Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 5 Mar 1980

Vol. 318 No. 7

Minister and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 1980: Second Stage.

Minister for the Public Service (Mr. G. Fitzgerald)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

In his statement in the Dáil on 11 and 13 December last the Taoiseach announced a number of changes in the structure and functions of Government. Those changes, which dealt with the reassignment of functions between Departments of State and consequential changes in ministerial and departmental titles, have already been affected by Government Orders. Two of the Taoiseach's proposals, however, require the amendment of existing legislation and hence the introduction of this Bill.

The proposals referred to are—first, to bring the Departments of Labour and the Public Service together under one Minister, and second, to increase the number of Ministers of State from ten to 15. The opportunity presented by the amending legislation required to give effect to these proposals is also being availed of to make certain other technical amendments to the Ministers and Secretaries Acts.

As regards the first proposals, the position at present is that section 3 (3) of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 1973, provides that the Department of Finance and the Department of the Public Service shall be assigned to the same person. Before the department of the Public Service can be assigned to a member of the Government who is not also the Minister for Finance, it is necessary to repeal this provision.

Deputies will be aware that most of the functions exercised by the Department of the Public Service since they were set up in 1973 were transferred from the Department of Finance. The main principle underlying the creation of the new Departments was that it would enable adequate attention to be given to, and adequate skills to be developed in, the important areas of personnel management, including industrial relations, and organisation which had hitherto been, inevitably, subordinated to financial, fiscal and economic matters in the Department of Finance.

The creation of the Department followed from the recommendations of the Public Services Organisation Review Group who had also recommended that the Department should be assigned to the member of the Government who was also Minister for Finance. However, the needs of Government are never static; circumstances change and the structures in operation at any given time must be flexible enough to respond. The changes announced by the Taoiseach are part of that process.

Since the establishment of the Department of the Public Service in 1973, the successful management of industrial relations has emerged as one of the main requirements for national progress. The Government have a twofold role. The Minister for Labour is responsible not only for providing much of the institutional framework and all of the legislative basis for industrial relations matters; he is also concerned with fostering a constructive climate in the industrial relations field.

At the same time, the Government are, directly or indirectly, the largest employer in the State. In broad terms, over a quarter of the work force and well over a third of those employed on the basis of a wage or salary are public servants. The Minister for the Public Service is responsible for a co-ordinated approach to industrial relations in the public service. Because of the size, both relative and absolute, of the public service and the variety of occupational groups it encompasses, movements in the public service obviously exercise a major influence on the whole economy. Trouble in the public service is trouble for the country. At this juncture in our affairs the situation requires that the Government's two roles in the industrial relations area should be co-ordinated at ministerial level.

The Government have, therefore, decided to assign the Departments of Labour and the Public Service to the same Minister. While there has in the past always been a high degree of coordination between the two Departments, their assignment to the one Minister will extend and deepen this co-operation. This Bill, by removing the requirement that the Minister for the Public Service and the Minister for Finance shall be the same person, will make it possible to assign the Department of the Public Service to the member of the Government who is also Minister for Labour. I would not be foolish enough to suppose that this is a panacea for curing all industrial relations problems. It is, however, the visible manifestation of the Government's determination to get to grips with the problems in this area and to ensure that there is a fully co-ordinated approach to these problems.

Before concluding on this aspect of the Bill, I would like to make myself clear on a number of points. The change in ministerial responsibility does not in any way imply diminished commitment to the existing programmes of the two Departments concerned. The Department of the Public Service, for example, will continue to perform their central staff role for the Government in relation to the organisation and personnel functions in the public service. In particular, there will be no change in the priority to be accorded to the various programmes for the reorganisation of the public service in terms of structures and personnel policies. The Department of Labour will also continue to perform their many important functions in addition to those which are directly related to the industrial relations area. For example, their work in regard to the safety, health and welfare of workers and manpower policy, including training and retraining of workers, will have a high priority. The importance of schemes for creation of employment particularly for young people and for protection against redundancy is self-evident and will, of course, continue to have a major role in the Department of Labour.

The second major provision of this Bill is the proposal to increase the number of Ministers of State from ten to 15. At present, section 1 of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) (No 2) Act, 1977, restricts the maximum number of Minister of State to ten. This Bill provides for an increase in the maximum number of Ministers of State to 15.

It is only a little more than two years ago since this House debated in great depth the many issues arising from the creation of the office of Minister of State. Prior to the creation in 1977 of the office of Minister of State the business of Government was allocated between 15 Ministers of Government who had the assistance of seven Parliamentary Secretaries. This situation had existed for 40 years despite the ever-growing range and complexity of Government business. When we introduced the 1977 Act we made two fundamental changes. First, we abolished the office of Parliamentary Secretary and replaced it with a new office of Minister of State which would give greater responsibilities. Second, we increased the number of posts available to lend assistance to Ministers of the Government from seven Parliamentary Secretaries to ten Ministers of State. As I have said, this House debated those measures in great depth at the time. I am heartened by the knowledge that there was general acceptance on both sides of the House of the need for the measures proposed. Nobody was in any doubt as to the dramatic changes that had come about in the nature and complexity of Government business. The impact of economic development, technological change and, particularly, our entry into the EEC placed inordinate demands, on the limited number of people available to deal with them. Indeed, in 1977 such was the widespread acceptance of the need for the measures proposed that one of the considerations arising from the Opposition side was that the creation of ten posts of Minister of State would not be sufficient to meet the needs that existed at the time. In replying to that debate the Tánaiste and then Minister for the Public Service pointed out that time would tell whether ten Ministers of State would be sufficient.

