Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 11 Jul 1973

Vol. 75 No. 5

Private Business. - Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 1973: Second Stage.

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

Minister for Finance (Mr. R. Ryan)

This Bill provides for the establishment of a Department of the Public Service and of a Public Service Advisory Council to advise the Minister for the Public Service on the organisation of the public service and on matters relating to or affecting personnel in that service.

These measures are the first to come before the Oireachtas as a consequence of the Report of the Public Services Organisation Review Group. This group was set up in 1966, under the chairmanship of Mr. Liam St. John Devlin, with the following terms of reference

Having regard to the growing responsibilities of Government, to examine and report on the organisation of the Departments of State at the higher levels, including the appropriate distribution of functions as between both Departments themselves and Departments and other bodies.

The group reported in 1969. Before I pass on to deal with the content of the Report, I should like to pay a tribute to Mr. Devlin and his colleagues on the review group who devoted so much of their time and talents to the production of this most significant public document. Its recommendations range over the whole spectrum of our administrative institutions but those which are of primary interest in relation to this Bill are concerned with the machinery for the central management of the public service.

Historically, this central management has been vested in the Minister for Finance. The Ministers and Secretaries Act, 1924, assigned to the Department of Finance the traditional "establishment" functions, when it assigned "the business and functions formerly administered and discharged by the British Treasury in Ireland". The Civil Service Regulation Act, 1956, continued the responsibility of the Minister for Finance for the regulation and control of the Civil Service and various enactments since the foundation of the State assign powers in relation to organisation and personnel matters in the wider public service to the Minister for Finance. While present arrangements may have historical legitimacy doubts exist concerning their present and future efficiency.

The review group, while recognising the connection between the budgetary function and the functions of organisation and personnel, saw serious objections to the present structure for discharging these functions at administrative level. They said:

Many of the weaknesses in the present system derive from the subordination of organisation and personnel to the budgetary function in the Department of Finance in the organisation beneath the Minister. The Minister's principal function is budgetary and the Secretary's background should therefore be in the economic and financial spheres. Granted such background and the demands on his time, it is unlikely that he will have extensive experience of organisation and personnel and he will, therefore, have to delegate these functions to a deputy. A deputy, however, can never operate with that freedom which is essential and the organisation and personnel functions would, in such circumstances, remain subordinate. Therefore, in our view, these functions should have equal status with and be independent of the finance and economic structures. To achieve this they should report through a separate Secretary to the Minister.

The first purpose of this legislation is, as recommended by the review group, to establish a separate Department of the Public Service under a Minister who will be Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service. This Department will be concerned with the functions of organisation and personnel for the public service. On the establishment of the Department of the Public Service on the appointed day, which, I intend, will be as soon as practicable after the enactment of this legislation, the Government will make an order under section 6 (1) of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 1939, transferring the organisation and personnel functions for the public service, at present discharged by the Department of Finance, to the new Department. The first effect of the legislation, therefore, will be to have the central organisation and personnel functions for the public service assigned to a separate Department instead of being discharged—as they are at present—as part of the responsibility of the Department of Finance. I have, in fact, made the separation in practice within the existing Department of Finance pending this legislation.

The second purpose of the Bill is to set up a Public Service Advisory Council as recommended by the review group. Again, I think the report of the review group makes the case for this council and I quote the relevant recommendations:

The reorganisation of the public service and its subsequent maintenance at the highest possible level of efficiency is a matter of such great public interest that it must be subject to a dynamic for adaptation from outside and it must be seen to be continuously adapting itself. We, therefore, recommend the establishment of a Public Service Advisory Council of eight persons —four from the private sector, three from the public sector and the Secretary of the Public Service Department—to survey the progress of the reorganisation of the public service. Appointments should be for a term of two years but, initially, to preserve continuity one person from each sector should be appointed for four years, one from each sector for three years and one from the public and two from the private sector for two years. The Advisory Council should review the work of the Department and its progress in the reorganisation of the public service in a report presented to the Minister for Finance and the Public Service each year. This report after consideration by the Government should be laid before the Oireachtas. While procedure will be a matter for the Council itself, we envisage that it will meet frequently. It should be able to suggest new methods and techniques but should not have executive powers. Its members should be nominated by the Government and, to secure an initiative for change from outside the public service, the Chairman should also be nominated by the Government from the private sector representatives.

Broadly, I agree with this recommendation and the Bill makes provision accordingly. When it came to a question of legislation, it appeared better to simplify the provision about terms of office and I am providing for terms not exceeding four years. To meet the point of getting new people and new ideas on the council, I am providing that a member of the council ceasing to hold office shall not be eligible for reappointment for four years. There is a problem about a definition of the public service for the purposes of membership of the council and of distinguishing those bodies on whose organisation and personnel matters the council may advise the Minister. There is no satisfactory neat definition of the public service and the definition in section 1 of the Bill is designed to cover the problem as far as the membership and scope of the council is concerned.

This is all that is provided for in the Bill but there are two other matters which I should mention. First, the new Department will have three main divisions—one for organisation, one for personnel and one for remuneration and staff relations. It will discharge all of these functions, at present discharged by the Department of Finance, with, I intend to ensure, increased professional competence and effectiveness while acting more in a staff capacity to the whole administrative system. As time goes on, I hope to extend its operations to cover all areas of the public service. I want to emphasise that any extension of its functions to bodies or areas which do not at present come within the scope of the functions of the Department of Finance would require further legislation.

The review group did recommend that two other functional units should be incorporated in the new Department—a procurement division and a commissioner for administrative justice. Although I am interested in implementing these proposals in some form, I do not propose to act on these recommendations at this stage. The future organisation to deal with public service accommodation and supplies will have to be considered in the light of the future organisation of the Office of Public Works and other purchasing bodies in the Civil Service.

In relation to the commissioner for administrative justice, I believe it will be very desirable, and indeed necessary, for us to deal with the problem of people aggrieved by administrative decisions. The report recommends that this should be secured through a commissioner for administrative justice who would oversee and coordinate the appellate machinery in the public service and report to a Parliamentary Committee. I would hope that the relevant recommendations about this matter in the review group report and the general question of appellate machinery will be considered at an early date by the new Department.

Secondly, there is a matter which is of great interest to the Oireachtas— the recommendations in the review group report that each Department should be divided into a central management and policy making area, the Aireacht, grouped around the Minister and a number of executive units to carry out settled policy. As already announced, we are examining the possibility of applying this concept on an experimental basis in four Departments—Health, Industry and Commerce, Transport and Power and Local Government. Teams from my Department and the Departments concerned are conducting the examination. Generally the idea is to allocate as much as possible of the executive business of Departments to executive offices and agencies, combining as much freedom in execution as possible with the essential responsibility and accountability to Ministers and to the Oireachtas. The general oversight and direction of these bodies would remain in the Aireacht, the part of the Department which would remain closely linked to the Minister.

The main problem emerging is the question of how to ensure acceptable standards of public accountability while granting the executive bodies reasonable freedom of action. I hope that, as a result of these examinations, we will be able to experiment with several models on a non-statutory basis and that we will eventually be in a position to come before the Oireachtas with proposals for worthwhile reform in our institutions.

As I say, and I want to stress this, there can be no change in the relationship of the public service to the Oireachtas without legislation. The new Department will be occupied with the exploration of the areas where change is needed and I would hope that it will, after a reasonable period of operation, enable me to seek the approval of the Oireachtas to such changes as are desirable. It is already evident that Members of both Houses are aware of the shortcomings of our present system particularly as regards the accountability of State-sponsored bodies. If the Oireachtas should decide to examine by Committee such matters as the relation of State-sponsored bodies to Ministers and to the Oireachtas, I would be prepared to make available to that Committee any possible help which the new Department could provide.

While the Bill of itself does not propose dramatic changes, it does provide a more effective instrument for the organisation and development of the public service. It does not alter the relation of the Oireachtas to the public service but it does provide for the creation of a new Department which will be available as an analytical base and resource for the development of proposals for the consideration of the Oireachtas in this regard.

We have joined the European Communities; we are living in a world where competition is keener than ever before. Our development and, perhaps, our survival depends on the extent to which we adapt our institutions to meet the new challenges. Certainly our public service must be brought to the highest standards and the proposed new Department is the instrument by which I hope to do this. This legislation is, I hope, the first step in a series of measures through which, over the next few years, we may transform our institutions to meet the requirements of the time.

Mr. Lenihan

This Bill is welcomed by our group in the Seanad. It is the first legislative outcome of the consideration of the Report of the Public Service Organisation Review Group under the chairmanship of Mr. Liam St. John Devlin. I was pleased to hear the Minister state that this is to be first in a number of legislative measures which will be necessary to implement the main recommendations in that report. This one briefly sets up the new Public Service Department and in addition the Minister proposes in the legislation to set up the Advisory Council which will be in a position to supervise the future legislative changes and the re-organisation that will follow on this legislation.

The establishment of a new Department of the Public Service is a basic first step towards the implementation of the other proposals in the report. It is important to ensure that organisation and personnel functions will be separated in a new Department from the traditional budgetary, financial and economic functions of the Department of Finance. The two, although related, will run separately.

If one is to get the whole structure of personnel within the service organised with proper relativities established with a proper basis of reorganisation established in accordance with modern management techniques as suggested in the Devlin Report, it is all important that this be co-ordinated within one Department of the Public Service. This Department can ensure that whatever recommendations are thought feasible to be adopted arising out of the Devlin Report can be adopted under the aegis of one single co-ordinating Department reorganising personnel and functions relating to personnel within the public service.

The Minister has referred to two matters which were recommended to be incorporated within this Department—a procurement division and a commissioner for administrative justice. In regard to the procurement aspect, this is tied up already with the functions of the Board of Works and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in regard to purchasing and procurement and it may be early days to have that division incorported in the present legislative proposal.

