department if he is not capable of managing it. By managing a Department I mean he should be capable of assessing the information coming to him from his officials and he should be able to decide on the best and most appropriate action to take.

With regard to reforming the public service, there is a further point I should like to make. A certain amount of money is provided for a Department when the Estimates are discussed and when the budget is decided and there should be no further discussion or interference from the Department of Finance, the Department of the Public Service or any other Department in relation to the way that money is disposed of subsequently. There are experienced officials in Departments and it should be left to the Minister in charge to decide how the money should be spent. There should not be the kind of frustrating interference that all of us experience in government from officials who have no direct connection with the Department. I fear the new Minister will suffer the same frustration. He will go to endless trouble planning our economic development, he will have discussions with all the Ministers, and all this will meet with quite a lot of opposition mainly from the Department of Finance.

I believe the right thing to have done would have been to set up such a unit directly under the Taoiseach's Department. Every Minister in Government fights his own corner for limited resources. The Taoiseach, more than any Minister, is concerned with the overall Government. He should be very close to this business. I believe the proposals for economic development should come to the Government with the Taoiseach's full knowledge of what is to be proposed. It then has a much better prospect of survival and of getting the necessary finance to implement those plans than it is likely to get if the person in charge of that Department is just another Minister.

There will be many restrictions when all this planning and research is done, and they are not financial restrictions alone. We are now restricted in what we can do because of our membership of the EEC. We have to be careful not to give a false impression that we can set out on our own, make all the economic decisions, provide all the assistance we consider is desirable and get away with this under the EEC rules and regulations. We cannot do this. Before the election I heard some of the Ministers telling the electorate all the subsidisation they would provide and all the things they would do about various sectors of the economy when the Government was changed. They cannot do those things under EEC rules. This is election time stuff and one can understand that extravagant statements are made at times like that.

One can have the best plans in the world but if one does not get the wholehearted co-operation of various groups in the country—I put the trade union movement at the head of the league—there is no hope of bringing those plans to fruition. If there is not general agreement that things like unofficial strikes can be abolished there is very little hope for the sort of development all of us want to see. I know this is the responsibility of Government. I do not want to stray too far from what we are directly considering, the setting up of a separate Department for Economic Planning and Development. Every Department should have a planning section. There should be people engaged on that work all the time, and perhaps there might be a way of co-ordinating this. My belief having had a short experience in Government, is that the best way to do this is not to separate this into a new Government Department and under a separate Minister but under a Junior Minister attached to the Taoiseach's Department.

The setting up of this new Department is a very significant move. We should all be concerned about the outcome of it. We want to see it succeeding. We have limited resources which must be spent in the best possible way in the national interest. I hope the approach made by the Government is the correct one. It is not my approach but I think it is a better one than not setting up such a unit in Government because there is a great need for it.

Dr. Browne

This, as everybody says, is a very important Bill in many ways. I am disappointed that the Minister has not taken this opportunity to review the very complicated question of the dynamics of power in a Cabinet and in a working democracy. I do not think anybody will deny— it does not matter which party are in power—that whatever was true of my time 30 years ago about the efficiency of a Cabinet, it has become much more complicated now. Ministers have such greatly increased responsibility dealing with all the problems which the EEC has brought, trying to watch developments in Europe and trying to keep domestic policy in accord with European policy, that it must be a very difficult job for any person to be a Minister in a modern Cabinet.

My impression of Cabinet work is that it was extremely efficient then. It is beyond my imagination what it must be like now. As Deputy Clinton says, if there are ten, 15 or 20 members in a Cabinet, each of them will naturally be concerned about the way he does his job. A Minister will not easily leave aside his ambitions in the interest of some other Department. In theory this is what we are meant to do in this kind of situation but it is very hard if one is in Education or Health or Social Welfare to admit that one's Department is not quite as important as the other Department and that how it operates is not quite as important to society, to the State or to the community one is trying to serve as a politician. Consequently this is an extraordinarily stressful situation for any member of any Cabinet and this is where the head of the Cabinet, the Taoiseach, has such a particularly difficult job.

While that is all true, very much more important is the extraordinary inefficiency of the process of Cabinet Government. It is wonderfully conscientious and careful to see that everybody's point of view is considered and discussed but I recall occasions when we discussed an issue for a fortnight or three weeks and sometimes even for a month or longer because everybody had to be heard and, as far as possible, everybody was to be satisfied. While that is a wonderful theory of the process of democracy in action, it must become an extremely inefficient process. Looking at it as it then was, I was particularly impressed by its inefficiency. I was particularly fortunate in that because of the moneys in the Sweep fund I was my own Minister for Finance and, therefore, made relatively little reference to the Minister for Finance, certainly in the early years. I had the greatest sympathy for some of my collegues in their attempts to get anything through in the face of opposition—conscientious opposition most of the time, I think.

There were the additional stresses of which the present Minister would not be conscious to anything like the same extent and this is something that has exercised my mind over the years. I refer to the multi-party situation in Cabinet. This adds enormously to these conflicting aspirations and ambitions, not only of individuals but of the different groups, again adding to the inefficiency. I would have thought that all of this would have occurred to the Minister, who has very much longer service than I had as a working member of a Cabinet, because there is no doubt that the whole idea of western democracy is very hard pressed at present and is very much under question, not simply because it is predominantly concerned with the attempt to operate monopoly-capitalist type private enterprise systems of government. I do not think that is entirely the reason.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Browne, this is a very limited Bill dealing with the establishment of a new Department of Economic Planning and Development. I am afraid the Deputy is going very wide of the purpose of the Bill.

