The definition of "public services", as I mentioned on Second Stage, is very wide and it does embrace the semi-State bodies. Is it envisaged that the organisation and the financing of the semi-State bodies will be brought within the purview of this Department?
Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 1973: Committee and Final Stages.
Question proposed: "That section 1 stand part of the Bill."
The definition of the Public Service has been arrived at by the parliamentary draftsman after very long deliberation and consultation. Outside the Civil Service, it is generally accepted that officers of local authorities and of State-sponsored bodies supported wholly out of public funds are public servants. The status of employees in commercial State-sponsored bodies is at least arguable. The present position is, therefore, that while the term public service is used to cover all officers and employments remunerated out of public moneys, it is not a precisely defined term and there are many cases where it is open to argument whether a position is or is not within the public service. This is the point Deputy de Valera is making.
As far as the Minister for the public service will be concerned, the existing powers relating to public servants exercised by the Minister for Finance will be transferred to the Minister for the Public Service by order made under section 6 of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 1939. Any new powers to be exercised in relation to part of the public service not covered by existing legislation will have to be the subject of fresh legislation. The definition is required in connection with the power of the Public Service Advisory Council to advise the Minister on matters relating to organisation and personnel in the public service. For this purpose, it is intended that bodies in addition to the Civil Service to be included in the public service shall be bodies established by or under statute and financed wholly or partly from public funds. It is not intended that there should be any question that private sector undertakings which are in receipt of any form of State aid should be included. The definition provides, for a start, that only the Civil Service will be included in the public service for the purposes of the Act. Other public bodies will be added by regulations made by the Minister for the Public Service as and when the new Department becomes equipped to deal with the expanded public service.
I take it the intention is ultimately to embrace within the ambit of this new Department of the Public Service the administration of the semi-State bodies. This is certainly possible within the definition section. Is it the intention?
At the moment nothing is intended other than to bring the Civil Service, as we know it, within the ambit of the new Department, but provision is being made so that in future the Advisory Council could look at the personnel and organisation aspects of these bodies, but this would not relate to any other function of those bodies. It would be simply to have a look at the personnel and organisation problems. It will be accepted, I think, by all wise people that there is a relationship between the people in such bodies and the Civil Service as we know it and, indeed, perhaps both sectors could be improved if there was greater mobility between them. It is therefore thought advisable that the council should at least have a look at these areas and that they should not be restricted to looking at the Civil Service alone and have no regard to the personnel and organisation problems affecting the other services.
Keeping strictly to the definition in section 1, the plain answer is, I take it, that that definition is designedly wide enough to embrace semi-State bodies as well as the regular Civil Service.
Yes.
I just want to clarify one or two points. The Minister said earlier, in reply to Deputy de Valera's first question, that for the moment the existing powers of the Minister for Finance in regard to the public service would transfer to the Minister for the Public Service but that any new powers would require legislation. I may be misquoting, but I thought that is what he said. I am wondering if that is correct and, if it is not, the fact is that in certain circumstances it could be done by regulation and in other instances legislation would perhaps be necessary. That is the first point. The second point is—it reinforces the point made by Deputy de Valera—that this definition of the public service is so designed as to enable it, if thought desirable, to include not only what are commonly known as semi-State bodies but also local authorities, health boards and other such bodies because if the basic recommendation of the Devlin Report is to be accepted, it will involve this concept of the kind of bodies I have mentioned being regarded as part of the public service with the consequential right of mobility the Minister has mentioned and certain other things that follow from that so that this definition, as I understand it, is designed to enable that to come about, but it will only come about as and when decisions are made in relation to these various bodies to bring them into the definition of the public service under the terms of this Bill and such decisions, if made, when being implemented will be implemented either by regulation or legislation. Clearly legislation would come before the House, but I am not quite clear as to whether regulations would come before the House.