The recommendation to have a commissioner for administrative justice is more fundamental. If the recommendations in the report as a whole are pushed to their logical extension, it will be all important to have such a commissioner of administrative justice within the main Department of the Public Service and to have that division properly staffed with an adequate Secretariat to ensure that decisions taken are implemented in a just and fair manner, various Civil Service Departments and both as regards personnel within the in regard to the public outside.

This is given emphasis by the further major recommendation in the Devlin Report which is not part of this legislation, that an Aireacht be established. This in effect will mean a Cabinet surrounding the Minister in each Department. A Minister who heretofore has been directly accountable to the Dáil now is to be removed one stage from the full sense of that accountability. If a particular decision on policy is processed from the Aireacht or the Ministry down to the various executive organs of each Department, the Minister, and the public and political accountability of the Minister, is a stage further away from the public. It makes excellent administrative and management sense, but this real danger is inherent in the Devlin Report.

The Devlin Report is an excellent document in every respect but there is very little reference in it to the political, governmental and parliamentary functions that have grown up side by side with the administrative machine in our democratic community. The whole question of accountability to the public, the role of the political head of a Department, the role of his accountability to the democratically elected Parliament—all of this area, which is very much involved when one considers the implications of the implementation of the decisions in the Devlin Report—is hardly referred to in the report.

It is a completely new area and probably one for politicians to exercise their minds on rather than the particular group which were appointed to make these recommendations; but it is inevitably wrapped up in the whole situation. If you are having a Ministry or a Departmental Government called an Aireacht making decisions in principle in conjunction with the Minister and passing on these decisions for implementation to executive bodies within each Department, what happens if the particular executive departments, in the course of implementing policy which has been agreed, make mistakes in dealing with the public, personnel and in the execution of policy? Where does the accountability arise?

It is in all of this area that I would see very real dangers which we must face. This is why I would ask the Minister, first of all if he is going ahead with the appointment of a commissioner for administrative justice. That appointment would be all important when one considers the type of area into which we are entering. Secondly, I would suggest that a very real effort be made to settle a matter which was often discussed in this House over the years: the question of the accountability of the State-sponsored organisations.

These State-sponsored organisations, certainly the non-commercial ones such as Bord Fáilte, with which I was associated as Minister for Transport and Power, are almost the protoype for the executive bodies envisaged in the Devlin Report, that is, the executive bodies within each Department. That is why Transport and Power were chosen as one of the pilot Departments. Dr. Theckla Beere, who was Secretary of the Department of Transport and Power for a long number of years, was one of the leading members of the Devlin Committee and contributed her thinking on how that Department functioned to the eventual proposals which emerged.

The point is that one can establish these executive agencies and certainly they will be modelled on the present non-commercial State bodies. These executive agencies will be given a job of work to do by the overall Ministry or Aireacht in conjunction with the Minister. Then one gets into the area of (a) the public accountability of these executive agencies in each Department and (b) the actual executive functions of the Minister in the day-to-day running of his Department, when traditionally in Ireland we have always regarded Ministers as being politically appointed, as being executive Ministers in the sense of being able to pick up the phone, ask for an official to come in, discuss the problems with him and take a very real and active part in the day-to-day running and administration of a Department.

Irish people have always demanded this close association between themselves, the Minister, the Minister and the actual administration of his own Department and also through the Minister's accountability in the Dáil to Parliamentary Question. All of this procedure over the years has given rise to a vary close democratic association between the politically appointed chief of a Department, directly accessible in many cases to people from outside, who is in a position to make immediate contact and decision with officials within his Department and is at the same time subject to open public accountability in the Dáil by way of Parliamentary Question. This close, intimate association, which has been very effective in a small country over the years, is one which will be diminished to a considerable extent if the recommendations in the Devlin Report are adopted to the fullest extent.

I believe that in principle we should move along the road which has been indicated by Devlin but I am pointing out that there are very real dangers to our particular close system of parliamentary democracy and representation. The only way to avoid these dangers is to ensure that first of all a Commissioner for Administrative Justice be appointed and be attached to the Department of the Public Service. I do not know to what extent this will be envisaged as a complete overseeing ombudsman role within the public service, both in regard to members of the public service and to the public as a whole. This is a matter which I know will have to be worked out and I should like to hear the Minister's views on the matter.

In addition to that, there must be the accountability of the various State-sponsored bodies and what in some cases will come to be executive agencies in each Department. There must be accountability of these bodies through some form of Parliamentary Committee scrutiny—Parliamentary Committee scrutiny which would have a fully organised Secretariat and administration, which will enable Members of the Dáil and Seanad, as in the case of the Committee of Public Accounts, but to an even greater extent than that Committee function, to examine the workings of various executive agencies of each Department.

I feel that these precautions will be essential if we are not to get away from what our proper attitude should be towards public administration, that is, of having democratic parliamentary accountability. We have had the problem for a number of years in the form of State-sponsored companies. If we are to reorganise every Department of State into a series of executive agencies with the overall supervision of the management team or Aireacht and with a Minister that degree removed from actual day-to-day control and accountability, then it will become very important that there be a tangible involved accountability through a committee system in regard to these executive agencies within each Department.

That aspect, which has been largely ignored in the Devin Report, is one to which we as parliamentarians and politicians should be devoting ourselves to an increasing extent unless we are to see an excellent administrative structure established in which not alone would the Minister be removed from day-to-day control and accountability but in which we in Parliament would become just as irrelevant as the Minister. This particular area must be approached on a simultaneous basis with those of administrative reforms, of which this piece of legislation is the first example.

We must, side by side with these desirable administrative reforms, have also the parliamentary reforms which are so essential unless we are to hand over power completely to excellent people within the administration but in doing so be thereby reneging completely on any democratic principle of accountability.

That is fundamental to our system. I do not see that the facade of democratic responsibility will long survive unless we tackle that problem of very real involvement and democratic accountability by bringing in parliamentary and political reforms side by side with the very desirable administrative reforms envisaged in the Devlin Report.

I mention this point because I was very conscious of it, having been in a Department for a number of years which is largely a prototype of this development envisaged—the Department of Transport and Power. When I went into that Department I was very conscious of the fact that the policy was that questions should not be answered in the Dáil. I changed that policy and made myself responsible in the Dáil—and got into a lot of trouble from time to time over it, but it was very welcome trouble—for questions asked in the House in regard to the day-to-day affairs of each of these State-sponsored agencies which were under the Department of Transport and Power.

I mention that because it is one attitude I have had for some years. If we start removing Ministers from parliamentary and executive accountability and responsibility, it will be very hard to bring any reality into parliamentary responsibility and accountability. In our circumstances and in our small country, it is an area which should be examined very closely. If you are going to have an Aireacht operating, deciding matters of principle and delegating the execution of these matters to executive agencies, the Minister is going to get himself into a dangerously powerless situation. The Irish public have, heretofore, expected democratically-elected Ministers to take action in regard to matters affecting the Department or affecting the public, but the Ministers have traditionally followed the Irish attitude of being almost ombudsmen to some extent for the members of the public affected by their Departments. However, if we are going to go into this situation, it is true it is excellent from the point of view of administrative efficiency. It brings management techniques into the operation of Government Departments for the first time, rather than the system heretofore where you did not have sufficient management structure at the top of each Department, but where everything was funnelled on a pyramid-like basis through the secretary and on to the Minister. That led to frustrations and lack of exercise of responsibility and initiative at various levels. From the point of view of administrative efficiency, I have no doubt as to the merits of the road we are going, but I have very grave doubts that unless we simultaneously do a very big job in educating the public as to what we are about, and do a very big job in regard to parliamentary accountability, ultimate control and responsibility on the part of Ministers in the process of Parliament and responsibility on the various executive heads and members of the Aireacht being subject to supervision by Parliamentary Committees, unless all those aspects are examined at the various stages of progress we make in the administrative direction, we could be erecting a very dangerous Frankenstein-like structure, which would not meet the wishes of all parties in this House.

Without experimentation and change, no progress is made. Therefore, I welcome this Bill. It is the first step in what I hope will be a major reform of the Irish system of public administration. But that, in itself, is not enough. True democrats should be beware of the dangers involved. The Government, political parties and the administrators themselves should be concerned about the aspect of public accountability.

I have discussed this matter on a number of occasions with heads of State-sponsored bodies. Without exception, they welcomed the idea of being involved in a system of Parliamentary Committee supervision. They were never afraid of this in any way. On many occasions they found that policies implemented by them tended to be misunderstood in debates in the Dáil and in the Seanad. All of these are highly-intelligent men. The fact that this misunderstanding existed was frustrating to them. It was frustrating as far as the morale of their respective organisations was concerned, and as far as the view of the public on the work they were doing was concerned. From my personal association and discussions with them, I can say they would welcome this idea of explaining fully to Members of the Oireachtas what was involved in whatever policy decisions were made or in what direction they were moving. I can assure the Minister of my support for the Bill in principle. We may have views on it at the Committee Stage. In principle, the Bill is an excellent piece of legislation.

Miss Owens

Our position tonight, in discussing the first piece of legislation to implement the recommendations of the Devlin Report, illustrates clearly the situation in which we in the Seanad find ourselves in relation to motions. Those of us who were Members of the last Seanad are aware that there was a motion on the Order Paper from the time Devlin issued his report, and yet no time was found to discuss that motion. It is a pity the Minister was not in a position to have had the views of this House expressed fully on the Devlin Report before coming to us with this piece of legislation. I should like to join with other Members of this and the other House who expressed their appreciation of the work done by the members of that review group. Whether one agrees with all, some or, indeed, none of the recommendations, we must accept that it was a remarkable piece of work. I am amazed that it took them only three years to produce that document. It was a fantastically well-prepared and well-researched document; and we owe them a debt, whether we agree or disagree with their recommendations.

The effects of the Devlin Report are very far-reaching, probably more far-reaching than is appreciated as of now. When the report came out it received considerable publicity. Many organisations and groups expressed their views but because of the time factor or for other reasons reaction has died down a little bit. The Bill went through the other House rather quickly and has come to us very quickly. It is a pity that we were unable to debate our motion previously and that there is not a motion on the Order Paper of the Seanad which could have been taken in conjunction with this Bill. It is now too late to cry about that.

