There is much that is objectionable in this Bill. Senator Killilea has made an excellent series of contributions in the earlier section, section 26, concerning the composition of the board. The real, basic, fundamental objection to this Bill arises in sections 30 and 32. Section 30 sets out the powers and duties of the board and section 32 sets out the annual programme of activities.
Section 30 (1) (a) states:
The Board shall exercise general supervision over the work of the Authority and be responsible for the attainment of the objectives of the Authority and the completion and implementation of such educational, advisory and research programmes as may, in accordance with section 32, be adopted with the approval of the Minister.
That is the section that effectively hamstrings this National Agricultural Advisory, Education and Research Authority, especially when taken in conjunction with section 32 (1) which states:
The Board shall prepare, in respect of each financial year, a programme, in such form as the Minister may require, of the projected activities of the Authority in that year.
That means that there is no board. We have an independent institute that could carry out its work and the legislation setting it up could have been amended so that it could still carry out its work in a reasonably free manner. That cannot be done by reason of this section and by reason of the subsequent section, section 32.
The Minister may check me up on this, but I have gone through the 1958 Act and through this Bill and counted the number of times "Minister" is mentioned in each piece of legislation. It occurs 175 times in the current legislation and is mentioned 24 times in the Act under which the institute has operated effectively for 20 years. That is the sort of bureaucratisation that, in my view, will totally stultify and frustrate this measure. All that had to be done was to amend the Bill by adding the extra advisory and educational functions. The independence and separateness of the institute could be preserved. In the 1958 legislation the functions of the institute are set out in great detail, and they have been operating accordingly for 20 years and there is not one, single reference to the Minister, except at the end where it is provided that the institute shall advise the Minister on any matter relating to agricultural research or agricultural science on which its advice is requested by him. In subsequent sections the Minister requires that the activities of the authority for the current year shall be submitted to him. This is not mentioned in section 4 of the original legislation. It goes through the functions of the institute without any reference to approval or requirement of the Minister or Ministers.
In section 4 (3) it states that: "The institute shall advise the Minister". In other words, the institute is put into the primary position. It does not have to have the requirement of Ministerial approval, literally and metaphorically, to dot every i and cross every it in regard to its annual programme of work. That is what is envisaged here if one reads sections 30 and 32 together. It is very graphically brought home in the figures I have mentioned; 175 examples of Ministerial intervention under this Bill; 24 examples of Ministerial intervention under the legislation setting up the institute.
The capital situation is the very same. The capital fund is established under the foundation legislation and again, the fund is to be used by the institute solely for certain purposes. It is stated in the opening of section 10 of the foundation legislation that "the Minister for Finance shall, when requested by the Council to do so, pay to the Institute". The institute is in the strong position that the Minister for Finance shall pay the council of the institute when they require. It is put into reverse in this legislation whereby the institute is effectively being translated into an executive agency where the Minister, himself, must approve the programme of work or approve of capital or current funding expenditure.
The same thing applies to section 11 of the foundation Act.
The Minister for Finance shall, when requested by the Council to do so, pay to the Institute, out of the moneys held in the Counterpart Special Account, a sum of one million pounds and that sum, when paid to the Institute, shall be known as the Endowment Fund.
The important section is section 12, which deals with the current fund. This is the fund that shows the big leap backwards that we are taking in this legislation. Section 12 (1) of the foundation legislation, setting up the State endowment of the institute, states:
For the purpose of assisting the Institute to carry out effectively its functions under this Act, there shall be paid to the Institute in every financial year, out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, a grant towards the expenses of the Institute the amount of which shall be determined by the Minister for Finance in consultation with the Minister and the Council after due consideration of any information furnished under subsection (2) of this section.
Subsection (2) states:
The Council shall furnish to the Minister such information regarding its income and expenditure as he may from time to time require.
We have here a global grant situation. The council requests, the Minister gives the annual grant and the council shall furnish the Minister with information. That is the basic, annual, working current grant provision. It is set out here that the board shall exercise under this legislation general supervision over the work of the authority. The programme shall be adopted with the approval of the Minister. That is the key phrase. Section 32 (1) states:
The Board shall prepare, in respect of each financial year, a programme, in such form as the Minister may require, of the projected activities of the Authority in that year.