The section, as drafted, will enable the council to review everything in the public service and Deputy Colley is right in saying that, when they give advice to the Minister, the Minister may consider it proper to seek powers and, if he seeks new powers which are not at present conferred on the Minister for Finance, he will have to come into the House to get the legislative authority to exercise whatever powers the council deem to be proper. It is quite possible that a great many of the changes which the council may recommend could be implemented by the various statutory bodies themselves without the Minister having to seek power to implement them. I would hope indeed that that would be what would happen rather than that it should be necessary whenever any improvement was required that legislation should be enacted or regulations should be made. There will have to be regulations before there are any new steps as regards the scope of the council in the sector outside the Civil Service.
Does this mean that if the council advise that the administration of semi-State bodies be included under the definition of public service that will require legislation or can the Minister merely approve?
Perhaps I should emphasise that at the outset the council will deal only with the Civil Service, as we understand that term, but if other bodies are to be added to the ambit of the review of the council the Minister would make a regulation bringing those bodies within the ambit of the council. If new powers are required thereafter to deal with any problems which may be thrown up and which are not resolved by the voluntary action of the bodies themselves, then legislative powers would be required and it would be a matter for the appropriate Minister to come to the House and seek those powers.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
SECTION 3.
Question proposed: "That section 3 stand part of the Bill."
Who will be the accounting officer for the new Department?
The Secretary of the Department of Public Service.
Will he be accounting officer merely for that Department?
Yes.
Will there be any change in the accounting officers throughout the service?
It is not at present visualised that there should be. It is possible that the council might recommend that in future there should be some alteration in the system, but I do not visualise it at the moment. I think there is a great deal to be said for having the secretary of the Department as accounting officer. I know Deputy de Valera as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts would prefer no change. Perhaps later on, in our wisdom, we may agree to a change.
Is it not so that there have recently been changes in regard to who should be accounting officer in relation to certain Votes? When I say "recently" I mean within this year. Has there not been a change in relation to the accounting officer for the Department of Finance? Certain Votes for which he was accounting officer have, I think, been transferred to other persons.
I am not certain, but I shall look into it. The Deputy has stimulated my thought processes.
Can the Minister throw any light on the portion of subsection (4) referring to the Documentary Evidence Act 1925?
This is a technical provision to bring the new Department into line with the other Departments in regard to the application of the provisions of the previous Ministers and Secretaries Acts and the Documentary Evidence Act, 1925. The 1925 Act deals with the proof of documents, orders, et cetera, and with the authentication of official documents on behalf of the Minister. Similar provisions have been made in previous Ministers and Secretaries Acts. Apparently it is required in order that the 1925 Act would apply to the new Department.
Could the Minister tell us what is the purpose of subsection (5)?
The purpose is to enable the necessary orders for the transfer of functions to the new Department to be made before the Department is established. Again, a similar provision has been made in all previous Ministers and Secretaries Acts, so we are following well established precedents. It is necessary before the Department is created.
The Minister will appreciate that because we do not often have legislation setting up new Departments it is no harm to put it on the records.
I quite agree.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 4 to 6, inclusive, agreed to.
SCHEDULE.
Question proposed: "That the Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill."
As a matter of procedure, do we take the Schedule as a whole?
As a whole.
In regard to subsection 1 (1), I referred to this on Second Stage. As the Minister knows, the Devlin Report recommended that the advisory council consist of eight persons, the chairman and seven others, one of whom would be the secretary of the new Public Service Department, that four persons should be from the private sector and three from the public sector. The Minister on Second Stage spelled out to some extent the difficulties which arise in determining what is the public sector and what is the private sector.
My purpose now is to reinforce a point I made then that whatever difficulty there may be in legal definition of the public sector as distinct from the private sector, I think it is very important that by the appointments to the advisory council the Minister should make it clear beyond any shadow of doubt that he is getting on the council four persons from what is commonly understood to be the private sector and three persons from what is commonly understood to be the public sector, as distinct from the arguments about the grey areas between them.
I believe this to be of importance for reasons which I do not want to go back over again. I was making the point that for very understandable reasons there is in certain areas in the public sector a built-in resistance to the changes which it will be necessary for the Public Service Department to bring about. Where such built-in resistance does not obtain, it is commonly believed that it does and this is almost as bad from the point of view of the problems the Minister is faced with here.