The effects of the Devlin Report would be to redraft the whole Public Service system which we have known and which we inherited from the British. The suggestion made in the other House by a member of the Opposition that we should have a Select Committee to examine it is particularly attractive to me. However, we need to ask the questions and find the answers. We may not find all the right answers, but if we ask questions we will get some answers. Will the new set-up suit us, now that we are in Europe? Everybody is concerned with the increase of bureaucracy. We are all concerned about the European bureaucracy. We should be very concerned, too, about the bureaucracy which exists in this country. Whether we are spreading this further or getting a really better system, and one which suits the Irish temperament, is the question which needs to be answered.

The Bill itself is a relatively small one. Most of us are aware that some of the provisions have been implemented already. The previous Government, due to pressure on the Legislature at the time, did not get the Bill taken in the House, but the Department of Public Service exists in essence. I am aware that some of the senior officials have already been appointed. I wish them well in their new jobs. They are in a tremendously powerful position and one which carries great responsibilities.

I am concerned about certain aspects of the Bill, more, perhaps, about what it does not say, and the extent to which it may go. I have some experience in this regard. The Minister mentions the difficulty in defining what is the public sector and what is the private sector. It is incapable of concise definition, as of now. It seems that more and more of the public sector is being taken from the private sector, and that is not anything that I would personally object to. But, there are still the grey areas in between. Some of the operations of this new Department to date are causing grave concern, because there are people employed in various areas and they are not too sure with whom they are negotiating.

It is quite clear that local authorities and health boards are in the public sector. I regret to say that, quite frankly, our experience to date in dealing with the Public Services Department has been that we have found it really a more disruptive and delaying factor. Therefore, I must urge the Minister and his Department to embark on further consultations with the staff groups involved. I understand there have been negotiations with some of the staff organisations. There positively have not been negotiations with many other important ones, groups which I do not think could be considered as providing small employment. They cover very large areas of employment and the work they carry out affects our everyday lives just as much as and perhaps more than the Civil Service. Therefore, I would ask the Minister to indicate and to instruct, if necessary, the Department to embark on consultation because the modern concept of personnel management—this is taken to be one of the prime objectives of our new Department of the Public Service—is to get a better personnel structure, better recruitment and better job satisfaction for the staff involved. I believe that they have the opportunity not alone to bring our public service up to date, but to embark upon a rather exciting future if they are prepared to listen to constructive criticism. I know it will be constructive because we are all involved in this. Therefore, I am urging very much more consultation than we have had to date.

On the question of the Advisory Council, it is difficult to know what the Minister means when he says that there will be a number of representatives from the public sector and a number from the private sector. Perhaps the Minister might be able to indicate which group the trade union movement falls into. In this type of council there should be at least some representation from staff organisations in regard to staff planning. It would be essential to the smooth functioning of the whole process. I should like to assure people that I think that goodwill is there. We are dealing here with sensitive areas such as promotion, which has been referred to already. We all agree in theory with the mobility of staff, but I have experience enough to know the problems that this mobility can bring. Again, mobility is a very sensitive area. The mobility that we have seen so far seems to be all in one direction. One half of the supposedly mobile people feel rather aggrieved whilst the other half may be feeling "This is great. The gravy is coming our way." I do not think that is a good situation, particularly at the outset of a new experiment.

I have nothing more to say at this stage, except to assure the Minister that there is goodwill. We welcome the separation of the personnel, organisation and structure from his budgetary and financial situation. We would ask again that we have fuller consultation with everybody involved, in particular before further legislation is introduced.

Professor Quinlan

I wish to join with the previous speakers in welcoming the Bill before us and, in doing so, to join with the tributes that have been paid to Mr. Devlin and the members of his committee for the great work they did. As Senator Owens has stressed, it is a pity that the Seanad did not have an opportunity of discussing the Devlin Report before the legislation was begun.

I was one of the Members of the previous Seanad who combined together to put down a motion requesting an opportunity for a full discussion on the Devlin Report. That motion gathered dust on the Order Paper for three years until it was liberated painlessly by the advent of the general election. I hope that in future we will be provided with many more opportunities for discussion at a time when discussion is right and proper and is sufficiently early to include the trend of future legislation.

Speaking as one who has had experience of the last four Seanaid and viewing the atmosphere since the change of Government, I notice there is something very valuable in the air in the change we have got: it is the sense of independence that has come forth and a sense of critical approach by the Oireachtas to our problems. This is shown on the Government benches where Members of the Government Party in this House, as well as the other House, are much keener to come forward with genuinely constructive criticism and suggestions like those which Senator Owens has made this evening, suggestions about the future and showing the underlying concern felt in Parliament for the way that the rights of Parliament are being eroded by an ever-increasing bureaucracy.

That is evident on the Government side, but it is also very evident on the Opposition side when we look at the speech that was made here tonight by Senator Brian Lenihan and, indeed, many of the speeches made by the ex-Ministers in the other House. They all showed this real concern in trying to strive to establish a balance between the demands of the Oireachtas and their accountability to the public, on the one hand, and the type of managerial society into which we like all other democracies are being immersed in the modern state.

As one who has advocated many reforms and tried to give more power to the Oireachtas over the past number of years, it is very consoling for me to find Members who were Ministers in the former Government are making the same type of speech that I and others were making over the past year.

An Cathaoirleach

I think it would be as well if the Senator, instead of talking about speeches, made a speech on the Bill.

Professor Quinlan

I am making a speech, but I am pointing out the lessons that we can learn: which is that the former Ministers, like Senator Lenihan, are showing that they are fully aware of the necessity to give more power to the Oireachtas and the necessity for this Bill. Yet we have to ask why were they unable to make greater progress in this regard in the past. Progress is difficult and is something that requires the combined efforts of all shades of opinion in the Oireachtas to ensure that we modernise both our Parliamentary system and our central Government management to the betterment of the nation. We are forced to move rapidly in this regard by our membership of the EEC and by the bewildering complex of bureaucracy it introduces. So bewildering is the complex that one has to get a new name for it. It is no longer bureaucracy; it is eurocracy.

This Bill, then, is to be welcomed as the first step in the implementation of the Devlin Report on this subject. I do not for one moment suggest that the Devin Report is infallible or that it has all the answers. What I tend to believe is that it just starts on the process of reform. We must monitor this very carefully as we go along and learn by trial and error as we progress. That is why the Advisory Council, as recommended in this reorganisation, is of such vital importance. It is recognised that this Advisory Council is to be one in which the experience gained in the private sector is to play a vital part in the modernisation of the public sector. As suggested by Devlin—and I think it is the intention of the Minister, though it is not written into the Bill—a very substantial part of the council representatives should be from the private sector. It is written into the Bill that the chairman should be from the private sector or that he should not be in the public sector wholetime. That is a very fine coming together and one which can do nothing but good for our future development.

I suggest that this coming together at the advisory level is only part of the problem. The real coming together we have to produce is between the personnel in the public and in the private sector. There must be mobility between the two. While a great deal of lip-service has been paid to the ideal of mobility in the past between various types of positions, with regard to moving people with experience and expertise from one section into the other, little has been done. I agree fully with Senator Owens when she says that this mobility has been largely in one direction: from the public sector outwards. We have not seen the readiness of the public sector to accept personnel from the private sector on a proper mobility basis, which is on a basis of short-term commitment, be it a two-, four- or five-year term of duty and back again.

To my knowledge, in the past, every obstacle has been put by the Civil Service establishment to taking in, at a high level in the Civil Service, anybody from outside. There is far too much of the closed-shop operated, especially in the upper levels of our Civil Service. I would appeal to the Minister to try and get mobility into that sector.

I have the utmost sympathy for higher civil servants in the burden they have to carry. The efforts to try to separate policy from executive work are mentioned in the Bill, as are also the efforts to create this Aireacht, a section close to the Minister that would be responsible for the thinking and the advance planning in the Department. This is all to the good. But the one requirement for such a section is time to think. There should be time and opportunity to get away from the job at intervals and to get into a different atmosphere where they can think on the problems in a different way. For instance, if some economists in a Civil Service Department work close to the policy-making level the best thing possible would be to get them out of the place every four or five years. Get them away for six months either into a position in industry or into a university or economics research institute, some place where they would have the time to sit back and think of the problems which were present in their Departments, to plan the future and to have an opportunity of discussion on non-Civil Service terms with colleagues in the field. If that can be done those men coming back after six months will be revitalised and recharged and will really be able to make policy in their Departments. I believe this is vital.

It is very good to hear again the emphasis placed by Senator Lenihan on the necessity for insuring that parliamentary reform go hand in hand with this. We try to come to some terms with the accountability problem and in this regard we may be getting something nearer to what we have looked for for quite a long time, that is, an Oireachtas Committee to deal with State-sponsored bodies.

The Minister said:

If the Oireachtas should decide to examine by Committee such matters as the relation of State-sponsored bodies to Ministers and to the Oireachtas, I would be prepared to make available to that Committee any possible help which the new Department could provide.

I would ask the Minister to go one step forward and let us initiate this Committee. Let the Oireachtas set up this committee that we have sought for so long to examine the relationship between State-sponsored bodies and Ministers and their relationship to the Oireachtas as a whole. Perhaps the Minister might have the Government examine whether this is the appropriate time to initiate such a committee.

We have the promise held forth for an ombudsman or, to give him his title, a commissioner for administrative justice. This is very worthwhile but tackling it at top level without getting down to the lower level is not likely to be very productive. The question of administrative justice at the lower level has, at present, to be discharged by the Members of the Dáil and, to some extent, of the Seanad. Any problems in administrative justice in a very wide sense, whether it be old age pension entitlement, grant entitlement or any such entitlements, are loaded on to the public representatives. This is making life unbearable for our public representatives. It is unfair that they should be saddled with this task. I am sure we all agree that it is too great a burden to continue to bear. It is getting worse as time goes by and I suggest, in looking into the question of providing a commissioner for administrative justice, that some scheme should be devised to try to help our public representatives, such as passing some of the burden on to local offices. I do not know how such a scheme could be carried out but it is badly needed.