We have now had over two years in which to judge this issue from experience. In this period the demands giving rise to the 1977 Act have not diminished. On the contrary, these demands have grown. We have had the continuing growth of responsibilities in relation to all aspects of EEC matters. There has also been a continuing increase in the demands made on Ministers on the home front. There has also been a dramatic increase in the demands being made on politicians generally and Ministers in particular by the general public in terms of the service the public require. We are now dealing with an electorate that is more articulate and better informed than ever before. Such an electorate demand a more sophisticated level of service from their elected representatives. Each and every Deputy in this House will be aware of these developments. The results of the combination of these factors can be seen in the expansion of the roles, functions and activities of the various Government Departments.

Over and above these considerations, there is the question of the role and influence of the Oireachtas. In all democracies there is a feeling that, because of the increasing complexity of the business of Government, the institutions of the State are not sufficiently answerable to Parliament. We are now in the process of taking corrective action. We have an active Joint Committee of both Houses looking into the affairs of the commercial State-sponsored bodies; a Bill to establish the office of Ombudsman has been introduced; and the present measure will ensure that the number of Members of the Oireachtas answerable to the Houses for the management of the public business is brought to a realistic level.

As I have said, we have now had more than two years to judge whether ten Ministers of State are sufficient to cater for these ever-increasing demands. There is, of course, as Deputies know, a constitutional limit of 15 on the number of Ministers of the Government. If, therefore, we are to meet all the needs to which I have referred, it is essential that the number of Ministers of State be increased. As already stated by the Taoiseach, this means, in the case of some Departments of State, the assignment to them of more than one Minister of State because of the scope and complexity of the business they discharge. The process of Government is becoming an increasingly sophisticated one. We can no longer hope to respond in a piecemeal manner to the challenge being posed. Neither can we expect to share out ever-increasing burdens among a constant number of hard-pressed individuals without affecting the level of service being delivered. Our experience in the last two years or so has convinced us of the necessity of having the number of Ministers of State increased to 15. This measure, together with the rationalisation of functions at ministerial, and departmental levels already announced by the Taoiseach, will mean that we are moving into the new decade with a full strength team equipped to meet the challenge ahead.

I said at the outset that the opportunity afforded by the amending legislation required to provide for increasing the maximum number of Ministers of State and for having a person other than the Minister for Finance appointed as Minister for the Public Service was being availed of to make certain other technical amendments to the Ministers and Secretaries Acts. First, the 1977 Act makes no provision for the termination of the appointment of a Minister of State on his becoming a member of the Government, nor for his resignation for any other reason. I am proposing that such provision now be made. Second, section 7 (4) of the 1939 Act provided, in the case of the office of Parliamentary Secretary, that his appointment or tenure of office would not be affected where another member of the Government was nominated to act for the Minister having charge of the Department to which he was assigned. I propose here to make a similar provision for the office of Minister of State. Finally, as regards technicalities, section 2 (1) (6) of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1947, still contains a reference to the obsolete office of Parliamentary Secretary. I am proposing that the office of Minister of State be substituted in the relevant section for the office of Parliamentary Secretary.

In conclusion, I would say to the House that those measures announced by the Taoiseach which have already been carried out by Government orders together with the provisions of this Bill represent part of the on-going commitment of this Government to the reorganisation of the public service to meet the challenges of the present day. This is a process which will continue at departmental level under my aegis as Minister for the Public Service. Looking at all the relevant factors, I can confidently recommend the provisions of this Bill to the House as part of this process and as a major step towards providing this country with more effective and efficient Government machinery.

Mr. P. Barry

Nobody believes that what was read out here today by the Minister for Labour and for the Public Service is the reason why the number of Ministers of State is being increased from ten to 15. When the original Bill came before the House two-and-a-half years ago we welcomed it because we recognised that the work of Government was much more demanding than it had been when the original limits were set. We agreed to the amendment and, as the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, just mentioned, we suggested that perhaps ten were not enough. At the time the Tánaiste was in charge of the Bill and he said that the Government had considered it very carefully and that ten was sufficient. This is a matter of the restructuring of the Government and the Taoiseach should be here to justify his reasons for wishing to increase the number of Ministers of State from ten to 15. This is the second occasion when under a Fianna Fáil Government there were increases and the Taoiseach did not come into the House to justify these extra posts. The last time, the Tánaiste justified this as being primarily a matter for the Minister for the Public Service and I presume the Minister for Labour who will be Minister for the Public Service on the passing of this Bill is justifying it on the same grounds. This is not a sufficient reason. It is technically a matter for the Minister for the Public Service to guide legislation of this nature or to have it initiated in his name but it is a matter of restructuring the Government and is a decision taken by the Taoiseach of the day. I do not think the Minister will pretend he knew about, or was consulted about, the proposed change before he read of it in the newspapers on the morning of 14 December. The Minister said in the course of his speech:

Our experience in the last two years or so has convinced us of the necessity of having the number of Ministers of State increased to 15.