Not alone must the authority be submitted to exercising functions which must have the approval of the Minister, it must submit a detailed programme which the Minister must approve before they can implement it. We will go on to the financial provisions at a later stage in which this is set out in greater detail.
We are going backwards instead of going forward into a progressive situation. Great progress has been made over 20 years and we are effectively limiting the objectives of this new agency. It will be so circumscribed, so hamstrung, so spancelled to the Minister's Department that in effect it can do nothing in the way of any initiative or any creative or original contribution to Irish agriculture without the approval of the Minister in detail in regard to its programme of work. That is what is happening under this section.
Ministers come and go, as I happen to know well, and basically what is involved here is the power of the administration that would be there day in day out. Some principal officers at some level will be handling these accounts, handling this programme of work, dealing with the powers and the duties of the new board, and in effect they will decide what will be done with the approval of the Minister and what will not. They will decide on the programme of work.
The whole idea behind setting up a body such as An Foras Talúntais was that it would be a creative, original body endowed originally by way of direct capital grant out of the American counterpart funds. Having been set up in that way, it was agreed between the Irish and the American Governments that an annual grant from the Irish Government would suffice to keep it going and to carry on the particular functions for which it was established and that there should be the minimum of interference.
This legislation runs right through the foundation Bill and I challenge anybody to go through it. I have gone through it line by line, and running right through it is the establishment of the independent and separate authority with a view to giving it the desired freedom to do a good job for Irish agriculture. That freedom is now being frustrated and stultified by this measure, and the figures I have quoted show that this operates right through the Bill. Nowhere is it more evident than in this section, which is one of the key sections in the Bill. It deals with the powers and the duties of the proposed executive agency. When that section is taken in conjunction with section 32 one sees how effectively, in fact, the administration in the Department of Agriculture, Finance and the Public Service have taken over this fine independent body that has done such magnificent work for Irish agriculture for over 20 years. It will now be effectively muzzled.
There is no point in the Minister for Agriculture standing up here and telling us that he does not intend to do this or does not intend to do that. In fact, the basic programme has to be approved by the Minister and the projected activities of the authority for the year have to be approved in detail by the Minister. That is the sort of situation that will exist as against the situation that exists currently where the council of the institute submit for an annual grant. The Minister may enquire into the operation of that grant from year to year with a view to making a decision the following year but the institute is not required to submit the sort of detailed programme of work that is envisaged under sections 30 and 32. If that in effect works out so that the authority is no more than an authority in name and is, in fact, totally subject to the administrations in the various Departments I have mentioned, well then everything is finished as far as the excellent work that has been done by the institute for 20 years is concerned.
We all know what happens when a creative institute or organisation of this kind gets totally within the ambit of civil service control. Now I am not decrying the civil service or anything of that kind. Administration is essential in any community. The job of administrations is to administer, to ensure that the law is carried out, to ensure that the basic administration of the State moves forward, but it is not an administration's job to put its fingers into research work. It is not an administration's job to put its fingers into basic matters concerned with development, concerned with organising new techniques and new developments for Irish agriculture. This is a highly specialist important business where there must be the maximum of specialist investigation at research and development level and the maximum communication from that through advisory and education channels. That is not the work of an administration. An administration has its own job to do, and a very important and fundamental job, but my view as to how society should be run in Ireland in this respect is that these educational, research and development associations, as far as possible, should be removed from the day-to-day administration of the civil service, should be given their annual grant to carry out their work in accordance with a certain mandate and that the basic administration is a separate matter altogether for the civil service.
We now have this Bill—and I think this was said earlier on—which is as much the thinking of the Devlin Report as it is of the administration. This report, by the way, was commissioned by the previous Government and it is a report with which I disagree. It will be disastrous for this small country of ours if we are to have a total takeover by civil service administration in every aspect of creative activity and so frustrate the sort of work that is being done by giving fine bodies in various areas of social and economic activity a reasonable degree of independence to carry out the necessary job. This section is a very real example of what I regard as a retreat back instead of a step forward in regard to public administration.