I was impressed by the recommendation of the Devlin Commission and the Minister's scheme to put the recommendation into force to ensure a reasonable turnover in the council so that there will be mobility within the council itself. I note that the Minister has taken the simple procedure that he will nominate the original council with varying periods of office; in other words, some members will be nominated for two years, others for three years and others for a maximum of four years. The provision to be written in that they cannot be renewed until they have stood down for one period is a valuable one. I take it that after the first council there will be a more or less uniform length of service of four years for all members. In doing so I think it is important that the continuity from the Devlin Commission over to the council should be seen to be there. At least two or three members of the original Devlin Commission should if possible be appointed to the council to ensure continuity. However, it should be kept to reasonable proportions because we do not want the new council to be dominated by the Devlin Commission members. We would like them to bring an informed and critical analysis to bear on the council's development.

Another old chestnut crops up here and I observe that the new Government are adhering to it as much as the old Government, that is the question —which has been raised so often here —of the members of the council ceasing to be members if they are nominated to either House of the Oireachtas. We generally accept that principle but another one has come in over the last ten years and has now become a fixture and that is where a member who is nominated as a candidate must leave the council. In the past we fought that as we thought it too restrictive. I would ask the Minister, now that he is on the other side, if there really is some good reason why this must be insisted on? It seems that the act of being nominated as a candidate should not cause a person to resign from this or any other council. It is all very well when a person secures a seat in the Oireachtas but we would all agree that it is right and proper at that stage that members should retire from this council or from any other.

This Bill is largely an agreed measure of carrying out what was initiated and recommended by the Devlin Commission. I join with other Senators in wishing this experiment well and I hope that the necessary reforms in the involvement of the Oireachtas will take place alongside the administrative reforms. Is there any real reason why the present Department should not be headed by an independent Minister? Even if, for the time being, it was considered advisable that it should be headed by the Minister for Finance it seems rather restrictive to tie this Department by statute to this Ministry for all time. We need a new statute to change it and I would have thought, with the scope of what is outlined in it, that it is the same argument that is being made to suggest that it was not proper that the one Department of Finance should handle both establishment problems and financial problems. It was suggested that two different outlooks and two different types of civil servants are required for that. In the long term, this Department of the Public Services will grow to be a very considerable Department and will be at least as large and as demanding as any of our existing Departments, not excepting the Department of Finance. Consequently, in the future as it develops we should contemplate having it as an independent Department headed by a separate Minister.

Mr. Russell

I should like to join with the Senators who have given a welcome to this Bill and would like to join the Minister and other Senators in paying a compliment to Mr. Devlin and his review board for the very detailed, comprehensive and searching report which they prepared, out of which arises this Bill. It would be wrong to expect too much from this Bill or to misinterpret it. The Minister made it clear in his introductory remarks that it is not proposed to alter in any way the power or accountability of the Members of the Oireachtas over the public services. In the debate in the other House there was a suggestion that in some way this Bill was proposing to take away from the elected representatives some of the powers and responsibilities which rested in them. I have read the Bill carefully and I do not see this. The Minister makes it quite clear that no dramatic or drastic change can come about without the approval of the Oireachtas.

In simple language we are seeking in this Bill to up-date the public services in the light of our modern society, and perhaps benefit from the experience of private enterprise, where the bigger and certainly the better companies have learned that progress goes hand in hand with efficiency. It is common practice in most of the larger companies and in some of the smaller ones to divorce policy-making from executive functions. The continentals have taken that a step further and have set up the two-tier system: a policy-making board, on which not only the management and proprietors but also the workers are represented, and an executive board, which carries out the day to day functions of running the company. Experience has proved that such an arrangement is both fair to all the interested parties, including the workers, and is also effective in getting results.

This Bill is an endeavour to apply these modern business methods to the structure of the public services and is one we should heartily welcome. The Minister has stated this is largely in the nature of an experiment. If this is a success we can proceed from there, and carry this structure right down through the whole system of public services. You cannot limit it to Government Departments like Finance, Transport and Power, Local Government, Agriculture et cetera, but must carry it through the whole system of local government. It is impossible to contemplate change at the top and not have change down through the structures of central and local government. There is the ever growing danger of centralisation, which was not referred to in the other House. We, as public representatives, are more sensitive to the growing threat of bureaucracy, that power appears to be passing out of our hands and into the hands of anonymous backroom boys.

If we are to successfully offset that development, which is a very real danger, we must preserve democracy in its ultimate. We must preserve a structure of democracy in which the biggest is not necessarily the best, and in which, in the ultimate, the smaller the statutory body, the better it is from the point of view of local participation. In current Government thinking there should be included the idea that the small body, whether a county council or an urban council, has an effective role to play in this new restructuring system. It is not sufficient to do the job at the top, leave it at that and say "We will abolish all the small local bodies; they are only talking shops. We will leave it to the civil servants and the elected public representatives to get on with the job". It cannot be done that way. When we talk about modernising our system of public services we should remember, as Senator Lenihan and other Senators have stated, that we must preserve democratic control in the ultimate over all the organs of the public services otherwise democracy cannot function down the ranks.

It would be simple, if we wanted efficiency and nothing else, to elect a board of directors of 20 or 25 of the most efficient industrialists and civil servants, abolish the Dáil and Seanad and hand over the country to them to run. They might make a better job of it than we have at times, but would it be in concert with our democratic principles? I do not think it would. We have the problem of preserving democratic control and participation by not only the public representatives but by the people who elect them right down the ranks and, at the same time, ensure that our Civil Service organs are efficient and up-to-date in concert with the requirements of a modern society.

There is a certain conflict of interests but, in the ultimate, we must go for the democratic control and system. People talk about maintaining democratic control over the public services, but we must have representatives of sufficient calibre and quality to do the job. Every public representative knows that a large proportion of his time is taken up not on his work as a legislator but in dealing with the many problems of his constituents. That is as it should be, but it brings burden on the public representative and means he has not got all the time he would wish to sit in the Dáil or Seanad, to study debates, to do his home work and make his contribution to the debates.

The Bill, generally, is a good one. There are a few small comments I should like to make on it. The Advisory Council consists of eight members—four from the public and four from the private sector—and the chairman will be elected from the private sector. I suggest to the Minister that an Advisory Council of this type might be expanded in membership. Eight people, four from each sector, may not be sufficient and the chairman should be from outside both the private and public sector. This is just a point I wish to make.

I remember when many small farmers and shopkeepers thought the ultimate employment for their sons and daughters was the Civil Service and when it was said, with a good deal of truth, that the brains of the country were going into the Civil Service. This included the British Civil Service and the Civil Service in other countries. Those days are gone, as there are now too many competing outlets for the brains of the boys and girls leaving the secondary schools and universities. For that reason it is vitally urgent that the conditions and opportunities open to civil servants are expanded and made more attractive. I agree with Senator Owens, when she stated that you must ensure that the staffs in all Government Departments are satisfied with their jobs, that they see opportunities for advancement and that, if they have any grievances or differences, they can be referred to some impartial body who will give them a fair hearing and a fair judgment. That system is necessary. It is the system which operates in private enterprise. If you do not like your job, at least you can have your case heard. If we are to model ourselves on the best examples of modern industry, it is very important that full consideration be given to the opportunities for civil servants, particularly in this competitive age when there are so many outlets for brains and ability.

The Oireachtas Committee, to which the Minister gave a sympathetic nod, to supervise and examine the operations of the State-sponsored bodies, is one which I should like to wholeheartedly support. I should like to heartily agree with what Professor Quinlan said on the matter. The Minister should be encouraged to set up, at the earliest date, such a Committee of representatives of the Dáil and Seanad. As he has promised to give it the necessary assistance from his Department, it would help to bring the public representative into closer touch with the running of these semi-State bodies but I hope that it would not have sufficient powers—it would be very wrong to encourage it—to interfere in the day-to-day running of any of the semi-State bodies or companies.

Anybody who has anything to do with the running of a successful business will know that one of the reasons for its success is that the men who know their job are given the opportunity and the freedom to get on with it. Even though we talk about setting up this Committee, we realise that there should be sensible limits to its powers, that its powers of investigation and recommendation should be limited. We should not be allowed to interfere. I would certainly oppose any interference with the day-to-day running of any business, whether State, private, or public company. There is a lot to be said in favour of such a Committee and I hope the Minister will give the matter sympathetic consideration and the support which he promised.

I assume that the title of the Minister will be the Minister for Finance and the Public Service and the Parliamentary Secretary will be the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and the Public Service when this legislation is enacted.

I turn now to the Advisory Council. Section 5 of the Bill states that the general functions of the Council shall be:

(a) to advise the Minister on the organisation of the public service and on matters relating to or affecting personnel in the public service, and

(b) whenever the Minister so requests to advise the Minister.

I wonder why in paragraph (b) they can only do so when the Minister requests. Is there a special reason for doing this? There probably is a very valid reason. Perhaps the Minister might explain it when he is replying.

Another matter is the question of the report. The council will apparently report annually but its first report is made 18 months after it is set up and covers a period of 12 months. I am not quite clear from the Bill whether the 12 months is just any 12 months, 12 calendar months or 12 months in the financial year. I would suggest to the Minister, now that we are likely to be changing our financial year to the calendar year, which I think is the EEC practice, that the report of this council should coincide with the calendar year. It would be a more appropriate period than just any 12 months.

There is nothing else I wish to say on the Bill. I should like to again welcome the Bill. It is a very useful step forward in a very necessary reorganisation of our public services. I want to emphasise the fact that the reorganisation will, of necessity, have to go right down the line to our local bodies, county councils, county borough councils and other bodies, which I hope in time will become statutory bodies, such as the regional development organisations.