I do not expect the Minister to reply to my suggestion that the first he knew of the proposal to increase the number was when he read it on 14 December.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

I will answer that.

Mr. P. Barry

I do not believe any Member would pretend that there was any other reason for the appointment of the extra five Ministers of State than the fact that there are political debts to be paid off. When speaking during the Adjournment Debate the Taoiseach justified the appointment of the extra five Ministers on the basis that when the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 1977 was going through the House the Leader of Fine Gael, Deputy FitzGerald, welcomed it. That is so, and it is possible that if we felt this Bill was being put forward to aid Government we would accept the reasons given by the Minister for Labour. However, we do not agree with the Bill because we believe the motives for introducing it and increasing the number are suspect. In the course of his contribution to the debate on 13 December, as reported at column 2054 of the Official Report, Deputy FitzGerald stated:

I should now like to deal with the question of the appointments of the Ministers of State. The Taoiseach referred to my remarks at a time when the numbers were increased to ten. He was quite right. It has been my view that in one sense we are undergoverned. There are too few people of ability engaged in the work of government. We need more such people engaged in this work, but the need is for people with a capacity to take on economic and social problems, to have the imagination to tackle them and the willingness to get down to and stay at their desks getting on with the job.

I do not wish to be harsh but I have to say that the appointments so far made do not conform to this need. I should like to leave aside from this criticism Deputy Moore.

He was referring to the changes in the personnel appointed by the Taoiseach to the ten posts of Ministers of State on that date. Deputy FitzGerald continued:

The remaining new appointments, I am afraid, are too obviously a reward for political services to one section of one party and do not offer any realistic prospect of an improvement in the quantity or quality of the Government in tackling the actual tasks to be undertaken inside Government Departments. Those appointments which have this characteristic and will be seen by objective obser vers as having this characteristic—I do not think that in this I will be seen as making any kind of political point because it is the view widely shared by people who are not particularly political.

Those comments were true and were borne out by statements in the national newspapers the following morning. The Irish Times stated that ten new Ministers of State were appointed and five more would be named when the Act governing their appointment could be changed as the Taoiseach continued to reward those who backed him in the struggle for leadership. The Cork Examiner stated that Charlie's men came in for their own reward when he announced ten Ministers of State; Jack's men had been purged in the reshuffle of the second string. The Irish Press said that the new appointments would be welcomed by supporters of the seven Deputies appointed while the return to the backbenches of four of the outgoing Ministers would add to the seeds of bitterness already sown with the ending of the services of four of the previous Cabinet. The paper also stated that Deputy Haughey's obligations to reward those who worked for his election could be matched by an equally important need to alleviate bitterness which could now be built up into a permanent hostility. The Irish Independent stated that four more of Jack's team retreated to the obscurity of the backbenches.

This provision will not do the House, the Government, democracy or politics here any good. I do not think anything happened since 14 December that would make a neutral observer feel that the appointments were, to use the words of the Minister for Labour, part of a major step towards providing this country with more effective and efficient government machinery. Does anybody believe that the changes made in the second string of Ministers last December improved the position or that the appointment of the additional five Ministers will provide more effective and efficient government machinery? I do not intend naming the Members appointed before Christmas because many of them are decent, hard working and well-intentioned people but a number of them will not be successes in their jobs. The team which now forms the second string of Ministers is weaker than that which existed up to last November.

We must bear in mind the response Deputy Barry Desmond received to a parliamentary question last week as to the cost of fitting out Ministers of State with cars. Deputy Desmond was told that the cost of providing a car and drivers was £33,000 annually but we must add to that the cost of a private office, telephones and the back-up facilities available to a Minister of State. That would increase the figure to £75,000. It is because of that that we are talking about adding £500,000 to the cost of government at a time when many things are being cut out of Estimates under the guise of belt-tightening. Small items such as grants to museums, the ICA and others, which have been discontinued, when totalled would not come anywhere near the cost of providing the new Ministers of State with cars and offices. Nobody denies that our Ministers have a heavy and onerous task to perform. There is an enormous amount of travelling attached to the post, a lot of detailed work to be done and attendance required here regularly. We were given to understand when the other Ministers of State were appointed that Government Ministers would be available more often but that did not happen. We have not seen Government Ministers very often and the workload is left to Ministers of State who do not have the final responsibility and are not in a position to give final answers. I accept that Ministers must attend functions outside the country and that during our Presidency of the EEC there was a lot of extra work involved. Had this Bill been introduced at that time we would have understood the need for the appointment of additional Ministers of State. Had the Government told us prior to the Irish Presidency that there was a need to increase the number we would have welcomed such a move. If that had been done then there would have been a welcome for it from this side of the House.