Dr. Browne

I will not develop that point but I still think it is important that the Minister who is to be given charge of this Department should be given a reasonable chance of success and should be in a position to influence policy and do so speedily. My case is that I feel a certain sympathy for the Minister because they have left the whole Cabinet process much as it is, not changed in any fundamental way. We have to bear in mind that this is a new Minister who is in Cabinet for the first time and someone who has had this experience should put it at his disposal, so that he can be given the optimum chance of making a success of his Department. This is important background information.

Listening to the Minister's speech, we learned very little. To me it was like looking at the old thimble-rigging people on a racecourse. One could look at a man's face and listen to what he said and watch his hands but nine times out of ten one would be wrong in one's decision as to under which thimble the pea was. I think that that is necessarily so in this kind of situation, taking the politics of it into consideration. Deputy O'Donoghue, who is to be the man in charge, has given us a fair indication that he is an independent-minded individual, extremely ambitious, able—if I am not being presumptuous—in his own sphere of activity. I do not agree with his basic political philosophies but he is a determined person. The struggle for the kind of Bill we have here must have been a formidable one between the Minister for Finance and the proposed Minister and between the Departments, particularly the Department of Finance. All of us who have had anything to do with that Department know it to be a notoriously power-loving, power-hugging Department. It must have been a very difficult thing for the Department of Finance, not to mention the Minister, to contemplate a serious rival in the whole Cabinet process.

Most people will want to know whether Deputy O'Donoghue is to become a new bottleneck. Is he to become an extension to the bottleneck we all knew in Government but which we considered the Department of Finance to be during attempts to get anything through? Is that to be his function?

In regard to the terms of the Bill, you cannot honestly say that they have avoided what the Minister said in his speech, "... the creation of an extra layer or layers of Government should be avoided because it would in all probability exacerbate the existing problems." This, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, is what I was talking about —the existing problems which were not dealt with at all by the Minister, the problems of the conflict of opinions, ambitions, aspirations and policy attitudes, which must go on even in a single-party Cabinet.

What will the new Minister's position be? Has he, like so many people in the past, got office without power? If he has office without power —and I find this difficult to believe considering the kind of person we are talking about—then what is the purpose of the exercise? Is this simply a compromise by the Minister for Finance because this individual was elected and promises were made about the introduction of planning, or will he insist on being a man who has office and power? If the Department of Finance are successfully challenged for some of the enormous power that they have, what will the repercussions be within the Cabinet? To what extent will the new Minister be able to insist on the solutions he seeks to put forward to the Government? It is impossible to be quite certain from the introduction to the Minister's speech which reads:

First of all, their general remit will be to promote and co-ordinate economic and social planning for the development of the economy including the co-ordination of plans for the different sectors and regions.

Deputy Clinton spoke about the difficulty of serious planning in a society such as ours where one has annual budgets, where one has elections at irregular intervals, where one is not sure if one will have five years in office. They are reasonably sure on this occasion but in the past that has not been so. Deputy Clinton mentioned the trade union movement.

I should like to mention the farmers. To what extent can the Minister plan with our kind of socially unstructured farming community except by price incentives? What hope has the Minister with industries? Unless the money is right they will not greatly concern themselves as they have no social interest in society. How is the Minister going to make realistic plans in that sort of situation? He cannot redirect the needs of society. Whether there is a need for tractors or agricultural implements he cannot do anything about it. I recall that that happened during the first Coalition. Marshall Aid money came in and we wanted it to be spent on practical things such as ploughs. Unfortunately, the only things on which it could be spent were consumer goods of one kind or another. At that time the great thing was nylon stockings, lipsticks and so on, a terrible waste of money. The idea that you can plan in this kind of economy is sheer fantasy. The Minister is not even able to say for how long he is planning because he will not be the Minister then. In my own case I was able to plan for a five-to eight-year period and spent accordingly—£30 million. That seems to be the only way in which you can have realistic planning except where public spending is concerned, and we find that these Governments do not want to indulge in public spending.

Whatever real power the Minister has, he is the only one that knows it. He may not have as much as he thinks. A couple of years, from now he will know how much power he has in this kind of free enterprise society. It may not be worth more than the paper on which it is written. Is the planning to be carried out in consultation with each of the other Ministers in Government as a preliminary to submission to the Minister for Finance or is it to be submitted to the Minister for Finance simultaneously by this subordinate Minister? Do the Departments of Finance and of Economic Planning and Development consider the questions together? If the Minister meets his Cabinet colleagues, considers their programmes and attempts to slot them into an overall scheme, does he then submit the scheme to the Department of Finance for consideration or does it go straight to the Government? Is there consultation between the Ministers for Finance and for Economic Planning and Development all the time when the latter is trying to hammer out a concerted plan with his Cabinet colleagues? You could envisage a position where the Minister for Economic Planning and Development worked extremely hard to create a plan which the Minister for Finance could veto. Has the Minister for Finance power to veto such a plan or has the Minister for Economic Planning and Development power to go straight to the Cabinet? Must he have the authority of the Minister for Finance to present his ideas to the Government?

Has the Minister any real executive power? What is the process whereby each Minister submits his proposals and at what stage, as Truman said, does the buck stop? Does it stop with the Minister for Finance or does it stop with the Minister for Economic Planning and Development? Will the Minister for Economic Planning and Development be planning within a great overall figure? This is something that will have to be decided, but where and by whom will it be decided? What kind of submissions will be involved in reaching this decision? Is economic planning a broad blueprint of the kind of programme which the community should adopt and send back along the line or is it more haphazard? Do the subordinate members of the Cabinet submit proposals involving local government, communications, roads, education, public spending, industry and commerce and so on? How can decisions be arrived at unless the broad blueprint is submitted within a fixed global figure? These are intricacies of planning which I do not understand, but it would be interesting to hear from the Minister what conclusions may have been reached in regard to these kinds of considerations.