Dr. West

I give this Bill a qualified welcome, not because it is not drafted in the right spirit or that we are not moving in the right direction, but because I feel that the context in which the Bill is drawn up is not entirely satisfactory. This is not the fault of the members of the Devlin Group or the people in the Department of Finance who prepared the Bill. It occurs because of the general context in which the deliberations have taken place and because of the flaws in our parliamentary procedure.

First of all, let me echo the Leas-Chathaoirleach's plea for more in-depth discussion of this very subtle matter before it got to the stage of drawing up legislation. A debate in this House on the Devlin Report would have been of great value, because this is not a simple change we are making in administrative structure. Any major change in administration of this nature will inevitably affect our own democratic way of life. It will inevitably affect us as parliamentarians. I must say I echo the Leas-Chathaoirleach's plea, and that of Deputy de Valera in the other House, that this was the sort of Bill which should have been considered by a Select Committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas.

The problem is that we do not have Select Committees of both Houses of the Oireachtas. We have not reached that stage in our parliamentary life and, as Senator Quinlan has already pointed out, it is impossible to discuss this Bill and divorce it from the reform of our parliamentary institutions. I am glad that the Minister recognised this fact in his Second Reading speech to the Dáil when he said in Volume 267, No. 1, column 55:

First, if, as seems likely, the separation of policy and execution would produce a more efficient public service, it would be necessary and desirable to consider what changes, if any, should be made in our political procedures to take advantage of this increased efficiency.

I would go further than this. I would say that in any case the changes which are necessary in our parliamentary procedure, which we in this House have been urging for some time, should be implemented by the Government and some real progress should be made.

This Bill is not a political Bill in the sense that it is proposed by one party and opposed by another. Everybody is in favour of the spirit in which this Bill is being introduced. It is, therefore, the ideal sort of Bill for a Select Committee of both Houses. It is clear that the major parties agree on the necessity for reform and they accept many of Devlin's recommendations. The legislation was introduced by the Fianna Fáil administration and is now brought before us by the present Government in, I imagine, similar form. Therefore, I think it is sad that we do not have a procedure which allows parliamentarians to discuss this Bill in-depth before it gets to the floor, where it must be passed, rejected or amended. I say this is because this Bill is so subtle.

The changes proposed are of a deep nature and one must try to look into the future and see how one's function as a parliamentarian is going to be changed, and it will be changed by the establishment of a Department for the Public Service. I have tried to read the relevant sections of the Devlin Report, and, as Senator Lenihan has already pointed out, the problem of how the changes they recommend will affect the parliamentarians—and the structure of our democracy is not mentioned in the report. We want to consider this structure because in Ireland, with our system of a single transferable vote and proportional representation, we know that many Members of the Oireachtas spend most of their time acting as ombudsmen. They deal with the relevant Department on behalf of constituents. Inevitably some of their actions will be affected in a way which it is hard to predict because the outline of this Bill is so minimal and the functions of the Department are just not spelled out in any detail whatever. I can see the Minister's point of view for not doing this, but it makes it difficult for us to discuss something which is not really defined. What will the Department of Public Service do? We have indications of what it will do from the Devlin Report. We have indications of its function from the Minister's speech. But neither of these has any legal effect whatever. This Department could be set up to perform a bugging operation at the next election. No functions are spelled out here.

It is a difficult thing to discuss and it seems to me that the changes are of such fundamental importance that we need to think about them. I have thought about them for some time and I find it very hard to forecast the future and see more than just the changes spelled out in the Devlin Report, which are essentially administrative changes. I find it difficult, without a great deal of further reflection, to determine what the overall effect will be. It will be a major one and everybody who has spoken on this Bill is in agreement on that.

I have read the Devlin Report and there is no mention of how the establishment of a Department for the Public Service will affect the structure of our democracy and our democratic procedures. The reason for this is clear when one looks at the composition of the Devlin Committee. They did a wonderful job. They have produced more than a textbook. It is a thesis and it is very hard going to assimilate it all. The Devlin Committee was a very small committee which must have worked tremendously hard. It consisted of businessmen, a barrister, a very high civil servant, but, as far as I can see, no one who has had any direct parliamentary experience. This raises the point mentioned by Senator Quinlan and which we have continually pressed in this House over some time, that is, the normal straightforward disqualification for membership of these committees by Members of the Oireachtas, Members of the Seanad or people who are nominated, not necessarily the Devlin Committee but the Public Service Advisory Committee. It is true to say that this disqualification stems from English legislation at least 300 years old from a time when corruption in parliamentary life was perhaps a little more common than it is now. At least it was more open. Now it is well hidden, if it is there at all. Let us say it is not there.

The point I am trying to make is that it would have been of great benefit to the country as a whole and to the committee to have had someone with the experience which one only gets after working in Parliament who could have said to the committee: "This is how it is going to affect my operation as a parliamentarian and the parliamentary procedures." This is a weakness in the Devlin Report. It is one which naturally they could not remedy. It is something which we ought to look at in future. I feel very strongly that there are many cases in which very important committees are being set up and in which the blanket rule, whether or not it is a part of legislation, is being applied to say no members of the Oireachtas must be allowed within a hundred miles of this committee. There are many cases. especially with our advent to the EEC, where committees of this nature will need the benefit of the experience of someone who has been a parliamentarian or who is serving at the moment.

As one tries to forecast the changes in the public service and the effect it will have on our operations here, I may say that in my short public life I have been very impressed by the terrific load that our public servants carry. I have been impressed by the integrity of the Civil Service. Our Civil Service is something we inherited from the British. Not everything we inherited from the British was all bad. They left us with a few problems as well, but certainly our Civil Service has a high standard of integrity and everybody in the Oireachtas recognises this. Particularly when one has extensive dealings with the Civil Service, as one generally only has with a wide range of civil servants as a Member of the Oireachtas, going to talk to them about legislative problems and problems of one's constituents, one sees the immense workload they have, especially the people at the top. It is interesting that this does not apply only to civil servants. In his speech on the Second Reading in the Dáil the Minister gave a list of some of the functions he has as Minister for Finance and they are really staggering. He may be accountable for all these operations but he could not have detailed knowledge of them. In fact, he could not have detailed knowledge of half of what is going on in his Department. The skill in being a Minister is, first of all, that he has some direction, some leadership and perhaps in some cases some control over the appointments of the people who are directly below him. This is not the case in this country.

I wonder when this Bill has become law if the Minister will have some more influence in choosing the members of the Aireacht in his Department and in the other Departments in which it occurs. The Civil Service has a pyramid structure and, naturally, because of its formation it is a conservative body. The ideas filter up to the Minister. A good Minister, in my estimation, is someone who takes his own ideas and pushes them down. It may hurt the pyramid; it may squash it a bit at the top. But a good Minister should be feeding things down into his Civil Service as well as just taking things that come up. I feel, and I would have felt quite independently from the suggestions made in this Bill, that a Minister in any case, to deal with the complex problems with which he is faced and the many different problems he has to deal with, should have his own sort of inner cabinet, which might not consist of civil servants, who would be a policy-making group. He might not meet them formally. He might have an unofficial policy-making group. But he needs some help with this problem of formulating policy, and I am fairly sure that the suggestions of separating the executive from the planning sections of Departments, which are outlined in the Devlin Report, are attemps to solve the problem and are generally attempts which I feel are correct.

I would like to have seen a much more detailed discussion of how the separation of these functions within a Department is going to affect the relationships between the Minister and his Department and the relationships that other parliamentarians have with his Department. There will be one group dealing with planning and one group dealing with the execution of the day-to-day business of the Department. It seems to me if one is going to get any real ideas through to the Department and try to influence them in some way, one is going to have to hop about from one committee to another, and I hope there will be strong links between these groups inside the Departments themselves.

I have had some experience of how groups of people operate when they get together. They tend to form a group mentality and this often takes a bit of beating down and this helps to channel up one set of ideas. There is no doubt that a number of individuals in a group behave quiet differently than they would if they were not members of this particular group. One tends to get a group mentality perhaps dominated by one or two strong minded people. I can see all sorts of difficult problems and I can see that the Minister with skill is the man who is going to sort out these problems and keep ideas flowing in all directions, not just upwards and downwards but, judging from the picture in the Devlin Report, in all directions and at all angles.

Some of the structures for the new Departments which the Devlin Report recommends are pretty complex. Modern society is complex, so we need these structures. We need not only to have separate links downwards between the Minister and his policy formation and executive sections but we need to have strong links across between these policy formation and executive sections. This will require real ministerial skill. It will not be just a matter for the civil servants. The Minister involved will play a very important part and a lot of the success will depend on his ability to deal with the structures in his Department and make the best use of them.

Some of the changes envisaged by this Bill are to ensure that in the Civil Service we get the best man for the job. I have not enough experience of the Civil Service to know whether or not this has been the case in the majority of situations that are arising at present. But it does seem to me again that because of the complexity of modern life it is essential that outsiders who have the requisite skill, expertise and know-how may enter the Civil Service at a fairly high grade, if they have the suitable qualifications, on qualifications alone.

I am glad to note that many of the Devlin recommendations are directed towards seeing that the best man gets the job. I should like to ask the Minister if this will be one of the main functions of his new Department: seeing that recruitment is at a top level, that any prejudices against people from the outside being drafted into the Civil Service are overcome. I think there are problems here. They are subtle, human problems. We are faced with the problems of the civil servants who may be by-passed by people coming in from outside. This will require a great deal of skill. It is a human problem.

When Senator Russell speaks of applying modern business methods to the public service it makes me shudder. I think one wants to apply more than modern business methods to the public service. Modern business methods still have got the aim of making the maximum profit for the owners of the firm and still have not got around to dealing with things like worker participation. We are only on the fringes of this sort of problem. Modern business methods, it seems to me, do not take social or human values into account. This is going to to be a crucial point in the Department of the Public Service. The social and human problems will be just as important as the problems of efficiency.

The trade unions have a part to play in this. If they spent less time arguing about wage rises and more about getting workers on the board and developing full participation, then these problems would solve themselves. Here again we need to think a bit more widely than just using management methods. We must deal very subtly and think very deeply about the human problems that are involved.