However, the motives behind the introduction of this measure today are suspect and can be interpreted, both inside and outside the House, only as a means of rewarding those people who the Taoiseach considers must be rewarded. In this regard I can only quote from reports in the four national newspapers on the day after the announcement of this measure. The line taken by all four was that the Taoiseach had to create more jobs in order to reward his friends. This measure will not be interpreted in any other way. The reason given by the Minister for the measure is, and I quote:

We have an active joint committee of both Houses looking into the affairs of the commercial State-sponsored bodies: a Bill to establish the Office of Ombudsman has been introduced: and the present measure will ensure that the number of Members of the Oireachtas answerable to the Houses for the management of the public business is brought to a realistic level.

I am not a member of the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies but so far as I am aware neither Ministers nor Ministers of State appear before that committee.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

The Deputy should read the paragraph. He is taking the quotation out of context.

Mr. Horgan

It is a smokescreen.

Mr. P. Barry

The Minister should not have drawn my attention to this because it definitely is a smokescreen. There might be some excuse if the Minister had conceded that the Ministers had extra work to do but that is not what we are being told. We are being told that the extra appointments are in the interest of the working of the Oireachtas.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Is this not an indication of my concern for the Oireachtas?

Mr. P. Barry

The Minister appears to be very one-sided because while he is ensuring that the Oireachtas will be served by the Government side, he would not appear to be making available the necessary funds or personnel that would permit the Opposition to balance that situation.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Has the Deputy not been told that these were increased recently?

Mr. P. Barry

I am still sharing with two others a room which is approximately 12 feet by 14 feet and there are seven of us sharing a secretary.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

I am talking about funds.

Mr. P. Barry

In the ordinary way we would like to be able to support any restructuring of Government that we consider to be in the interest of the more efficient running of this Parliament, but we cannot accept in this instance that the motivation behind the measure is in the interest of serving the Oireachtas better. As Deputy FitzGerald said in December last this move is a reward for people who backed what turned out to be the winning horse in the Fianna Fáil election stakes.

Mr. Kelly

And who put up the winning horse and who camouflaged a trap for the losing one.

Mr. Horgan

Perhaps that is what the Taoiseach meant when he talked of stable government.

Mr. Kelly

They are as stable as a mug of toothbrushes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Barry is in possession. If Deputy Kelly wishes to be out of order, the Chair will have to deal with him.

Mr. P. Barry

We see this measure purely as a pay-off for people without whom the Taoiseach may fear he cannot remain in his present position or, perhaps, people to whom he promised a reward before his election.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is in order to make a political charge of reward but a charge that the Taoiseach, before his election, promised rewards is a charge of dishonesty against a Member of the House and, therefore, should not be made.

Mr. P. Barry

I make the political charge that the Taoiseach is rewarding people who supported him and that, to that extent, this measure will have the result of making more cynical many people who are cynical already about the operations of Members of the House. It will make people cynical regarding the motivations behind the desire of people who engage in what is referred to as public service.

Mr. Horgan

I have been surprised often by some of the speeches emanating from Government benches in supporting the various measures being put forward but I am astonished at the effrontery of the Minister for Labour in respect of the case he is making in defence of this Bill. Deputy Barry said he doubted that anybody on this side of the House believed the argument being offered. I wonder whether the Minister believes it.

It is extraordinary to note the comparison with the situation today and the situation as it was some time ago when this move was mooted but before going into that I wish to say something about the extraordinary specious arguments advanced by the Minister in relation to the Bill. A major point he made—and this was a general point—was by way of his reference to both aspects of the Bill. He told us that the Bill represented a reorganisation of Government services to meet the challenges of the present day. He went into some detail on the first aspect of the Bill, that is, the transfer of the Department of the Public Service from the Minister for Finance to the Minister for Labour. One could agree with much of what the Minister said without agreeing that this necessarily involved such transfer. The more obvious explanation is that the Minister for Finance is not up to dealing with the Department of the Public Service. To put the kind of gloss on the situation that the Minister put on it only makes the Minister for Finance look even more unfortunate than he has been made to look in the past couple of days.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

I do not know how anybody could say that after last week.

Mr. Kelly

We saw his Esau and Jacob act then.

Mr. Horgan

I find it extraordinary that this Bill could be brought in by the Government with the supporting argument that it involved a reorganisation of Government services to meet the challenges of the present day, within three months of that Government abolishing one of the major institutional and administrative innovations ever effected by an Irish Government. I refer to the Department of Economic Planning and Development.

Deputies will be aware that we did not oppose the setting up of that Department. I can remember the Deputy soon to become Minister for Economic Planning and Development berating us, and with some reason, at our modest complaints about the scope of the new Department's proposed activities saying that the Coalition were in power and asking what innovations did they make? We accepted that this was a major innovation but we did not make any secret of our belief that it was inadequate.