Personally, I was once in the wonderful position of being in complete charge, of knowing everything that was going on in the sphere in which I was involved but my involvement then was with what would be only a tiny proportion of the type of financial problem being faced now. There are now more than 20 people involved each of whom will be presenting what he or she believes to be the ideal plan for the relevant Departments. These plans have to be analysed and costed before decisions are reached. Obviously, the Department controlling the money make the final decision about planning. We want to hear from the Minister whether it will be the Department of Finance or the Department of Economic Planning and Development who will have the final say.

I have considerable respect for Deputy O'Donoghue, for his determination and his self assurance. He must be quite a tough customer in negotiations at Cabinet level. But for a long time the Department of Finance have been in control of the purse strings and they have defeated most of their protagonists through the years. Has the new Minister any reason to believe that he will succeed in this very important job?

Will it be his responsibility to tell a Minister that his scheme cannot go ahead? Will he be the one to have to say to various Ministers that their schemes might be accepted next year or the year after but not this year? Such unpleasant tasks would not help him very much in the popularity stakes in the Cabinet and certainly would not help him very much in regard to the possible leadership of the party. These considerations are all involved in this question. We are all politicians and that is why the background information would be fascinating. However, one will not be given such information. What is at stake here is the leadership of a great political party. If Deputy O'Donoghue is successful, obviously his position within the party will be tremendously powerful, but if he fails he will be dismissed. However, that is none of my business. My only interest in this question is which of the two Ministers concerned I would prefer to see succeeding as the decision-maker. That is something about which each of us reaches a private decision. I do not know enough about the Minister for Economic Planning and Development to hope that he might be the one to win this great argument which undoubtedly has taken place in the various Departments and in the Cabinet and which, in addition, has been at the centre of the Taoiseach's mind in relation to the years ahead.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This is not the sort of planning we are discussing.

Mr. P. Barry

We may not be discussing it but the people opposite are thinking it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I suppose they are entitled to think it but it may not be discussed on this Bill.

Dr. Browne

On this Bill I am asking which of the Ministers will undertake the decisions in relation to planning? This planning will influence what happens in respect of unemployment, in respect of the health service and of education and so on. It involves questions of what will happen to the whole status of our people. That is why that struggle is so important to us. Although the question is not one of who heads Fianna Fáil, all of that is implicit in the enigmatic few words which the Minister gave us by way of his introductory speech, a speech which, as I have said already, was very much lacking in regard to the kind of discussion into which the House should have been led on this very important subject.

The question before us concerns the whole democratic idea in our society and of societies in most of western Europe because at the heart of all this is the success or failure of the Ministers in the Cabinet. If, ultimately, this Bill is merely the raw material of a continuing and increasingly bitter civil war between two powerful opponents at the centre of the Cabinet, it will stultify all the activity of the entire Cabinet.

Therefore, personalities are unimportant but the success or failure of this Ministry will determine the economic policies of the Government and may determine the success or failure of whether young people will continue to concern themselves with this tedious, prolonged but very wonderful process of parliamentary government.

Minister for the Public Service (Mr. Colley)

At the outset I should like to congratulate those Deputies who made their maiden speeches in the course of this debate, not least of whom was my colleague, the Minister for Economic Planning and Development.

I have been very interested in and to some extent impressed with the debate, particularly with the rather shorter contributions we had today which gave some interesting and revealing views from former Ministers of different previous Governments. I shall come to those later, but first I should deal with what seems to be the main point of criticism in so far as the Bill is concerned. While the setting up of this Department was welcomed by almost every Deputy who spoke, it was said that it should have control in regard to the allocation of expenditure if it were to have teeth. In most cases the definition of whether it would have teeth or power lay in the question of whether it would have control over expenditure.

I am fascinated by this argument which is merely a reflection, particularly so far as the Fine Gael Deputies are concerned, of a view put forward fairly trenchantly by the Leader of Fine Gael when he announced the names of the Fine Gael front bench as reported in The Irish Press on Thursday, 15th September, 1977. I quote:

He did not believe that economic planning and finance could be separated successfully, and already he had heard that this division in Government Departments was causing "great tension and difficulties". After studying the British arrangements some years ago he had come to the conclusion that the planning section which did not control finance did not work.

That theme in one way or another was put forward by quite a number of Deputies. If one accepts that view there is no logical way in which one can support this Bill. I wonder why the Fine Gael spokesman, Deputy P. Barry, announced earlier on that they were not opposing the Bill. Indeed a number of his colleagues were even stronger in their welcome of the Bill. If one believes that we cannot successfully separate the two functions of planning and control of expenditure then this Bill is totally wrong and is going to do great damage to this country. Let us examine that.

If you are saying, as many Deputies did, that control of expenditure should be given to the Minister for Economic Planning and Development if he is to have any power, what you are saying is either that we should abolish the Department of Finance and transfer all of their functions to the Department of Economic Planning and Development, or that we should not have a Department of Economic Planning and Development and all of these powers should be vested in the Department of Finance. Either way you are saying that they should be in one Department under one Minister.

It has been found from experience and under a number of Governments that it is not possible effectively to produce the kind of economic planning that is needed and at the same time to operate all the other functions that are required of the Minister for Finance, who is by law necessarily the same person as the Minister for the Public Service. On a technical point, if the argument were that we should abolish the Department of Finance and transfer all their functions to the Department of Economic Planning and Development a lot of people might wonder why we go to all that trouble. If that were to be the argument there would be some constitutional difficulties because the Constitution states at Article 28.7.1º:

The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the member of the Government who is in charge of the Department of Finance must be members of Dáil Éireann.