I certainly hope that a system is devised so that a really good person from outside will be attracted to the Civil Service in any particular branch. He will be attracted, first of all, by the challenge which the work offers and also he should be remunerated properly for his work and there should not be any bars on anyone. This recruitment of people from outside the Civil Service will act as a spur to the people inside and will not be looked on grudgingly and in a way which could cause bitterness inside the Civil Service. There are terrific problems.

I am very pleased that the Bill incorporates the establishment of a Public Service Advisory Council and that an important fact has been recognised in the establishment of this council, that is, that some of the members—at least half of them—will not be from the Public Service but from outside. I think their recommendations are going to be important and they can help. Here we would have a body made up of public servants and of people from outside the public service with expertise in other fields. This Public Service Advisory Council will play a very important role in trying to discover some of the problems in advance of their occurrence inside the Civil Service and the problems that the establishment of such a body will create.

I hope, as other Senators have said, we can tackle the problems of semi-State bodies and that we have some sort of an Oireachtas review committee established. Senator Russell has pointed out the danger of having this committee getting their fingers too deeply in the semi-State pie. I would see it as a review committee, but it is rather unfair to these semi-State bodies, and certainly unfair to the Oireachtas, that they should be accountable only to the Minister for Finance—in a sense, the buck stops there—and it is hard for us to get detailed information on their activities. I feel an Oireachtas Committee would be a step in the right direction.

In trying to figure out what is going to be the effect of the Public Services Department, the only guidelines I have had are the Devlin Report and the Dáil debate, which is instructive but rather sadly short, as Senator Owens has pointed out. Because this is such an important measure it is debated in the Dáil one week and is up here the next. Although we have had the Bill for some time, its ramifications merit very wide discussion. I should like to ask the Minister if he intends to be guided generally by the recommendations made in the Devlin Report on the running of the Department of the Public Service? It refers to it specifically at page 433 of the Devlin Report, Recommendation 31:

The Departmental organisational units should be responsible for structure, organisation and management services, and the personnel units for the provision of staff.

These are the units inside the Department itself.

Both units should co-operate with, and draw on the expertise of, the Public Service Department.

I think it is very important that there should be very strong links with the other Departments and, of course, with those who are going to try this important experiment of separating executive and management functions.

In Recommendation 33 we read:

The Public Service Department should have as its main aim the bringing of organisation and personnel practices in the public service up to the highest standards. The Public Service Advisory Council will examine and report on progress achieved each year.

That is a self-evident recommendation. Recommendation 35 states:

To ensure that the public service is reorganised and keeping up with requirements, there should be an administrative audit of selected units conducted each year by the Public Service Department.

That is important, too, because we need to know that our accounting systems are being kept up to scratch. Recommendation 42 reads:

The existing system of classes and grades in the higher civil service should be abolished and amalgamated into a single structure.

Presumably, this will be a problem that will be dealt with in a wider context by the Department of the Public Service in the context of recruitment and promotion. Recommendation No. 50 states:

Promotion to grades from and including Assistant Principal level upwards should be open to all qualified staff; vacancies should be advertised; every post should be filled by the best officer available; merit should be the basis of a promotion policy.

That is absolutely vital if our Civil Service is to function as well as possible. Recommendation No. 51 says:

There should be some outside recruitment to promotion grades.

Recommendation 62, which no doubt is being supported by my colleague, Senator Robinson, states:

The present problems of sex and marriage differentiation should be examined with a view to a solution, possibly on a phased basis.

It is nice to know that they have got sex problems in the Civil Service but I imagine that this will also become part of overall policy and the differentiation between males and females in the public service will disappear. The sooner that happens the better.

While I welcome this Bill, I feel there are problems involved. The pity is that we have not got a parliamentary structure which can really give them an examination in depth or that the Devlin Report did not consist of someone with experience of parliamentary democracy and the difficulties that parliamentarians encounter in carrying out their day-to-day duties. I hope that the Department of the Public Service is given a good start and I am sure the skill of the Minister involved will be paramount in getting these reforms of our public service under way so that the public, the parliamentarians and the civil servants themselves can reap the obvious benefits.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

There is no great disagreement on this Bill. It has been welcomed by both sides of this House and by our Independents. It is a matter of compliment to the Minister that it has been so necessary to have such very long speeches welcoming what has been referred to as a non-controversial Bill. At times, listening to the debate, one is a little confused about what exactly we are discussing. Are we discussing the revision of the interparliamentary system and accountability in this country or are we discussing measures which arise from the report to make the public service more efficient? We have to be perfectly clear as to which we are, in fact, addressing our remarks to.

It is a very good thing that we would begin to question and discuss the growing amount of powerlessness in our society, the great dissatisfaction which exists among a number of people that they have no power over very important decisions affecting their lives. This is a matter to which I referred, and to which Senator Robinson referred, in the debate on Developments in the European Communities. I would ask the Minister to consider one suggestion which has already been made by an Independent Senator, Senator Quinlan, as to why we should not have a separate Ministry. Obviously, if he wishes to reply in the negative to this suggestion at this stage will he then, at the end of a period to be stipulated, give us some guarantee that if, for example, the new Department finds itself totally subsumed under the Department of Finance, he will set it free to be independent and to be fully critical. We would all welcome this assurance.

It is important that we should be honest about the public service. Everyone blames the Civil Service for a number of things of which they are not guilty and for a number of things of which they are guilty. If the new Department is to be a critical Department, continually examining the operations of Departments, continually evaluating the structures within different Departments—and there are several different structures—it must have the maximum of freedom. I would recommend to the Minister in considering this point that if, after a period, the Department finds itself too much under the influence of the structure of one Department, the Department of Finance, he reconsider his decision and make it fully free.

The debate on this Bill has been a generous debate. There is a welcome from all sides of the House for it. We are talking about making the public service more efficient, but I do not regard this Bill as sufficient for discussing, for example, interdemocracy in this country. This is not the opportunity and this Bill is not appropriate for such a discussion.

It has been mentioned that accountability will be eroded. It has been said that the establishment of a group of special advisers surrounding the Minister will limit the Minister's powers. The only thing that would limit the effectiveness of the Minister is either his commitment to political development or his intelligence. The people who want to appoint advisers will know what they are about. Those who have considered the establishment of an Aireacht must remember that one is not talking about the extension of pragmatism or of pragmatic alternatives in the public service.

There will be Ministers who differ ideologically and, contrary to popular opinion, ideology is not dead. Ideology may be contaminated. There will be Ministers who differ as to the treatment of important social issues—for example, the elimination of inequality in our society. It is a fine development that such people would be able to appoint and bring with them people who would offer them competent technical advice.

I do not wish to make a long speech on this Bill. It is a Bill concerning the Department of the Public Service and I would welcome the Minister's opinion as to whether he would be willing to review the independent suggestion I have made, that is, that the Department be made independent after a period. It is a very heartening development for a person like myself, who has been involved for only a brief period in this House, to know that so many Senators are anxious to review their powerlessness or their powerfulness and I would welcome as soon as possible a full discussion as to how decision-making processes are structured.

It is correct to pay tribute to Mr. Devlin and his colleagues in the review group. We should also bear in mind that a considerable contribution has been made by Mr. Barrington of the Institute of Public Administration, who has made imaginative comments on the whole structure of local organisation.

The atmosphere in the discussion on this Bill has been generous and I hope we will soon have an opportunity for an entire review as to how decisions are taken. I noticed the use of the phrase "We are now in the Economic Community". People remind me of that every day, but I share the opinion of those who say we need checks on developing and growing bureaucracy within the European Economic Communities. We should begin at home and see if we have not a developing rather than a diminishing bureaucracy in our own structures.

Mr. Halligan

It is with certain diffidence that I rise. For the Minister it is the end of a long day and he must be feeling fatigued. We are meeting infrequently and, an rud is annamh is iontach. When we get the opportunity we tend to go on too long. The Minister will take it as a tribute to the Bill that so many Senators wish to speak It is in the spirit of Senator Higgins, from the point of view of offering critiques rather than criticism, that I wish to make some observations. I should like to confine myself to the public service rather than to any evaluation of democracy, and parliamentary democracy in particular.

The Minister stated in his speech there is no satisfactory definition of the public service. It is clear, from Devlin and from the Bill and from what various Senators have stated, that there is a distinction in everybody's mind between the public service and the Civil Service. The Devlin Review Group singled out three distinct components of the public service, of which the Civil Service was but one component. Senator Owens correctly expressed a certain disquiet in one other of the three components—namely, the local authority sector—as to how their previous mode of operation in respect of remuneration and recruitment, et cetera, would be affected by what would appear to be an extension of the authority of what previously was the personnel section of the Department of Finance.

Section 1, the definition section would, as the Minister has stated, permit the Bill to extend to the semi-State sector only as a result of legislation. That is clear from the terms of the definition in section 1. If that is the case, would the provisions that currently apply to members of the Civil Service then apply to individuals currently employed by semi-State bodies? The system of public administration which we have inherited from the British enjoins on those who join the Civil Service certain restrictions with respect to public life. Are those restrictions now to be extended to any sector of the public service to which they do not now apply? At a time when certain sectors of the public service wish to be given the freedom to engage publicly in public life it would be a retrograde step if the net were to be cast wider than it currently is. I will return to this point later.

The concept of the public service must be enlarged. Senator Owens made the point that interchangeability is desirable between the three sectors. It would be sine qua non to the proper development of the public service but not at the expense of the individual freedoms currently enjoyed by members of the public service not now members of the Civil Service.

I, too, share the same misgivings of Senator Higgins in respect of section 3 (3). Ministers for Finance come and go and, naturally, I hope the present one enjoys a long, fruitful and happy career. I do not wish to see him leave office too quickly; but he will accept that others will follow him, and what is being done here now is to lay down a structure that will continue for some considerable time, because that is the nature of the legislative process. Changes are not made too quickly when something is put into the Statute Book. There is no other provision in the Ministers and Secretaries Act or the various Amendment Acts enjoining that a certain Minister shall also be Minister for another Department. There are more Departments of State than there are Ministers and some people double up. It states in subsection (3):

The Department of Finance and the Department of Public Service shall be assigned to the same person.