Consequently, I think it is very important that in making these appointments the Minister should make it quite clear that the advisory council need not be loaded in any way and does not appear to be loaded in any way in favour of the public sector, so that people looking at the operation from the outside might believe, rightly or wrongly, that the council was so constituted that recommendations unacceptable to what is commonly known as the public sector would not be made. I hope I am making my point clear to the Minister. I merely want to reiterate the point which I made before.
This paragraph, as drafted in the Bill, follows the recommendation of the Public Service Organisation Review Group and Deputy Colley may be assured that we will be most careful to select the personnel of the new council in such a way as to provide a fair balance of interests. The chairman may not be a person who is whole-time engaged in the public service. He could be a person who was a director of some State-sponsored body as long as he was not whole-time in that capacity. We would be desirous that he would be somebody from the private sector who would show great ability in the personnel and organisation fields.
The secretary of the new Department will also be one of the members of the council and this will ensure, together with the appointment of three other persons from the public sector, that the public sector will be adequately represented. I would not wish this council to be born in an atmosphere of resentment against new ideas and restructuring because I think the whole public service would be the better for a thorough revamping because at present a great deal of skills and aptitudes of the various members of the public service are not given full opportunity, and many people have capacities far beyond the present scope which the public service can offer them. As a result, the public service and the country as a whole lose. We are anxious to change that and I think the best way to ensure that we get a fair balance of new ideas is to ensure equal representation as between the public and private sectors. Deputy Colley may be assured we will bear in mind the views he has put before the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment and received for final consideration.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
There is little to be said that has not been said on Second Stage.
Hear, hear.
I know I am confined to what is in the Bill but perhaps I will be allowed to say that I am sorry the Minister did not take up my suggestion that we would look into this Bill in a broader committee manner. Be that as it may, the Bill confers powers for the benefit of the administration of the bureaucratic side of the Minister's responsibility, and with that I have not very much quarrel.
The quarrel is with the implications of this Bill for this House. In effect, by the refusal of my suggestion, we have been asked to rubber-stamp a wide, undefined provision. The scope of the Bill is very undefined and it is very hard to see from the Bill as it comes to be passed in its final Stage what it effects and what it does not effect. I think there are grounds for the fears that some of us expressed on Second Stage.
Let me finish by being quite definite that I am not blaming the Civil Service side of the Minister's responsibility for this. It is their business to seek efficiency and to do the best they can. There is in the passing of this Bill a warning for this House, which is in arrears with its business, in arrears with its financial business, a House whose only effective Committee is dealing with finances of some years past, a House in arrears with its own Estimates, and which is now asked to function as a rubber stamp. It appears that it is degenerating completely into that role. I say these fairly strong words designedly in the hope that Deputies on all sides of this House can be bestirred to make this Parliament an effective, modern, democratic institution and not simply to glide down traditionally from the past like the famous House of Lords in Gilbert and Sullivan that did nothing in particular and did it very well.
With these remarks I wish the Minister the best of luck with his Bill. I would also like the Minister to look to his parliamentary side. The Minister or his successor of his colleagues or any other Minister, because of this development, if this House becomes a rubber stamp, will quickly become mere cyphers. The Minister, who is a political Minister, needs parliamentary and political support. For apparent reasons of efficiency or for executive reasons, if he ignores that, he runs the risk—and it has happened in the past—of finding himself completely dependent on one side for his support and, becoming completely dependent on that, he loses his power and his individuality and his capability as a Minister, which is what he should be in the primary sense.
I do not intend what I have said as abuse. I do not intend it as an attack on the present Minister or any Minister or on the Civil Service, but I do mean it as a warning to every one of us in this House. We are already involved in Europe. This Bill is a further step towards the emasculation of Parliament and we have nothing corresponding to it on the European scene. This Parliament will be needed more and more to fulfil its functions. If the passing of this Bill has these defects it can, on the other hand, have the great merit of sounding the alarm to each and every one of us in this House, which has not faced up to itself for so long, which has not debated its own Estimates for so long —I do not know quite how long but I will check. It is in that sense that I want to make these points with full appreciation of and commendation for the Civil Service which has carried us. There is an imbalance in our mechanism. We have become lopsided. Unless we correct that we will drift into being a totally bureaucratically-administered State with disadvantages not only to the citizens and Parliament but to the very officers who are operating that bureaucracy.