It would appear, therefore, that transfer of the functions of the Minister for Finance as they were at the adoption of the Constitution to another Minister would probably require a constitutional amendment. However, that is merely a technical point. That is not what is proposed to be done. What is proposed to be done is to transfer to the Minister for Economic Planning and Development functions of the Minister for Finance which were not conferred on him by law but were assumed by him over the years and which no Minister for Finance, I think, has ever effectively exercised and which, given the complexity of the functions of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for the Public Service and the sheer work-load involved, could not be exercised effectively by any one man.

It seems therefore that the basic criticism made of this proposal in the debate falls and lacks logic unless one says "We are opposing this Bill". There would be logic in that. There is, I suggest, no logic in looking at the Bill and then saying that we should transfer control of the allocation of expenditure to the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, which takes us back to square one again and to the present set-up of the Department of Finance.

Not alone would I freely acknowledge but I would urge very strongly that the success of this arrangement depends on two basic requirements, both of which I believe are being met in the arrangements we are making. The first is that the two Departments, the Department of Economic Planning and Development and the Department of Finance, should be so structured that they can mesh together at the right points. Arrangements are being made precisely to ensure that.

Perhaps I should explain in a little more detail what I mean. Firstly, the preparation and bringing forward of the budget is of course a function of the Department of Finance, but arrangements are being made whereby the Department of Economic Planning and Development can be kept informed and can make their own contribution in that regard. Similarly arrangements are being made whereby the Department of Finance will, to use a jargon phrase, plug-in the Department of Economic Planning and Development in relation to the latter Department's preparation of longer-term plans so that the Department of Finance can be kept informed of the trend in that regard and can make their input to the preparation of such plans. Without that kind of structure this arrangement would not have much hope of success.

There is another and perhaps in some sense more important requirement and that is that the two political heads of the Departments concerned should be working in close co-operation and ensuring that the structure that is set up works. Despite various things that have been said in the course of this debate I am not only content but determined to ensure the success of the operation of the Department of Economic Planning and Development. I know that my colleague is equally determined to ensure this success and to ensure this success in co-operation with the Department of Finance. Of course the structure we are setting here is not related only to individuals; nevertheless in its first years it is relevant to consider the people who will be responsible for ensuring the success of the new Department in the way that I have been outlining.

In that context I can say that my colleague and I have worked very closely together over quite a number of years and sometimes in very difficult circumstances. We have never had the slightest difficulty in co-operating together. Sometimes we have perhaps a different approach, a different assessment of certain problems. It would be very strange if we did not, but this is not something that means we cannot resolve such differences of opinion and work together as rational people can do. We have demonstrated we can do it, and there is no reason why we should not be able to do it in relation to the operation of these two Departments.

There seems to be, however, a number of mythological tales which we have heard in the course of this debate and, indeed, read in comment outside this House. One of the myths we seem to have to live with is the idea that the Department of Finance is a super Department. I suppose the main reason for the origin of that tale is that for many years the Department of Finance was the only Department, that is, outside the Department of the Taoiseach, which is in a different category, which had a kind of supervisory role in regard to other Departments. Certainly it had to operate specifically to the other Departments. There were people in each Department who dealt with the Department of Finance and people in the Department of Finance who dealt specifically with certain other Departments. Then the Department of the Public Service was set up. It has the same role and structure and it has to operate on the same basis. However, as I mentioned earlier, that Department, by law, has to be under the control of the Minister who is also Minister for Finance.

The new Department of Economic Planning and Development will be the third Department which will be in that central role. It may be that, because of this and because of the old treasury tradition and how it was exercised, this idea grew up of a super Department. There is no such thing as a super Department. Perhaps I might say at this stage that listening to Deputy Clinton, and I listened with great interest, and even more so to Deputy Browne, I was reminded of some of Seán O'Casey's later plays where he was tilting very fiercely at a society which did not exist, one that had existed perhaps when he was in Ireland. His great efforts seemed to be directed at a society I did not recognise, because I grew up after he had shaken the dust of this country from his feet.

Dr. Browne

Would the Minister change places with the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, Deputy O'Donoghue, in the power struggle?

Mr. Colley

I am coming to the power struggle, this other myth we have. The fact is that Deputy Browne was describing a structure and an operation of government which certainly does not exist today. I suspect from what Deputy Clinton said that there is some resemblance between the picture painted by Deputy Browne and the situation that existed in the Government that went out in the last election. It may not be exactly the same, but from the description it seems there is a good deal of similarity. I do not want to be misunderstood on this. I think the picture painted by Deputy Browne, while it was exacerbated in multi-party or Coalition Governments, was probably reasonably accurate of Fianna Fáil Governments of those times, too. But it is a long time ago. Things have changed, and the system of government operated by this Government is one that answers the description we heard from Deputy Browne.

Deputy Browne asked specifically how this planning system would operate. I think the Minister for Economic Planning and Development outlined this in his speech, but very briefly let me say it is planned to have a planning unit in each Department which will work in close consultation with the Department of Economic Planning and Development and will be the contact point for the work of each Department both in relation to what it is doing at the moment, its costings and so on, and its projections for the future. The Department of Economic Planning and Development, working with each of these, will attempt to formulate a longer-term plan, as I indicated earlier, and will, in the process, be consulting specifically with the Department of Finance. It will be a two-way process. It will be consulting with each Department through its planning unit, but eventually it will produce a plan.