We are now being asked by the Government, who abolished their own innovation because they apparently regarded it as useless, negative and a delusion of some sort, to agree to the allocation of certain functions from one Department to another and to agree to the creation of five ministerial jobs.

The other part of the Minister's speech to which I listened with growing disbelief was his assertion that what led him and his Government to take this step has been "our experience of the last two years or so". It is obvious that the experience which led the Government to this deed was not the experience of the last two years or so but the experience of the two or three days between the vote in the Fianna Fáil party rooms and the vote on the floor of this House for the election of a new Taoiseach.

That was an experience which one could sense in this House on the day the new Taoiseach was elected. It was so tangible one could practically carve it up and sell it in lumps to visiting American tourists. No one who was here on that day, when the newly-elected Taoiseach, in his first announcement to the Dáil, revealed that he proposed to come back to the Dáil to ask for sanction for five new ministerial posts, will forget the atmosphere of shock and almost disbelief and astonishment that reigned on these benches, and I suspect in some quarters on the Fianna Fáil benches as well, when that announcement was made.

What is obviously taking place now is the cosmeticisation of the naked political realities we saw on the floor of this House on that occasion. It is a political back-hander of the most sordid kind. Deputy Barry has already spoken of it in terms of rewards made available by the Taoiseach to certain of his supporters. I have no objection to the Taoiseach rewarding anybody who votes for him. He can invite them to champagne parties in Kinsealy or do anything he likes, but I do have an objection to these rewards being paid out of the public purse, and that is precisely what is being done in this measure.

We are not even sure that a reward system is actually what is operating here because there are two ways at looking at this. You can look at it as a reward system—we will know in more detail when the names are announced exactly which prognosis is more accurate—but you can also look at it as a sticking plaster system in which the Taoiseach will not be rewarding the people who supported him, he has probably done that already, but he will be making sure that the very fragile, very secret, coalition which exists within Fianna Fáil at this moment and which has existed ever since the election of Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach does not suffer any permanent or serious damage.

We heard enough laughter from the Government benches over the last two-and-a-half years about what went on under the National Coalition. It is no secret I would not support everything done under that Government, but at least the National Coalition was a public coalition. What we have on the Government benches at present is a private coalition whose shape and activities we can only discern by seeing the occasional outward actions that betoken activity within.

It is like the story of the two blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. One of them touched the elephant on the leg and said it was like a wall and the other touched the tail and said it was like a snake. All we know is that something is going on. We have a rough idea from time to time when something breaks the surface, and obviously something is breaking here.

In introducing this Bill, the Minister went into some detail about how useful Ministers of State would be. The experience of the last two years has shown that the main functions of Ministers of State have been taking political heat off Ministers who should be in here bearing it. I have no personal animosity for Deputy O'Malley who was Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy, but we did not see him in this House for months. It was left to his deputies to carry the can on prices and many similar areas where he was very justifiably exposed to attack from this side of the House.

When we come to considering the fact that more Ministers of State are to be appointed the problem we have to consider is that not all the existing ten Ministers of State are bad. One or two are half reasonable. I will spare their blushes by not naming them. On that basis, there is a possibility that one of the five to be appointed will be worth his job.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

At least we have a worthwhile number to pick from.

Mr. Horgan

The 20 per cent ratio is the best we can hope for under this Government. It will not be forgotten that by increasing the number in this way the Government are following the great example of the British House of Commons in establishing a certain ratio between Chiefs and Indians. In the British House of Commons the newly-elected Government have enough jobs to give approximately one job for every one-in-three of their supporters on the Government benches. I am glad to see, if only somewhat sardonically, a Fianna Fáil Government following a British precedent in this regard.

Mr. Kelly

It is the only precedent they respect.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Horgan does not want any help.

Mr. Horgan

There is one precedent of the same institution which I doubt very much they would follow, and that is the practice of appointing parliamentary private secretaries to do work in the House of Commons but not getting paid for it. I do not see that kind of precedent being followed very rapidly by Fianna Fáil.

Overall the inference the Minister sought to bring to bear on this problem was that we would have a better democracy in this State and in this House by the appointment of five extra card carrying members of the Fianna Fáil party who would have certain as yet unspecified responsibilities on behalf of the public. He has not even told us which Departments they are likely to be assigned to. I do not think anybody would disagree that our democratic structures and process need to be looked at and overhauled from time to time and that the Oireachtas is not as responsive to the public and to the electorate as many people, including many Deputies on the Government benches, would like it to be. The answer to that problem is reform of the Oireachtas structures, not the appointment of extra bodies to fill extra seats.

Mr. Kelly

I remember 5 July 1977 and the acceptance speech of Deputy Lynch on his election as Taoiseach. He chose as his theme—every Taoiseach chooses a theme or two for that speech—an unusual subject, reform of the public service, administrative reform. That was what Deputy Lynch, and presumably the Government he led, regarded as the first priority. He admitted two or three times in the course of his speech that it required political will, and that political will would be forthcoming.