I had intended to say a few words but, arising from what Deputy de Valera has said, I must say something. First of all, I would not disagree with Deputy de Valera that Parliament does require urgently to update its procedures to try to make them more efficient from a democratic point of view, which is not necessarily the same thing as more efficient from the point of view of the rate at which business is dealt with and despatched. There is an important distinction there. Under either heading we can do with reform, but I could not agree with Deputy de Valera when he said, as I think he did, that this Bill contributes to the emasculation of Parliament. It does not. These two matters are completely separate. It is true to say that this Bill is designed to improve the public service and its efficiency. I think Deputy de Valera said that he paid tribute to the public service for trying to improve itself, but he said it is to its advantage. I am not sure what he meant by that.
Let me make it clear that I know, of my own personal knowledge, that there are a number of sectors in the public service which do not welcome this Bill and do not welcome the setting up of the Public Service Department. If the Public Service Department is going to contribute to greater efficiency in the public service generally that is something to be lauded. It is something that the community are entitled to expect. It is our duty as legislators to bring that about and to make it possible. I do not think that Deputy de Valera would disagree with anything I have said on that. His fear—and I appreciate it— is that if the public service becomes even more efficient then it is—and contrary to much popular opinion it is quite efficient—and if Parliament becomes even more inefficient than it has been, the net effect will be that we will appear to be legislating but, in fact, we will be run by the Civil Service. I appreciate that fear.
This Bill is not contributing to that problem. The solution of that problem does not lie in this Bill. It lies in the hands of the Deputies of this House. It behoves us to pay particular attention to the warning sounded by Deputy de Valera in that regard. I want to make it clear that, in my opinion, this Bill is not contributing to the problem. The solution is something quite removed from this Bill.
There is one other matter to which I want to refer briefly. It is something to which we have referred on Second Stage. I am a little unhappy about it and I may have misunderstood what the Minister said. If I understood him, I am unhappy about it. The Minister will remember that, on the Second Stage, he referred to the decision which had been made—a decision of the previous Government although he did not say so—that the Aireacht concept would be experimented with in four different Departments. At the end of the Second Stage I raised a question with the Minister asking him to bear in mind that, if this experiment were to be carried out without the full panoply of what had been envisaged for the experiment, he could find that he would be told that the experiment showed that the Aireacht concept had failed. I asked him to consider, in order to make it work, even on a temporary basis as an experiment, trying out the provision of a commissioner for administrative justice.
I do not know whether I understood the Minister, or whether he understood me. It seemed to me that the Minister's answer to that was to say that the Government did not intend in any way to diminish the power of Parliament or the right of Deputies to ask Parliamentary Questions. I do not know whether the Minister meant by "diminish"—and I am not sure if that is the word he used—that it was not intended to make any change in the procedure in this House arising out of the implementation of the Aireacht concept. If that is what the Minister intended to convey, I am disturbed about it. If it is not, perhaps the Minister will explain it in a moment? It is conceivable that the implementation of the Aireacht concept, with changes in our procedure here consequent on that and with limitation on our right to ask Parliamentary Questions in certain areas but with a different form of machinery for dealing with these matters and with new machinery which would evolve for dealing with the day-to-day administration of semi-State bodies, which are not at present subject to review, we might well be better off from a democratic as well as an efficiency point of view.
I hope the Minister was not conveying that it is not intended to try out this experiment. If it is to be tried out this must entail, at least on an experimental basis, changes in our procedure here in this House as a consequence of trying out that experiment. This is the point I was trying to make to the Minister. I may have misunderstood his answer but I should like him to make it quite clear, as I hope he will, that this is his mind, that he does not rule out the possibility of these changes being made in our procedure, even on an experimental basis, to let everybody try it out and give the Aireacht concept a fair opportunity of being tested out.