Deputy's Browne's question was, what happens then? The plan is then put to the Government, and the Government will either accept it or reject it or modify it. But this is the key to the whole thing. The decisions on matters of this kind are made by the Government, not by the Minister for Finance, not by the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, not by any one Minister but by the Government working as a team. That is the only way it can work.

Deputy Browne interjected a moment ago about the power play. I am fascinated by the various things I am hearing and reading about the power struggle that is going on. I would like to expatiate for a moment or two on this whole concept of political power. It may be that some of my predecessors as Minister for Finance exercised their powers in such a way as to try to dominate their colleagues.

Mr. Harte

I can think of one.

Mr. Colley

They certainly all did not. It may be even that some officials of the Department of Finance on occasions operated on a similar basis in relation to officials in other Departments. There may be some people who are interested in political power or any other power for its own sake. Such people need psychiatric treatment. In any properly run Government, major decisions are not made by individual Ministers and they are not made by the Taoiseach. They are made by the Government acting as a team.

If one can grasp that fact—it was outlined by my colleague in his speech —one realises that all this talk about power play, about one Minister controlling everything and keeping the other Minister out, does not make any sense. Neither Minister is vested with that kind of power under the system of Government operating today, literally today.

All sorts of contradictory allegations were made, one of them being that if the Fianna Fáil target for job creation is achieved the credit for that will go to the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, and if it is not he will be the one to be blamed for it—Deputy Noel Browne said he would be dismissed. I have every confidence those targets will be achieved.

Mr. P. Barry

Twenty thousand jobs next year.

Mr. Colley

The Deputy knows what we set out in the manifesto. It is in writing. Let us not digress. That is only a red herring. I believe we will achieve it but now, before we know positively whether it will be achieved, I want to put something on record: if we achieve that, the credit will be due to the Fianna Fáil Government acting as a team, and if we do not, the blame will not lie on the Minister for Economic Planning and Development or any other Minister, but on the Government as a whole. I am putting that on record now before anyone says it will be one way or the other. That is the basis on which this Government operate and intend to operate.

In the course of his interesting remarks, Deputy Clinton referred to the Department of the Public Service as a road-block. I found his comments interesting in the context of what they were revealing about what had been happening in the previous Government in this respect. In all fairness to that Department, I should like to make three points. The first is that that Department officially were set up under the previous Government, at least the basic nucleus was there during the previous Government. Number two, for a good deal of the time that Department have been operating they have been obliged to enforce an embargo on the creation of new posts in the public service, a decision of the previous Minister for Finance presumably backed by his colleagues.

That is no help to any Department of the Public Service trying to do their job. I am not talking about the merits of the embargo but operating in that context one could not expect the Department would be described by a Minister who was looking for extra staff as anything but a road-block. One of the main jobs of such a Department is to push ahead with reforms but the Department of the Public Service could not do that because the political will did not exist in the previous Government. There were differences of opinion as to whether it should be done or how it should be done.

Mr. P. Barry

That is not true and the Minister knows it. The Department of which I was head went ahead—

Mr. Colley

I was speaking of the Government. There was either a disagreement within the Government on the idea or at least on how it should be done. The Deputy is speaking about the Department of which he was in charge, but it is a matter of public record, in the recently published Public Service Advisory Committee Report, that the former Minister for Industry and Commerce did not agree with the concept as put forward and prevented the operation of what had been intended to be a trial operation of the aireacht concept in his Department. That is on record.

Mr. P. Barry

He did not disagree with the concept of reform in the public service.

Mr. Colley

He disagreed with the concept or with the way it should be done.

Mr. P. Barry

There was no lack of agreement on the need for public reform.

Mr. Colley

Without Government decision to go ahead with this nothing can happen. The present Government have taken the necessary decision and the work is going on.

Deputy J. O'Leary spoke about the functions of the new Department and said no real powers were being conferred by the Bill. I set out in the last page and a half of the speech with which I introduced the Bill that the functions being conferred are all that are required to enable the new Department to do what they are being set up to do, basically to produce for the Government integrated national plans for the economy and to review the implementation of those plans. The functions set out in section 2 are ample for the effective working of the Department by reference to the Minister and Secretaries Acts for other Departments. When functions are specified in those Acts they are always specified in broad terms. There are Departments who do not have anything like as extensive or as precise a definition of functions as are set out in this Bill for the Department of Economic Planning and Development.

A point was made by a Deputy about a reply given to a parliamentary question and he said that the functions of this Department had not yet been settled. He seemed to think that indicated some contradiction of what is in the Bill. Functions for which legislation is required are set out in this Bill but this does not preclude the assumption of further functions by the Department, as has happened in the case of quite a number of Departments—they assumed certain functions though they were not set out in the Acts setting them up.

When introducing the Bill I said that although the final details have not been settled, our general design is clear. What I said in reply to the parliamentary question referred to is not a contradiction of what is set out in the Bill.

Deputy Keating spoke about the lack of reference to social planning in the title of the Minister and the Department. It may be a point but the fact is the title is already fairly long —Minister for Economic Planning and Development. What is really important are the functions in relation to the social planning vested in the Minister. Of course, they are important and I refer the Deputy in that regard to section 2 (2) (a) and (2) (e). He will see there that they are clearly vested in the Minister. In that connection I support strongely a point made by Deputy de Valera that it is quite ridiculous to try to talk about social planning divorced from economic planning. Indeed, Deputy Keating went very close to that proposition. The truth is you will make little or no progress on the social front if you do not make progress on the economic front. The two are necessarily closely interwoven.