In Devlin, paragraph 12 (7) (5), consideration is given to the possibility that the Department might in the first instance be assigned to the Taoiseach. I agree with Senator West that the absence of a politician, practising or past, from the commission led to the inclusion of the most unlikely language in that paragraph from the point of view of a politician. It was in their opinion that the Taoiseach would hardly wish to become involved with organisation. That was a valued judgment on their part. I do not know the basis for that valued judgment: I do not know if they interviewed the past Taoiseach. I do not know if they looked at the experience of other countries. I do not know how they came to that judgment. I do not agree with that judgment. In many respects the proper place for the organisation of the public service is under the aegis of the Taoiseach of the day.

I would suggest, but I think the Minister would be the last to admit it, that the workload of the Minister for Finance is enormous. At columns 102 and 103 of the Official Report of the Dáil for 3rd July, he outlined some of those onerous duties which he has to perform. Senator West referred to them. They occupy almost an entire column. They demonstrate that he has a fascinating and bewildering range of responsibilities, which also must be very intimidating. To add to these responsibilities the development of the public service within the context of our involvement in a much wider democratic framework is overloading a man who is already overloaded by the fact that he must, to a great extent, now carry in addition to purely national economic affairs the task of being a financial ambassador within the context of the European Community.

At the moment, the monetary crisis which is affecting the international monetary community must be demanding of him a great deal of time and clearly will involve a great deal of travel. Obviously there are important economic issues involved in the discussions in which he will be engaged at EEC level. One has only to think of decisions arrived at with regard to exchange rates and of their impingement on the Common Agricultural Policy and thereby on agricultural incomes to see how relevant and important these Ministerial responsibilities are to our economic situation. So in expressing concern at the workload, particularly these new additions, one is not talking about theoretical considerations.

I would support the view of Senator Higgins that perhaps the Minister might in the light of his experience consider whether the workload on him as a Minister is not proving too great or whether in his view the freedom which the new Department would require in order to be truly innovative might not be better expressed in the future by a separation of the Departments of Finance and Public Service. Perhaps it is that a continuation of the link with the Department of Finance may prove to be too inhibiting on the new Department of the Public Service at a time when innovation is required in the public service. That will be a matter for his judgment and if he finds that a separation of Ministerial responsibility is required I am confident he will undertake the necessary severance of the two Departments.

The Minister correctly made reference to the new context within which he must view many aspects of policy—the wider context of Europe. Certainly, the advocates of our entry into Europe always had one very good point when they claimed it would widen our national horizons and loosen us from the cultural as well as the economic domination of Britain which has existed for far too long. As part of that cultural domination we have taken on board the British administrative system and we have been too long dominated by this particular model which is supposedly both efficient and neutral.

The recent article in The Sunday Times by Barbara Castle a former Secretary of State in the British Labour administration, highlighted from the point of view of a practising politician some of the defects of that system, many of which had been hidden for too long. I do not think that one could claim, for example, that Britain's economic performance since the war is any credit to the administrative system, particularly the Treasury.

Therefore, in looking to Europe we should at least consider whether to adopt some of the principles of the organisation of the public service which have been developed there and have been referred to in the debate.

I am asking for consideration of new concepts now at the very least. Decisions can come later with greater exposure to continental practices. For example, we should reflect on the fact that political freedom for civil servants is rather commonplace on the Continent. Membership of political parties by civil servants is an accepted feature of their public life. Nobody thinks any the worse of public servants for that, and certainly their administration does not suffer.

Senator Lenihan, in opening the debate for the Opposition, referred to the cabinet system. That was something Barbara Castle referred to most forcibly in her article. It is one of the most attractive features of the continental system and is something which should commend itself to us for adoption and implementation in the near future. I do not think the civil servants should see any competition between those appointed on cabinets and themselves, because members of cabinets are nothing more than the political extension of the Minister—they are an extension of his political personality. Their role ends when his political life ends.

There is, too, the question mentioned by Senators Quinlan and West of the necessity for mobility between the public and private sectors. This is one of the great features of administration in France, a country to which we could address ourselves with great profit in the field of administration. These principles of administration are operable in Europe. There is no reason to believe that they would not work here. The argument could be advanced that membership of a party interferes with the political neutrality of the civil servant demanded in our system and the British. It is a philosophical impossibility that anyone can be objectively neutral in any situation. I was trained in a science that regarded itself as being politically neutral, that is, the field of economics. I always regarded that contention as methodological nonsense. Any economist would now honestly recognise that to be the case. Those whom the economist was advising certainly recognised it to be so. We should recognise the realities that all men are committed to some set of values and priorities with political attitudes based on these values and priorities. It would be best if that reality were expressed openly and honestly within the public service and then politicians could always evaluate Civil Service advice, whether technical or otherwise, within an open context.

The fourth principle, and I do not intend to develop it at any length in this debate because I do not think it entirely relevant, is, of course, the extension of the parliamentary system through the use of committees. The Minister made the point that he would give consideration to assistance to a committee which would examine the relationship between the semi-State bodies and the Oireachtas, if the Oireachtas so decided. We would all decide on that very quickly. I hope the assistance will be forthcoming pretty quickly because I regard an Oireachtas Committee on semi-State bodies to be a necessary companion to the Committee of Public Accounts.

In passing I might add that one should not underestimate the role of the boards of the semi-State bodies, as is done too frequently in these debates. Although the Minister referred to this in the Dáil, I would make a plea for special consideration to be given to the directors of the semi-State bodies because their average remuneration is only about £500 per annum and has been such for quite some time. In this age of inflation it is a derisory amount, certainly within the context of the time many of them are required to give in the common good.

I would join with the other Senators who have welcomed the Minister's commitment to the appointment of the commissioner for administrative justice. This appointment is long overdue and it is a very welcome innovation.

I would support the plea of Senator West that on the Public Service Advisory Committee Members of the Oireachtas should not be ruled out simply because they are Members of the Oireachtas. They would bring a distinct slant to the evaluation of the performance, development and role of the public service which could not come from industrialists or civil servants or members of other sectors of the public service.

Senator Lenihan expressed some concern about the concept of the Aireacht but I regard it as one of the more welcome innovations in the Devlin Report. I wholeheartedly support the four experiments which are currently taking place in the Civil Service Departments. The Aireacht is analogous to long range planning departments within most large industrial and commercial organisations. There is nothing new or sinister about them on the context. This form of organisation is employed by all forward-looking companies and institutions.

Senator Quinlan made the point that a major difficulty for top executives is that they simply do not have time to think, a problem which is recognised in all management theory books. The top executive has to distinguish between what is immediate and what is important. The experience is, however, that one is always swamped out by what is immediate and one puts on the long finger what is important. Then the executive finds that he is not taking the correct policy decisions from the long-term point of view. This is the old problem of the conflict between policy formulation and execution. The Aireacht tries to resolve this conflict and in so doing I do not believe the Aireacht will diminish ministerial responsibility to the Oireachtas. I am sure neither Deputies nor Senators will allow that to happen. But this development of Aireacht could make for better organisation of the Civil Service and for better discharge of ministerial responsibility. Rather than expressing suspicion about the Aireacht we should be supporting it clearly and without raising these spectres which do not arise in the mind of anybody experienced in organisation theory or practice.

As the Minister has said, this Bill is only the first step in a complete reform of the public service. It is true to say that in the past the development of the public service has been piecemeal. Now, after half a century of experience, the time has come for a thorough restructuring of the public service. Perhaps that could be best preceded by a debate on the Devlin Report in general in order to get the views of both Houses of the Oireachtas on those matters which they as politicians consider to be essential.

Minister for Finance (Mr. R. Ryan)

I am grateful to the Seanad for the manner in which they have received this Bill. I wish to assure Senators that the several Aunt Sallys put up are not directly relevant to this legislation. I am not saying that they could not be put again in the future, but, even if they are, it is not as a consequence of this legislation itself. This Bill does no more than to legislate as required by article 28 (12) of the Constitution which provides inter alia:

The following matters shall be regulated in accordance with law, namely, the organisation of, and distribution of business amongst, Departments of State, the designation of members of the Government to be the Ministers in charge of the said Departments, the discharge of the functions of the office of a member of the Government during his temporary absence or incapacity, and the remuneration of the members of the Government.

We had to introduce this Bill in order to create a new Department to be concerned solely with the public service. If we did not do that we could not hive off from the Department of Finance the responsibilities which at present lie with this Department.

Senator Russell raised the possibility that the Minister would be known as the Minister for Finance and the Public Service and his Parliamentary Secretary as the Parliamentary Secretary for Finance and the Public Service. There might be some confusion in Senator Russell's mind and in the minds of other Senators. They will be two separate Departments of State. It will be somewhat similar to the present position where the Minister for Health is also the Minister for Social Welfare. But he holds two separate seals of office and there are two separate Departments separately reporting to the Tánaiste as Minister for Health and as Minister for Social Welfare. Likewise, the proposal in the Bill is that the Minister for Finance would also be separately Minister for the Public Service. He will have two seals and he will wear two hats.

The argument has been raised very validly that perhaps they should be separated. Senator Higgins was particularly anxious that the day might come when there would be two individual Ministers and that the two Departments would not be related. I do not exclude that possibility, but the Devlin Committee went into this at some great length. They considered that, for the time being at any rate, it should lie with the Minister for Finance because personnel and organisation are interrelated with budgetary matters and remuneration. At present something over one-third of the current budget is related to payments to people engaged in the public service. It will be seen that questions of pay and remuneration are very significant matters and it is thought that it would be wise to get the new Department at least working before a decision would be taken to have a totally separate Department. It may occur in the future, but as structures operate at the moment it is considered to be prudent to keep them within the responsibility of the one Minister.