To deal with the remarks of Deputy de Valera first, he has raised many matters of legitimate concern to this Parliament but they do not arise out of this Bill. This Bill is not conferring any new power on anyone. We could, in fact, set up a body to advise the Minister for Finance on the organisation of the public service and do it without statutory authority. To do that would be doing as much as this Bill proposes to do. The Minister for Finance, who will also be Minister for the Public Service in future, will simply, as a result of this Bill, have available to him the advice of wise men from the new council, but power will still be in the hands of the Minister alone.
It was thought appropriate to respect the importance of personnel and organisation problems in the public service and to devote a new Department of State to dealing with these problems. This is not conferring any power on anyone. It is simply recognising the importance of personnel and organisation matters and referring them to the new Department. What has happened in the past—and Devlin, quite properly, recognises it—is that this terribly important factor played second fiddle to the other legitimate duties of the Minister and staff of the Department of Finance.
The Bill simply transfers this area of responsibility to a new Department which will have its own Secretariat on its own personnel concentrating on this terribly important field. They will be people, who by reason of being in a new Department, will be free from the obligations that at present lie on them to consider the other responsibilities of the Department of Finance. In creating this Department there is no interference, good, bad or indifferent with the present responsibilities and rights of Dáil or Seanad Éireann. The Bill is necessary because in the creation of the new Department we have to respect Article 28.12 of the Constitution which reads as follows:
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 Department, 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 could not create this new Department without having the Bill. We are, in creating this new Department, in no way conferring new or special powers on anybody or making any new departures. Even though we are not doing any of those things it is still necessary to have this Bill in order to create this Department which will be staffed with people with individual responsibilities.
The Minister for the Public Service will be responsible to this House for everything that Department does in the same way as every Minister of State is responsible for anything done by his own Department. Before there could be any diminution of that Minister's responsibility to the House there would have to be new legislation. Until such time as the Government introduce such legislation no Minister can escape responsibility for anything done in his Department. Whether it be done by a unit to be called the Aireacht or a unit dealing with purely executive matters, the Minister will remain fully and absolutely responsible to this House.
Deputy Colley raised the desirability of introducing legislation to deal with this Aireacht concept before it is implemented. I do not close my mind to that possibility. I mentioned on the last occasion that it might possibly be desirable to get some experience of the working of the Aireacht concept before introducing legislation because nothing would be worse than to bring in advance umbrella legislation which might generate trouble and limit the House in its efforts to control it. To introduce such legislation would be to do something of the kind Deputy de Valera might likely object to.
Deputy de Valera said that this Bill conferred powers for the benefit of bureaucracy and he seemed to infer it was for the sole benefit of bureaucracy and to the detriment of everybody who was not a bureaucrat. I think that is unfair. We are all the better or the worse for our Civil Service. If our Civil Service is not efficient it is not merely those who are employed in the Civil Service who have a life of lesser quality and benefit. It is everybody, because the Civil Service is by its nature a body of people who are serving the community. Many of its present institutional structures are such as to prevent us getting the best out of the public service itself.
Deputy de Valera said this was a rubber stamp Bill to give undefined scope to institutions which were being created by it. I do not think that is true. The scope is clearly defined. It is defined as being the organisation of personnel in the public service. It is simply a Bill to transfer that responsibility, which traditionally has remained with the Minister for Finance, into the new Department. That is not something which would cause people to be worried in any way, as Deputy de Valera has professed himself to be today and on previous days.
Deputy de Valera suggested also that this Bill will lead to a situation in which Ministers will become mere cyphers. I do not think there is any possibility of Ministers in this Government becoming mere cyphers. I suspect, as Deputy de Valera was speaking tonight, that he was glad there had been a change of Government in February of this year because we know well from Deputy de Valera's honest and courageous statements in this House from time to time on these benches that he was not happy at the way in which the State was drifting. He was on many occasions in the company of criticism which was coming from us when we were then on the Opposition benches.
The Minister is joking.
He knew on those occasions in the past when he was speaking to this House he spoke above the heads of Ministers who were unsympathetic to the criticisms he was offering. He knows now, how ever, that there is in power a Government which is not unsympathetic to the criticisms he was offering. He is aware there is in power a Government composed of people who spent very many years in Opposition and who found themselves in those years in Opposition faced with a Government that would not permit any Member, either on the Government side or the Opposition side to question any behaviour of the Executive.