There has been a suggestion from some Deputies as to the role of the Department of Finance being a negative one. Now, whatever may have been the position 20 or 30 years ago, the record shows that a great deal of the initiative for economic advance since then has come from the Department of Finance. While it is true that the Department of Finance has to exercise a certain amount of control— it is, if you like, an inheritance from the old Treasury control—that control is not exercised at all in the way it was exercised many years ago.

I have always taken the view that it is quite wrong, subject to certain necessary safeguards, when decisions have been taken on expenditure, on the lines of the expenditure and the amount of it, that the Department of Finance should interfere with other Departments in that expenditure, subject, as I say, to the necessary safeguards to ensure that what is agreed is what is carried out and that new items of expenditure, particularly those leading to enormously costly expenditure in subsequent years, is not embarked on unknown to the Department of Finance. Subject to that kind of constraint I do not think it is a proper function of the Department of Finance to interfere in other Departments.

When I was Minister for Finance before I achieved some progress in eliminating that kind of control and I intend to achieve even more progress. It is, in my opinion inefficient and time wasting. It is a situation, as Deputy Browne suggested, in which you have people with no particular expertise in a certain area endeavouring to control or assess policies in areas in which they have no particular expertise. I do not think that is at all the function or role of the Department of Finance. I do not know if Deputy Browne is surprised to hear me say this but, if he is, he will realise now there is some truth in what I am saying; the Department of Finance today is not quite the same as the one he was talking about.

Deputy P. Barry was to some extent, I think, fighting certain aspects of the last election in his contribution. It is, I suppose, an understandable temptation, but it is one I want to resist. However, there were a few things he said to which I simply cannot resist replying. He will understand that. I do not wish to give any bad example but I cannot let all that he said go unremarked. He said Fianna Fáil had planned for widespread emigration. The fact is we stopped emigration. When did it start up again? We got rid of the haemorrhage of emigration after centuries but it started up again under the Government of which the Deputy was a member.

Mr. Harte

Is that a fact?

Mr. G. Collins

Yes, of course.

Mr. Harte

It is an opinion.

Mr. Colley

On what grounds?

Mr. Harte

Because I do not accept the Minister's point.

Mr. Colley

It has no actual connection. It is the ESRI. I know the Deputy and particularly the former Ministers must be in an embarrassing position on this Bill because we all recall the fact that my predecessor as Minister for Finance refused point blank for quite some time to engage in planning. He said it could not be done. Eventually, after considerable pressure from the Opposition and from other quarters, he agreed a plan would be produced and with great gusto his colleagues told the House there was a plan on the way. We were given dates. I am sure we all remember the mid-summer promise. The fact is no plan was produced by those people who are now talking on this Bill about the necessity for planning. When they had the opportunity to plan they did not produce one.

That is of some significance because, although we certainly would not claim and never did claim that our manifesto represents a complete economic and social plan, nevertheless the fact is we produced it in Opposition. Indeed, we produced the bones of it last September in Opposition. Good as it was, I believe we should be able to improve on it very considerably now with the resources of Government available to us.

There have been references to the question of obtaining a consensus to any plan that is produced to enable it to work. Deputy O'Leary made it clear in his references to me that in his view —a not incorrect view, I may add— a consensus is vitally important. I have consistently maintained that a consensus must be sought and, if one does not get a consensus, a Government has no right to abdicate. That was one of my major criticisms of the former Government—that they did abdicate. In most cases I believe that if a Government produces reasonable proposals it will get a consensus from the interested parties. We are in the unusual and somewhat happy position that we have not just got a consensus for the proposals in our manifesto from this sector, that sector or the other sector, but we have a consensus from the people and we have that consensus in an unprecedented way. I do not think anybody need worry unduly about the obtaining of a consensus in regard to the implementation of our manifesto proposals.

One Deputy—possibly more than one—made reference to an individual civil servant. The references were laudatory. The man was identified in the public eye with the effort to get reform in the public service. The point was made that he was taken out of that job. I have as great a regard for that man's ability and commitments as anybody but, as I said earlier, virtually no progress was made on public service reform. That is not criticism of that particular civil servant or of any of his colleagues. The basic cause was the one I mentioned earlier, the lack of political will and decision to achieve it.

Deputy Barry and others referred to Fianna Fáil buying votes in the last election. I can understand the effort by Fine Gael in particular and the Labour Party, to some extent, to try to convince themselves in the first instance and the public in the second instance that the reason for their defeat was dirty tricks by Fianna Fáil going out buying votes in this way or that. But before this becomes part of the alleged history of this time let me point out that I and a number of my colleagues repeatedly during the election campaign, in speeches and in radio and television interviews and even in party political broadcasts, stressed that the Fianna Fáil manifesto was not just a list of goodies, that it was an integrated plan containing things that were not at all easy for people to accept, as well as those which were attractive. One of the obvious difficult areas is in relation to moderation in wage demands. Certainly, I—and I think some of my colleagues—was very closely questioned on radio and television during the election campaign on that aspect of our manifesto. We made it clear in addition that there were three major problems that we had to tackle, unemployment, inflation and the state of the public finances. We said that even Fianna Fáil could not tackle all three together but that all three had to be tackled, that our priorities had to be unemployment and inflation but that the manifesto proposals also involved tackling the state of our public finances. The beginning in that regard would be made a year after the beginning of our attack on unemployment and inflation. We intend to adhere to that.

Mr. B. Desmond

You are rowing back first.

Mr. Colley

From what? Which commitment?

Mr. B. Desmond

In fact the Minister is beginning to sound like Margaret Thatcher.

Mr. Colley

Which commitment?

Mr. B. Desmond

Go on. Simplistic politics.

