Before Question Time I was dealing with the guillotine motion and the dangerous precedent which was being set. I outlined the experience I gained when dealing with semi-State bodies where members and chairmen with different political affiliations were appointed by the Coalition Government but whose expertise, integrity and enthusiasm put them in a category apart. If one were to follow the lead which has been given in this whole disgusting process then each time there was a change of Government the tomahawks would be out, scalps would be sought and there would be general disruption in this area where civic-minded people have been giving good service over the years since Seán Leamass began the whole system of semi-State bodies.
If this is the kind of treatment that will be meted out to people we will find it very hard to get civic-minded people to serve on these boards. There are people who want to make a contribution even when they lose money in their own business or profession. It will add to the growing lake of cynicism about public affairs and public life.
Let us contrast what is happening now with what happened last February. During the last general election campaign members of the Youth Employment Agency were appointed. Deputy Kavanagh, as Minister for Labour, was the person responsible at the time. We took over on 9 March. On 8 March the chief executive of the Youth Employment Agency was appointed. This appointment was attacked by a very prominent Fine Gaeler. We used to receive letters from him. He is now an adviser in that Department. What did Deputy Gene Fitzgerald do in March of last year to his eternal credit? He defended the appointment against attack. In other words, he followed the tradition of standing by appointments made and allowing the people appointed an opportunity to give service to the country. This was despite the fact that they were blatantly political appointments. That did not necessarily hinder them from giving good service.
The Government, in trying to push the Bill through the House by way of guillotine motion, are doing a great disservice to the tradition which has built up and was honourably followed, as I just mentioned, by Deputy Fitzgerald as Minister for Labour. He was not defending his own appointees but rather those of the then Opposition.
I was perturbed by the attack made in the House during the course of the debate on members of local authorities. Such an attack can only come from a person who does not know the history of local government in this country and how much it meant in the last century to the people to have effective local government. The grand jury system was the one which obtained up to the last decade of the last century and it was responsible to no one. It was regarded as a great step forward to have the 1898 Act on the Statute Book. People on both sides of the House should reject the kind of ignorant and narrowminded criticism made of members of local authorities. The people who took over in the counties which the Ceann Comhairle and I have the honour to represent discovered the inefficiency and crookedness of the grand jury within a year despite the fact that in every prestigious English paper at that time we were told the Irish could not govern themselves even at local level.
The point has already been made in the debate about who tries a man. Who come to a decision as to whether one of our fellow citizens is guilty or innocent of a charge but a jury of 12 people picked at random? Despite problems on occasion, that system has stood the test of time. In the same way the non-technical person, the non-expert, the person with intelligence who is aware of what is going on in public life and in the community has a valuable input to make on any board. We could have a line of architects from Vitruvius down to the present time on a planning board and they would drive the whole country mad. There are sensible architects and there are mad architects. A person with commonsense is an important ingredient on any committee or board. Criticism has been made of the board. The only criticism I could make of them is that they never did what I asked them to do when I made representations to them, whatever their political affiliation. I would say that is the experience of Members on both sides of the House.
Did they get the tools for the job? We are told on the best of evidence that they did not. The whole apparatus which was supposed to serve them was seconded on a seven-year basis and there was no proper back-up of civil servants available to them to speed up planning appeals. The delay which has taken place in dealing with appeals is something of a scandal. There is a remedy but it is not this kind of pseudo-reforming Bill.
I remember being shocked years ago, before I had any intention of standing for Dáil Éireann, when talking to a senior civil servant, an honorable and efficient man. During the course of a social conversation he told me much the same as the prestigious English newspapers were saying during the last decade of the nineteenth century, that he did not believe we were capable of local government and was doubtful whether local authorities such as county councils, urban councils, town commissioners or corporations should exist. It is one of the hazards of administration at senior level that the officers get it into their heads that they have the sum total of expertise, knowledge and ability. Part of the function of this House is to disillusion them on that.
I see some evidence in this Bill of that kind of principle. For that reason we on this side are fully justified in fighting it every inch of the way. I would appeal even at this stage to the Minister, who as a barrister must have had training in deduction and logic, to look at his Bill again, to take steps to improve the points I mentioned about the service of the Planning Board and the speeding up of decisions and to leave the general structure he found there. In doing this he will be impacting not merely on the planning Bill but on a whole range of legislation which has been developed to deal with semi-State bodies.