As the months went by I asked a couple of questions to find out how the Government assessed the progress they had made in public service reform, and in one of the replies I was told that they regarded the extension of the second-row ministerial ranks from seven to ten as a substantial public service reform. I spoke at length on the Bill that effected that change. I said that it was contemptible to the extent that it reflected the awful Paddy Whack inferiority complex which that party have in their bones.

"Parliamentary Secretary" which had been good enough for Willie Cosgrave, for deValera, for Seán Lemass and for Liam Cosgrave was somehow not good enough any longer because the people whom we met, the neighbours, were confused because in France, Germany and in other countries they tended to regard a secretary, no matter how qualified the title might be, as a mere official—they did not recognise that behind that title a throbbing political animal lurked. And so people like Deputy MacSharry and his colleagues who had been made Parliamentary Secretaries by Deputy Lynch, so that their real nature would not be disguided for our neighbours, had to be given this upgrading of title.

We have had the same kind of thing in the Army from time to time, just because our rank insignia and titles were different from others and because we had not the courage to stand on our own feet and to do our own thing, and let the other people get puzzled by it and come and say "Tell us what is going on". But we traipse after the English every time. We are perfectly willing to encounter people like the Chinese or the Vietnamese and humbly try to pick up clues from them about how they run things, but when it comes to running our State in our own way, creating our own posts, our own titles and our own structures, there is not a possibility of it, especially when the Soldiers of Destiny occupy the Government benches.

I suggest that any fair assessment of the history of the State—I admit a period of initiation is more favourable to innovation than any other period—would agree that the only serious innovative spirit ever seen here was between 1922 and 1932. Things were done then of a drastic innovative character compared with anything done since. The establishment of the State's institutions, the establishment of a judicial structure which the people could respect, were done and the entire apparatus of symbolism and of ceremonial which surround these things, and are an important part of the working of the State, were cast out of raw materials by the first Government. In many cases they were given a distinctive Irish shape.

Since then, for the most part anything that has happened has been the destruction and the diminution and blurring of these native models and their replacement, when they have been replaced at all, by something slavishly taken from the English. All you have to do is put your hand in your pocket and look at the coinage it brings forth, the size, the shape of our decimal coinage—the design, of course, a monument as much to the vanity as to the taste of the present head of the Government, who personally assumed responsibility for it and gloried in it until it was pointed out to him that it was ugly and inappropriate—that coinage was copied from the English, and the decimal coinage was introduced——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should get to the Bill before the House. We are not about to discuss English and Irish coinage. The Deputy must get to the Bill before the House.

Mr. Kelly

I agree I have been going far afield. This Bill fits into the pattern of the public service reform which the last Taoiseach on forming his Government held out to the Dáil as being a first priority. What happened? He upgraded the title of Parliamentary Secretary, which had been good enough for all his predecessors, because the neighbours did not understand it. Where did he get the title "Minister of State"? Where did he run to for that? Was it to the Italians, Russians, the Chinese? No. He did not run further than London for it. He made ten of them while he was at it, not seven.

We have been told here again, with unparalleled impertinence, by the Minister who spoke a few moments ago, that the new office created in 1977 would be "an office with greater responsibility". I defy Deputy Calleary opposite me to tell me what greater responsibility does a Minister fo State in the Office of Public Works or elsewhere have than the corresponding Parliamentary Secretary had under Deputy Liam Cosgrave's Government. I have no personal spleen about this, but I have a general anger about the way the country is being run, not only by this Government but by their predecessors in some respects. I have a particular anger about the sham and the cod and the loping after the English. However, it is not any personal experience of mine that adds to my sense of outrage about this.

As a Parliamentary Secretary for four years in the office of the Taoiseach and simultaneously in the Department of Foreign Affairs for two years—according to Deputy Lynch I had a title which was misleadingly modest—I was paid only half what either Deputy Lalor or Deputy Andrews were being paid when they were upgraded. It took the two of them to do the job that I did. Deputy Bruton for two years was simultaneously Parliamentary Secretary to the Departments of Education and Industry and Commerce. Deputy Bruton has an even harder case than I. I do not mean a hard personal case—I am sure it would not cross his mind to make this calculation—I am trying to put into perspective what are supposed to be the "greater responsibilities" of these Ministers of State.

The responsibilities carried by Deputies Lalor and Andrews, two decent gentlemen and, I should like to think, two friends of mine, were roughly half the responsibilities I carried and approximately one-third of what Deputy Bruton carried. He had Education and both sections in Industry and Commerce which were given to Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn and Deputy Ray Burke. Where is the "greater responsibility"? There is not any. The sections which were assigned to me in Foreign Affairs are the same as those assigned to Deputy Andrews when he was Minister of State.

In other words, the workload has shrunk: less work is expected from more office-holders, at least less work of the kind they are paid to do. But of course that is not the whole story, because to the extent that their load is lighter in their Departments they have more time for other things.