Mr. Colley

As new Deputies will have noticed already. Deputy Desmond is a great man for throwing out statements of that kind but when given, the opportunity to justify it, failing invariably to do so. I shall give him one more chance: will he specify from what commitment am I rowing back?

Mr. B. Desmond

The Minister is making the speech.

Mr. Colley

The Deputy has had his chance.

Mr. B. Desmond

I am listening to the Minister. Let him go on.

Mr. Colley

That answer is obvious to everybody here.

Mr. B. Desmond

We will get back to the point——

Mr. Colley

The answer is perfectly obvious.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order, please; the Minister is concluding.

Mr. Colley

I know the Deputy did not like our manifesto before the election and likes it even less now but, unfortunately, for him the people wanted it and they are going to get it.

Mr. B. Desmond

They certainly are.

Mr. Colley

They will get precisely what they were promised.

Mr. Harte

Is that a threat or a promise?

Mr. Colley

The people voted for it and they will get what they voted for and Deputies opposite can interpret that as they like. Deputy Barry claims that the Coalition handed over a booming economy to the Government and quoted the latest ESRI quarterly economic commentary in support of his argument. It is true that growth rate this year is encouraging although I have some doubts as to whether it will be quite as high as ESRI have projected. When this Government took over the economy was pulling out of a recession. Deputy Barry seems to regard this pick-up as a boom, rather like saying a man has become richer simply because he found £100 which he had lost. The fact is that if no action were taken by us, even with the growth Deputy Barry talked about, our employment situation would become considerably worse and it is necessary for us to take very substantial action substantially to increase growth, almost double it in order to make any real impact on unemployment.

Mr. P. Barry

To double the rate of growth?

Mr. Colley

Yes.

Mr. P. Barry

In what period?

Mr. Colley

Twelve months.

Mr. P. Barry

From June 1977?

Mr. Colley

No, in 1978, as against what is projected for this year.

Mr. P. Barry

Over 10 per cent of an increase?

Mr. Colley

No. As I said, I think the ESRI figure is probably a bit high. We anticipate that we will have to add to growth which would otherwise have come about at least 3 per cent.

Mr. Harte

This is another fact?

Mr. B. Desmond

Yes, about 9 per cent; 15,000 jobs—no problem.

Mr. Colley

It is all set out in the manifesto.

Mr. B. Desmond

It is certainly there, a brilliant job.

Mr. Colley

The Deputy does not appear to have read it.

Mr. P. Barry

I was interested in hearing the Minister say they were going to double the rate of growth.

Mr. Colley

I said "almost".

Mr. P. Barry

And no tax increase?

Mr. Colley

It depends on the outcome for this year and, as I have indicated, the additional growth that will be necessary will be at least 3 per cent.

In relation to the booming economy of which Deputy Barry spoke, I should say that our unemployment rate is at 9½ per cent which is the highest in the EEC: our inflation rate is still very well into double figures and for the benefit of Deputy Harte, I should say that the ESRI drew attention in their June bulletin to the possibility that net emigration has resumed.

Mr. Harte

A possibility, that is not the picture I have in Donegal; people are coming back to the country to build homes.

An Ceann Comhairle

A debate has taken place. The Minister is now concluding.

Mr. Colley

Deputy Harte might look at the figures available for the movement of passengers and see if he still contends that there is no possibility that net emigration has resumed. We have very serious unemployment, very substantial inflation. We have a resumption of emigration and if these are the features of a booming economy our economic textbooks will have to be rewritten to conform with the Fine Gael definition of a boom.

Mr. P. Barry

I think the Minister should read what I said.

Mr. Colley

I heard it. I do not think I am misrepresenting the Deputy —and I do not think I am misrepresenting Deputy Barry—by saying he also was claiming for the former Government of which he was a member credit for the recent strong growth in industrial exports. It is true, as I think he was pretending, that recent national wage agreements have led to slower growth in unit wage costs here than in Britain which is still our principal single export market.

Perhaps it would be fairer in allotting credit for the achievement of increased industrial exports if Deputy Barry were to grant honours shared to the trade unions and the employers rather than the Coalition Government. I do not say that just as a smart debating point, but because the Coalition Government's lack of any coherent anti-inflation policy did very much to complicate the wage settlements eventually reached.

Mr. P. Barry

I do not like to interrupt the Minister but, in fact, the reverse is what happened. As I pointed out when I was speaking, unit wage costs here were ahead of Britain when we took office, and that interfered not only with our exports to Britain but also with our competitiveness in international markets where we were competing with Britain. When we left office our unit wage costs were below those of Britain which facilitated our exports to Britain and also made us competitive with English goods on world markets.

Mr. Colley

I am sure the Deputy will be aware of the factors which went into that situation—I am referring to the unit wage cost situation—factors which were to some extent a product of the downturn in the economy and in what was happening as it began to come up. It is true to say that, in regard to the negotiation of wage agreements—and this is not something new for me to say; as the Deputy knows I said it repeatedly from the benches on which he is now sitting—the previous Government had no coherent anti-inflation policy and they did a great deal to complicate wage negotiations.

However, comparative unit wage cost trends do not fully explain what has happened. There is no doubt at all that our exports have been helped by the decline in the value of sterling which is important, of course, given the very great diversification which occurred in relatively recent years in our export market. I presume the Deputy would not claim credit for, or influence over, the decline in the sterling exchange rate. Most people recognise it as being true that much of the recent growth in industrial exports is due to new firms coming on stream, firms which were attracted here by the industrial promotion agency. Indeed, the ESRI tend to agree with that view which is supported, to some extent, objectively by the fact that until very recent months the increase in industrial exports was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in employment.