I am glad that two Senators sympathise with the burden which the Minister for Finance has to carry. As I mentioned in the Dáil, this covers everything not only related to general economic planning, budgetary and fiscal matters but also everything from the bloodstock industry to the National Theatre. The way to relieve the Minister for Finance of this burden is to move off from the Department of Finance any of these matters which are with the Department for purely historical reasons but have little bearing today on the overwhelming responsibilities of the Minister for Finance in relation to the economy. He should not be troubled with the several matters of detail, important in themselves but indeed because they are so important they ought to be dealt with by the Ministers who have special disciplinary responsibility for the several small fields which at present lie on the deck of the Minister for Finance.

This redistribution of responsibilities, not only from the Department of Finance but between other Departments, cannot take place until we have a new Department of the Public Service which can do the thinking, as Senator Quinlan pointed out, that present institutions do not permit to be done. The men who ought to be doing the thinking, revising and planning are unable to get away from dealing with the trivia of the day in order to prepare the great plans for reorganisation which are so necessary for tomorrow. We are hopeful, therefore, that this new move will mean that, instead, of personnel and organisation matters being subordinate to the other responsibilities of the Department of Finance, the new Department with qualified men will be able to look after these great responsibilities which have been identified in successful private enterprise long since as matters deserving special attention and skills. The same recognition has been given in theory in the public service but nothing has been done to put this correct concept into practice. We are now hoping that this will occur.

I should like to emphasise that there is no intention at this stage to confer on the Minister for the Public Service responsibility except in relation to those functions which at present are exercised by the Minister for Finance in personal and organisation matters. Before any new powers would be conferred on the Minister for the Public Service new legislation would be required.

It is important to emphasise that, particularly to people in the local government service who may be worried that the Minister for the Public Service and his new Department are going to impinge on their rights. That cannot be done without new legislation. It is important that reassurance should be given. In order that the matter can be adequately considered, the Minister for the Public Service will ask the Advisory Council to consider the personnel and organisational problems in local government, health boards and State-sponsored bodies. No power could be conferred on anybody without new legislation. A study, as you know, is one thing—the walls of the libraries of this House and many other institutions of State are lined with reports that have never been implemented. I am hoping that will not happen in relation to the new Advisory Council on the Public Service. The mere fact that a report is written is no certainty that the several recommendations in it will be implemented.

Senator Lenihan and other Senators emphasised that it was for parliamentarians themselves to improve their own procedures. I adverted to the responsibility of Parliament, both in my speech in the Dáil and in the Seanad today, because I felt it was appropriate to remind both Houses of the Oireachtas that they had not updated their procedures to give themselves the powers they ought to have in order to supervise the statutory bodies to which they have given birth. This is a failure of the parliamentarians. The Devlin Committee were not asked to consider this. At the time they were sitting there was at least one Committee in the Dáil and perhaps one in the Seanad which were supposed to be considering improvements in the procedures of the Houses of the Oireachtas. They sat, considered the matter and wrote some reports, but there the matters lie. I do not think this is good enough.

A number of Senators, including Senator Lenihan, said their own personal experience was that many people in State-sponsored bodies would welcome the involvement of Parliament. I think this is important, not that I see it as Senator Halligan does as something that would be a twin to the Committee of Public Accounts. I would consider it appropriate that they would review current and past expenditure, but what I think is even more important in relation to State-sponsored bodies is that the parliamentarians should, with the directors of State-sponsored bodies and the people responsible for the management of them, be looking ahead so that we would not do, as we so often do, react when crisis is already upon us. We ought to be capable of working with the State-sponsored bodies, planning ahead for the kind of Ireland, the kind of superstructure, the kind of State-sponsored bodies and machinery which we should be planning in 1975 and 1980. Until such time as we have Parliamentary Committees we clearly are not going to do that because our own parliamentary procedures and Standing Orders do not permit us to be prophetic in our activities.

In relation to what Senator Owens said with regard to having the views of trade unions sympathetically considered, I would like to emphasise that the Advisory Council is not conceived as being a representational body. Organisations will not have a right of representation on it. I do not think we would get the best kind of body if we were to allocate a fixed number of positions on that body to particular organisations, be they of workers or of employers. However, I would be most anxious—in this connection I would give my own personal guarantee—that the Department of Public Service would listen to the views of all people employed in the public service. Indeed, I would hope that it might be possible for the new Department to be more readily available to workers to hear their views than it was possible for the Department of Finance to be in the past. Anything I can do in this connection I certainly will do, because it is terribly important that, as we are proposing to blend the several grades and classifications and strata in the public service, we should be available to ease people's anxieties.

We are anxious to encourage enterprise and initiative and give credit for merit. This will mean that, to some extent, the old principle of seniority will be modified so that merit as well as seniority can get more respect in the future than it has in the past. It will be for the good of the public service and, I believe, it will give the job satisfaction to which so many Senators made reference. I appreciate this anxiety. We must take some steps to alleviate any anxiety which may develop.

Senator Quinlan identified the greater readiness on both sides of this House and of the other House to offer constructive criticism and to improve the whole mode of behaviour in Parliament. I think that is true. It is one of the benefits flowing from the change of Government which all sides of the House can recognise. Those of us who have for so long been in Opposition appreciate just how frustrating parliamentary life can be unless you are more actively involved. We would not wish that frustration to be inflicted upon those who may be wanting to remove us from ministerial office. We believe that it would be much better if people were to be involved on committee work and I think there is every possibility that that can be activated and encouraged in the years immediately ahead.

Both Senator Quinlan and Senator Owens complained that mobility in the public sector appears to be in one direction only. I think they had two separate things in mind. I suspect Senator Owens was thinking of mobility from the Civil Service, as we know it, into local government and Senator Quinlan saw it as mobility from the public sector into the private sector because people were not being adequately rewarded either in job satisfaction or remuneration in the public sector. I think both Senators are right in identifying those particular trends. I do not think it is good. It creates a certain amount of ill-will and one would hope that the new Department of the Public Service will be able to ensure true mobility without it being in one particular direction.

Several Members referred to paragraph 5 of the Schedule, which states:

Where a member of the Council is nominated either as a candidate for election to either House of the Oireachtas or as a member of Seanad Éireann, he shall thereupon cease to be a member of the Council.

I can sympathise with some of the views expressed. This Bill is one for which I must accept responsibility. I do accept it as it is, a Bill which I have introduced. It is not dissimilar from a Bill which my predecessor had launched before the change in Government earlier this year.

The reason for this provision is to avoid the injection of what could be acrimonious political interest on a council which is supposed to advise a Minister. Possibly we are moving towards the day in which parliamentarians can act more responsibly than in the past and where we might have less partisanship than we had. I think for the time being it might be as well, in this particular sector, to avoid having a politician on this council which will be dealing in the main with people who are in the public service and, on that account, ought to be left free from the fear that, possibly, political considerations as distinct from purely administrative ones are entering into decisions which might affect them. I am sure this is not the last word we will be having about the Department of the Public Service and its Advisory Council and this, perhaps, can be looked at on some future date.

Senator Russell thought that eight members on the council will be too small a number. In reply to that, we know from ordinary life that sometimes the smaller the number of people entrusted with responsibility the greater the chance that responsibility will be discharged. There is the danger that if we make this council too big that it will be nobody's responsibility to do the work and give the necessary advice. As I mentioned earlier, it is not a representational council. It will be a council which we hope will be composed of people with the best brains and experience in this field and it will also be a council composed of continually changing personnel. We have provided in the Bill that nobody will be appointed for any longer than four years. Some of its initial members will be appointed for even shorter periods so that we will have a continuing mix of interests and age groups and backgrounds. This, we believe, is the best way to ensure that we will have continually refreshing views put before the Minister and, in turn, before both Houses of the Oireachtas because there will have to be an annual report made to the Oireachtas.

Senator Russell mentioned, in relation to section 5, that there appeared to be some uncertainty as to the difference between subsections 1 (a) and 1 (b). Subsection 1 (a) is the one which gives the council the general power to advise the Minister. Subsection 1 (b) is the one which obliges the council to give the Minister advice on a particular matter upon which the Minister seeks advice. The first subsection is general and the second one is very specific.

Senator West mentioned that our structure of Government is a pyramid. He thought that a good Minister squashes down on the pyramid rather than accepting all that comes up to the apex. I think he is right. Any Minister worth his salt realises that sitting on a pyramid can be most uncomfortable. If he is wise he certainly gets nearer the ground. At the same time, there is a great deal to be said for the public service. They have served us exceedingly well. If it has limitations today it is because the political leaders have not restructured it. It is not because the advice has not been given about new structures. The advice has been given but Ministers have not squashed down upon the public service pyramid. Now that we are doing so I hope it will be much more effective in the future.

Senator West also hoped that the prejudice in the public service against recruitment of people from outside the service would go. I think it is already going. I certainly welcome the idea of people in the private sector going into the public service for a period of years. It happens regularly in other countries with very great benefit to both the private sector and the public sector.

Those of us who are in Parliament or who have ever had the privilege of being in public office get a new understanding of what the public sector is doing. We realise that the music hall joke that the Civil Service is merely a tea-making shop is untrue. Our public servants are serving our people, in many cases far beyond the call of duty, and this is not generally recognised. There is a certain intolerance in the private sector towards the public sector which is not justified, but the spread of this knowledge is likely to multiply if we have this mobility between the two sections.

Senator Higgins spoke about the general powerlessness in our society. Several other Senators spoke on this too. We all feel it. This Bill in no way touches upon powerlessness or power except to transfer responsibility from one Department to another. I as Minister, or my successor will, as visualised by Senator Halligan, have to carry the can of responsibility for everything done by the new Department, and that is as it should be. I trust I have touched upon most points raised in the course of this debate and I look forward to having further discussions on this problem on the remaining Stages. I do not know if the House would be disposed to give them to me now, but I would hope that on future occasions when the Estimate of the Department of the Public Service and the reports of the Advisory Council are being discussed it will be possible to tease out some of the problems mentioned by Senators.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.