Again, I want to mention a Deputy against whom I have no personal spleen although I have, on a couple of occasions, asked questions about him in the House. I think he resented it and felt that I was in some way out to do him down. I was not. I give the House my word that I have absolutely no reason to persecute this Deputy, now a Minister, personally in any way at all. But the conspicuous manner in which he seemed to restrict his public duties to his own constituency struck me time and again. I asked questions about it, not because I had anything against him, but because he seemed to be a particularly flagrant offender in this regard. I call it an offender, because he is not a Minister of State or Parliamentary Secretary for one county, or one and a half counties, but for the whole State, if the title means anything at all. That Deputy has since become Minister for Agriculture. He is one of the Gang of Four, or the gang of whatever it is supposed to be that——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will not call members of the House a gang of anything.

Mr. Kelly

I do not mean to be insulting, Sir. The Chair knows that that phrase has passed into the political——

Mr. G. FitzGerald

The Deputy cannot help it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We will not use that phrase in the House in respect of members.

Mr. G. FitzGerald

The Deputy cannot help it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Minister, please. Deputy Kelly would not like any member of the House to refer to him as a member of a gang. We must have some respect for the House.

Mr. Kelly

I hope no one thinks I am so small as to resent it, but a very opprobrious epithet was applied to me by no less than Deputy Haughey last Wednesday evening here.

Mr. G. FitzGerald

The Taoiseach, please.

Mr. Kelly

It does not appear in the Official Report. It was not I who took it out of the Official Report, I may say, but it is not in the Official Report now, because of course it would not square with the smooth image if he was seen to be flinging terms of opprobrium across the House in the way that the rest of us do.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Another allegation.

Mr. Kelly

Perhaps that phrase —Gang of Four—is not yet sufficiently housetrained or domesticated to be acceptable among the exquisite sensibilities represented in this House, and I am sorry I used it. But at any rate it is said that the Deputy about whom I am speaking was one of the small group of conspirators who effected the change in the leadership of his party. It is in no sense of resentment or personal pique—in fact I scarcely know the Deputy; my contacts with him have always been civil and polite; I have never had any trouble with him, in the House or anywhere else—and I do not in any way intend this as a specifically personal attack. But it is a useful thing that I happened to spot his form earlier on, because it enables me to track the way in which the duties of these Ministers of State, with extended responsibilities, were performed.

I have here a file—I do not guarantee that it is a complete file but I imagine it is a reasonably representative file—of speeches made by Deputy MacSharry, now Minister for Agriculture, in the year 1978. In case anyone suspects the provenance of this material, I want to explain to the House how it comes. The office in my party rooms which has these files does not go round clipping the contents out, or especially requesting them in the case of any individuals. We merely get the ordinary Government Information Services circulation, like many other people in the House, and as I do also personally. I need not tell the House that the speeches are never read, or almost never read, but are distributed into files under the names of the respective officeholders in case they are ever needed, and they usually are not needed. But they are there now anyway, and here is Deputy MacSharry's record so far as it remains in the imperishable printed word for the year 1978.

He addressed five meetings in Dublin, all in the middle of the week, needless to say, because it would be impossible for him to be——

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Deputy MacSharry is not mentioned in this Bill.

Mr. Kelly

He addressed a dinner and seminar of the Association of Graduates and Public Administration on 28 June 1978 in Dublin. On Wednesday 5 April he addressed a reception in the Institute of Public Administration, another matter perfectly relevant to his job as Minister of State in the Department of the Public Service. On 23 March of that year he addressed members of the Public Service Advisory Council. On 23 February he addressed the people who attended the inauguration of the degree of Bachelor of Public Administration at UCD, again in Dublin. His only other engagement—at least I do not guarantee that the list is complete but certainly no one has picked and chosen; anything we have here, as far as I know, is what we got from the Government Information Services—on 9 February was when he addressed the Civil Service Training Centre at Lansdowne House. These were five functions, all in Dublin, all carried out on a Wednesday or Thursday; no other day of the week features in Dublin. Every other single function in respect of which that Deputy, now Minister for Agriculture, handed out a script, or had a formal government script, took place in his own constituency. So far as Deputy MacSharry, now Minister for Agriculture, was concerned no other county in Ireland existed except Sligo and Leitrim.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Surely Deputy Kelly can make his case on this Bill without picking out one Minister of State, now Minister for Agriculture. The Chair must have some regard to order in the House. Deputy Kelly on the Bill before the House.

Mr. Kelly

I want to make the point and to demonstrate—and I am sorry if I become heated in doing so—by reference to this single individual that only by accident I happened to spot——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Surely Deputy Kelly can make his case without singling out people for attack. Please, Deputy Kelly.

Mr. Kelly

I have not said there is anything wrong about speaking in one's constituency. I do it all the time myself, and did when I was an office holder. All I am saying is that I spoke in a lot of other places as well, and one would think from this production that this particular Minister only had functions either in Dublin—when he could not avoid being here, in the middle of the week—or in his own constituency.

