asked the Minister for Finance whether it is in accord with the principles governing Civil Service procedure for a high officer of the Department of Education to publish an article in a periodical purporting to set out Government policy on education; and whether he will make a statement on this matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Article by Civil Servant.
61.
Standing instructions provide that no officer is permitted, without the prior sanction of the head of his Department, to prepare for publication or publish any article touching on the business of his own or other Departments.
The officer concerned received the permission of the Minister for Educacation to contribute the article mentioned by the Deputy. This permission was given on the understanding that any views expressed would be personal ones and could in no way be taken as reflecting the views of either the Government or the Minister. It was made clear in the article that the officer was expressing his own views only. There could, therefore, be no question of the article purporting to set out Government policy on education.
Would not the Minister agree with me that this departure from the general practice is highly undesirable in that it creates utter confusion in the public mind if an Assistant Secretary of a Department of State publishes an elaborate policy statement and, at the same time, the Minister for Education presiding over the Department of which this officer is the Assistant Secretary accepts no responsibility for the policy advocated in the statement while the public generally believe that the officer concerned is primarily interested in advising the Minister on education policy generally?
The Deputy will appreciate that this is a fairly difficult area. The situation has changed a great deal in the past decade or so, I believe, and it is the view of the Government, that the policy for any Department should be enunciated by the political head of that Department.
Hear, hear.
However, it is true to say that by now in the civil Service we have accumulated a great deal of technical and specialised knowledge and, from time to time, Ministers are faced with demands from technical bodies and organisations of one sort or another to have their officers who have this specialised knowledge at their disposal read papers or initiate discussions on particular aspects. The Deputy will appreciate that it is difficult at times to draw the line between what is, if you like, technical and specialised knowledge and what borders on policy. I myself in my own Department find this difficulty facing me from time to time. One does not want a situation where a great deal of the valuable knowledge which is stored up in Civil Service Departments is not available to the public and cannot be used as a starting ground for useful public dislishe cussion on problems of one sort or another. I agree at the same time that policy as such should be enunciated by the political head of the Department alone.
May I take it from what the Minister has said, without implying any censure on anyone who may have acted in the past, that general policy in the future will be that officers of the Department of any Minister will not make declarations on policy other than through the Minister speaking on behalf of the Department for which he is responsible to this House?
I should like to make two points on that. First of all, the Deputy will appreciate that sometimes a situation will arise where a Minister may have to ask the head of his Department to read a speech or statement on his behalf.
I accept that.
The second point is this. I am told—I am not sufficiently expert to know—that the particular article to which the Deputy is referring would not normally be regarded as being a statement of policy.
Very much so.
Did the Minister read it?
I read it.
It is rather in the specialised technical area to which I have been referring.
May I ask the Minister for Finance if he has not read it would he consider reading it? The Minister for Finance is the head of the Civil Service. Would he consider reading the article and considering the general question as to whether matters of policy are appropriate matters on which civil servants should take up public positions, fully recognising the vast reservoir of expertise there is in Departments but bearing in mind the over-riding question that the public should be reassured that this country is governed by Oireachtas Éireann through an elected Government and not through an anonymous bureaucracy?
Is it not a fact that one of the strengths of the Administration of this country has been that the civil servants, the Ministers' advisers, were supposed to be anonymous and not to seek publicity? In this instance I cannot see what particular reservoir of technical knowledge was available to the Deputy Secretary that was not available to a great many other people. Was not the borderline between a statement of policy and an expose of the technicalities of education a very thin one? Does the Minister not feel that the general public in this instance at least thought that a civil servant was dictating policy for the Government and expressing it, and that the Minister was there simply to endorse it, so to speak?
Any such impression on the part of the general public, for whatever reason it might be held, would be erroneous. May I quote from the paper? The writer says:
I am speaking my own mind and the responsibility for everything I say is mine alone. Neither the Minister for Education nor his Department is accountable for any opinion, speculation or forecast that I may offer.
He had the opportunity of pressing that point of view on the Minister which no ordinary citizen has, and what is the ordinary citizen to believe in circumstances like this but that it is the civil servant who is dictating policy and not the Minister who is formulating it?
I have already indicated my opinion that this is a difficult area. I can only fall back on the statement of principle with which I began, that policy decisions and their announcement are matters for the political head of the Department. I do not think, however, at this stage of our development, with so many complex technical problems facing us in so many different fields, Deputies would not be prepared to permit the type of technical papers to which I have been referring to be published by civil servants. I want to point out to the House that the demands for the expert knowledge which our civil servants have acquired by now in the different fields of economics, sociology, and so on——
Oh, my God. Would you bury that topic fathoms deep?
——are numerous.
Psychologists and sociologists have driven the country mad.
No Minister could possibly attempt to attend all the various gatherings, seminars, and so on, for which these demands are made. Therefore, I think it is only sensible where it is purely a technical or scientific matter that civil servants should be permitted to attend and give this limited type of dissertation.
Are we all agreed that the Oireachtas and not bureaucracy is the Government of this country?
If not, it will be.