Which of the two present Governments?
We were faced for years with a Government which totally opposed any effort by the Members of this House to maintain the supremacy of the House and the rights of individdual Members to challenge the conduct of Ministers of State. We have already announced and given birth to a European Affairs Committee which will be intimately involved in studying European legislation.
You have not done a thing about it.
Mr. Ryan
We are anxious that this idea will be encouraged and that other committees will be established in this House——
It was done by us. You have done nothing since.
Mr. Ryan
—to assist in the process of making this country better than it was when it was handed over to us. Deputy de Valera is quite right in drawing attention to the ineffectiveness of this Parliament, which debates expenditure sometimes years after the money has been expended and seldom, if ever, looks to the future. This criticism is particularly valid in relation to State-sponsored bodies which have the spending of millions of pounds of the people's money. Many of these bodies are spending money far in excess of what is spent by any Department of State, yet this House has not developed the modern techniques of supervision which apply in many other parliaments.
I said on the last occasion we debated this Bill—and I said it since then when I was debating the issue with Deputy de Valera on the radio— that this Bill in itself contains no dangers. I believe that possibly it will generate a great deal of good. It has generated concern amongst some Members of this House about the need to strengthen the powers of Members of the House so that they can be more fully and usefully involved in supervising and generating new ideas for State-sponsored bodies. If the Bill does no more than that it will be well justified. It provides for the establishment of a council to advise the Minister. This council will have work to do which will be on-going. It will publish a report annually and that report will be placed before the House. It will be open to Members of the House to discuss the report if they wish to do so. They will certainly get the opportunity every year in the course of the debate on the Estimate for the new Department of the Public Service. This is a worthwhile departure.
In the past the debates on the Estimates for the Department of Finance did not sufficiently attend to the problem of the organisation and personnel of the public services. I am sure Deputy Colley will agree with me on that. There are many other matters which come within the ambit of the Department of Finance which tended to attract the attention of Members. Indeed, all too often the Estimate for the Department of Finance, was not discussed at all and, on more occassions than one, it found itself lumped in with other Estimates for rapid approval at the end of a very lengthy session. We hope this can be avoided in future and I believe that the annual debate which will take place here on the Estimate for the Department of the Public Service and on the annual report of the new council will generate a totally new atmosphere in relation to the public service.
The service is not held in as high repute now as it was ten, 20 or 30 years ago. It is not now regarded by many young people as the very best place in which one can secure a worthwhile career. Many of the people in the public service now, were they in the private sector, would receive remuneration and status far beyond what the public service as at present structured can offer to them. I do not think this is good for the public service and our whole community will suffer if this situation is allowed to continue.
There are many new ideas which the private sector has put into operation over the last decade or so. Very few of these have percolated into the public service. We hope that the council about to be established, together with the new Department of State to be established by this Bill, will generate new enthusiasm in the public service, new respect for the public service, and greater opportunities for our young people who may come into the public service to achieve, in the service of the people, a more rewarding experience than which was, perhaps, available to their seniors.
It is up to this House if it is concerned about these developments to restructure its own behaviour. On many occasions in the past, speaking from the Opposition benches, members of this Government drew attention to this need and we would hope now that there appears to be unanimity on both sides of the House, from the front and back benches of the Opposition, as well as from the Government and Members on this side of the House that, at long last, we will do something to bring the Dáil into the latter half of the 20th century. We are almost in the last quarter of the 20th century and we still have procedures here which might have been all right in the 18th century but are totally inadequate to meet the demands made upon us in the 20th century.
Is there any word in this Bill other than "1973" in the title which was not in the Bill I circulated?
I would need notice of that question.
May I answer it for the Minister? There is no word in it other than "1973" which was not in the Bill circulated by me.
I know there were one or two technical amendments. If the changes were so small I do not know why there was so much criticism from the Opposition.
The criticism was not of the Bill.
Then it was irrelevant.
Question put and agreed to.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 11th July, 1973.