The principle underlying the Bill was that it should be open to succeeding Presidents to decide just how much of the field of administration they were prepared to take collective responsibility for, how much of the general field of administration would be thrown into the circle of collective responsibility. It was asked that there be given to each President discretionary elasticity. The amendment, in fact, says that there shall not, and that is described as compromise. The amendment limits the expansion of the Executive Council to two additional members, from the present seven to a proposed nine, and I think that is unreasonable. At the moment, outside the Executive Council in this country, which is predominantly agricultural, you have the Department of Agriculture. You have local government, a matter which touches people very closely in their everyday lives, and it perhaps comes home more pointedly to a great many people than the central Government. It is very questionable whether Departments of that kind should be simply matters of single responsibility—the single responsibility of any Minister—and Senators know that in fact people have not adjusted their minds to acquitting the Government generally, the Executive Council, of responsibility for these matters.
If they feel that things are wrong in Local Government matters they blame the Government. If they have criticism or comments to make with regard to agriculture, again, it is the Government. Again I suggest, Deputies, Senators and still less the general public, have not adjusted their minds to this idea of the single responsibility of an individual Minister in respect to an important sphere of administration and personally I do not believe that they ever will. These matters will always be regarded as of concern and responsibility for the Government generally. I have stated frankly that we do not think as much of the Extern Minister idea as some of us did in 1922, when it was embodied in the Constitution. I attempted to explain that it is a matter of theory, this matter of single responsibility, rather than of fact, for the reason that every important proposal of any of those Ministers has its financial consequences. It has financial reactions and the Minister for Finance is necessarily and naturally a member of the Executive Council. These matters, because of their financial reactions, become, in fact, matters of collective responsibility. Take the position of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Practically any administrative proposal of his has its financial side, must get the concurrence of the Minister for Finance and consequently becomes the collective responsibility of the Executive Council. Take the position of the Minister for Agriculture. His recent move in the matter of the dairy industry involved large expenditure. The Executive Council found itself compelled to sit in judgment on that necessarily because of its financial aspect. This collective responsibility idea is fictitious theoretically and could only work in practice because there has been such a good understanding between the Extern Ministers and the Executive Council as a body. There is very little in it, if anything. We do not secure in fact, as we hoped we might, that mitigation of the rigidity of the party system. You do not secure in the Dáil free non-party discussions on the proposals of these Ministers. It would be very difficult to realise that ideal because almost all their proposals involve considerations of finance and thereby and therefore involve the Executive Council and become matters of collective responsibility. That being so, is it unreasonable to ask that each President, on his election, be free to decide whether or not he would resort to this Extern Minister idea at all; whether he would not fix the responsibility for every act of administration and make them all matters of collective responsibility?
Senator Barrington did not seem to realise what was involved in the Bill He talked the facile talk of economy as if it were a question of the number of Ministers involved rather than of the nature and character of the Ministers and their responsibilities; whether we are going to perpetuate and stereotype this fiction of the single responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture for agriculture, or the Minister for Local Government for local government, and keep those matters removed from the joint responsibility of the Executive Council as a body. At the moment, at all events, the position is theoretically that these Ministers stand on their own legs and are singly responsible to the Dáil. If any of them were defeated on a departmental proposal it would have no reactions on the Executive Council. If the Executive Council as a body went out, the Extern Ministers would remain. That is splendid in theory, but does it work out that way in practice? It has had a five years' trial, and we know there must be collective responsibility; for Agriculture, for the Post Office, for matters in Local Government, for any matter that involved expenditure at all, radiate immediately and necessarily into the sphere of the Executive Council, and become matters of collective responsibility.
Senator Bennett's amendment seeks to say that at least three Departments must be left outside the field of collective responsibility. Is it wise to tie the hands of a President in the matter of the extent of the general field of administration that he would make the subject of collective responsibility? I do not think it is.
The question of the number of Ministers to be appointed is quite another matter. I can assure Senator Barrington that the Extern Minister idea had no aspect whatever of economy. It was a constitutional fact; it was an idea that you might correct the rigidity of the party system by making certain departments the subject of free non-party discussion and division in the Dáil by excluding them from the sphere of collective responsibility.