Deputy Barry claimed he and his colleagues in the Coalition Government brought down the rate of inflation. He gave us a number of statistics. The record in this regard should speak for itself. The previous Government came to power in March, 1973. The rate of inflation in 1973 was 11.4 per cent. Progressively under that Government it soared. In 1974 the figure was 17 per cent. In 1975 it reached almost 21 per cent. The Irish record for inflation was reached in the May, 1975, quarter at almost 25 per cent.

Mr. Harte

The Minister must admit it was worldwide.

Mr. Colley

It is true that the rate fell subsequently but this is the point— and this was in the boom situation Deputy Barry was talking about. When the Coalition left office it was still 14 per cent. I do not think Deputy Barry can claim the Coalition brought down inflation.

Mr. P. Barry

I am no economist and the Minister for Planning and Economic Development may correct me if I am wrong. It is one of the most widely accepted economic theories that when a small open economy is attached to a large economy it imports the rate of inflation of the larger dominant economy.

Professor O'Donoghue

I have consistently opposed the inaccurate version of that theory which was expounded as an alibi by Coalition speakers over the past three years.

Mr. P. Barry

It was long before the time of the Coalition or of Fianna Fáil perhaps. It goes back to Keynes, as far as I remember.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. P. Barry

It is the relationship between the two which is important. When we took office our inflation rate was higher than the British rate and when we left it was lower.

Professor O'Donoghue

If the Deputy's statement was correct, we should have reached full employment first.

Mr. Colley

That is the whole point. For that to operate we should have had full employment and we did not. I do not know what Deputy Desmond said but if I knew I am sure I would be asking him did it justify something or other and he would say he was listening to me. As I said, there was no coherent anti-inflation policy. This is an old tune and I hope not to play it again in this House.

Mr. B. Desmond

It is a good old cliché. It sounds well.

Mr. Colley

I do not think Deputy Desmond should be all that pleased because he has not heard it yet. He went into these lobbies consistently to vote for what I am about to talk about. One of the things he voted for was the adding of 14p to the price of a gallon of petrol in December, 1974, which was followed with the January, 1975, budget——

Mr. P. Barry

Which the Minister is now taking off?

Mr. Colley

——which also drove up the consumer price index. Then, in June, 1975—I am sure Deputy Desmond remembers this; he was delighted that day—the Minister for Finance came in here with another budget in which he reduced prices again back to where they were before he increased them in the previous January.

Mr. Harte

That was the same day the present Minister voted against social welfare increases.

Mr. Colley

They were way above what they should have been at if Deputy Desmond, Deputy Barry and Deputy Harte had done what we were telling them to do.

Mr. Harte

That was the same day the Minister voted against social welfare increases. He voted against increases for old age pensioners and in mental handicap allowances.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Harte had his opportunity to speak. He should allow the Minister to conclude.

Mr. Harte

He loves it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is no reason why Deputy Harte should indulge in interruptions.

Mr. Colley

I am talking in the context of the lack of any coherent policy by the Coalition on the question of inflation and the damage this did to wage negotiations. It will be remembered that in the January, 1976, budget there was another about turn involving, among other things, about a 70 per cent increase in motor tax. That budget added about 4 per cent to the consumer price index. It is true that a little of this was knocked off in the January, 1977, budget but the damage had been done at that time.

I do not pursue Deputy Barry into the election campaign once more. I thought it necessary to get a few little things on the record in view of what Deputy Barry said.

Mr. P. Barry

We both have it on the record now.

Mr. Colley

This debate should be about whether economic planning is desirable or necessary and, if so, whether the approach outlined in this Bill is the right one in order to achieve it. I have tried to demonstrate that it seems to us to be the best way to do it. I do not say we have positively the final definitive wisdom on this. I do say that, with the situation we are faced with, given the kind of resources we have, and given the kind of structure of Government we have, this is the best way to tackle it.

The basic problem adverted to from the Opposition benches about the lack of control over finances is really another way of saying : "You should not have this Department at all. It should all be done by the Department of Finance." We have had that situation and there is general agreement that there is room for improvement. This Bill is an effort to achieve that improvement by providing a Department and a Minister most of whose efforts will be concentrated on the question of economic and social planning and development.

The question was raised about executive functions vested in this new Department. Some Deputies felt no executive function should be vested in it while others felt that if it did not have substantial executive functions it would not count as a Department. The truth lies between those two extremes. If it has no executive functions what-ever, there is a danger it will lose touch with reality. I am speaking of all the people involved in it. We are all in that danger if we do not, as Ministers, have executive functions. On the other hand, if it has a load of executive functions, then it will be so engaged and engrossed in them that it will be unable to do the job which it is primarily being set up to do, to stand back from the loading of executive functions and do some long term thinking in regard to the development of our economy and our whole social structure.

The new Department has been given a relatively small amount of executive functions but not such as to overload it. We tried to approach this problem on the basis of common sense, on the basis of our experience in Government, on the basis of the kind of structures we have. I am hopeful, and confident, that it will work. Certainly, as one Deputy remarked today, it is better to do this than nothing. We cannot go on as we have been with a virtually unplanned economy. This is the right way to do it but it is not necessarily the last word. If we find that this does not work as effectively as we would like and we think we can improve it, the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, and myself, would be the first to want to change the system. However, that has not been demonstrated yet. The setting up of this Department could well mark a vitally important development in the evolution of our structures of Government and, perhaps, a very important development in the achievement of economic advancement which is more important. Certainly, it is designed to achieve that situation. On all the evidence available, it is the best method available to us for tackling the problem and on that basis I enthusiastically commend this Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 2nd November, 1977.