Mr. Calleary

Would Deputy Kelly have a look at Minister MacSharry's record in the EEC.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We are not dealing with the Minister for Agriculture at present; when his Estimate comes up, Deputy Kelly, if he has anything to say, can——

Mr. Kelly

Would the Chair please just take it from me that, as against the five occasions which are on record, which were sufficiently important to warrant a script being prepared by his Department, in Dublin, there are nine occasions in Sligo-Leitrim. There is another one admittedly in Dublin—need-less to say it has nothing whatever to do with his Department; it is an opening of an art exhibition, but of a Sligo ar-tist——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair must point out again to Deputy Kelly that he can make his case on the workload of Ministers of State without attacking anybody.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): On a point of order, I am submitting that it is in order to make one's case by pointing out how, in the past, these positions had been used, how in the past these positions of Ministers of State have been used. I wanted to submit that that is in order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair accepts that but what we are having now is a continuous attack on one Minister, on one man. The Chair will not allow that; it is not relevant to the Bill.

Mr. Kelly

I am falling over backwards to make it clear that I have no personal animus at all. Perhaps the Chair would accept my word of honour that I have no personal animus at all against this Deputy. I single him out, it is true, through the accident that I happened to spot his form, so to speak, in this regard, and I am juxtaposing this public record with what was said in the House here by the Minister who moved this Bill in the House half an hour ago when he described the office which Deputy MacSharry then occupied—and all the other ones, the other six—as a "new office of Minister of State with greater responsibilities".

I am trying to show how those responsibilities were discharged. I am trying to insinuate, indeed I am saying flatly that the purpose of these appointments, or at any rate the result of these appointments, was merely to create an office holder who would have more freedom of action and influence in his own constituency, and that is not good enough. Above all it is not good enough to sell it to the people, or get the people to pay for it under the name of "public service reform". That is a brazen piece of cynicism. It may have some function. Perhaps it does fulfil a useful political function. No doubt a party which has absolute belief in its own rightness must be allowed a certain amount of leeway in making sure that it is not put out of office. But to represent it as a "public service reform" is a piece of brazen absurdity.

What has happened in the public service since 1977, since the change of Government? I will tell the House one thing that has happened. I am not so sure that there was any visible reform; certainly I have not seen anything very much. As Deputy Horgan said, we did have an innovatory new Department which was not allowed to exist as much as two and a half years before it was scrapped, although of course the man who scrapped it is on record—and I will come to that when I have a chance to speak on the budget—as being in favour of resuming economic planning and giving it a better status. He said in a speech a week before the dissolution of the last Dáil that that was the most conspicuous innovation and it has, as Deputy Horgan said, been cancelled out. What have we had in public service reform? What other high profile feature on the public service landscape is there? When we left office after having incurred a good deal of unpopularity both inside and outside the House for having applied, in the public interest, an embargo on recruitment to the civil service, there were 48,600 civil servants. That was far too many. It was the equivalent of three army divisions with support troops, lines of communications, cooks, troops, entertainers and so on. That was in 1977. As recently as 1950 there were less than 30,000 people in the civil service. I know that a lot of things have happened since then but not so much as to justify an increase of that order.

It would be more important in the context of civil service reform to get value for the money spent on 48,600 people, on three divisions of civil servants—an army corps. That is an unpopular thing to talk about. It can cost votes. The Government, because they are the Government they are, because they never risk unpopularity if some cheap stroke can rescue them from it, did not devote their attention to that. They recruited more civil servants; and the number we had in January, 1980, as I have been informed by the Minister's own Department, is 53,800. That is an increase of 5,200 over the number of people in July 1977.

One can be misled by global figures. It is possible that many new tasks and functions have to be performed which it is not possible to do with 48,600 civil servants and that would justify the extra recruitment. However, it is more likely that the extra recruitment was a deliberate part of the effort to prove that the new administration were able to make a dent in unemployment by taking up school leavers.

I am all in favour of making a dent in unemployment figures but not by way by making jobs which do not produce wealth but only consume it. In order to pay a relatively junior civil servant with a salary of £5,000 per annum, before one can assess the cost of that single post one must add something for the building, heating, various overheads, office equipment, desk, table, allowances, superannuation, travel expenses and so on and, taking into account the cost of renting or building these days, one could double that figure in order to get the true annual cost of an extra civil service post. If we assume that each of the 5,200 extra people in the public service which, after three years of that Government is the only conspicuous difference between the state of the public service and when we left it, I am not too far away from the mark in saying that people are paying £50 million a year for those jobs. If one assumes an annual salary of £5,000 —some have more and some have less— that is £25 million, double it and it is £50 million. The health boards have shown an even more dramatic rise compared with when we left office. There are over 8,000 more people employed in the health boards——

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Is this relevant to the Bill?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy can deal with the public service because we are dealing with the Minister for the Public Service but we are not getting into health boards.

Mr. Kelly

In order to produce the revenue to pay the salary of a single civil service post, even allowing for the fact that some of it will be clawed back in tax, five or six other citizens have to work. It takes the total tax contribution of five or six other citizens to pay that salary. Some of them are in the public service but some are in wealth producing jobs. It inhibits their capacity to invest, and their incentive if that extra burden is placed on them. That is the only reform which the Department, now presided over by Deputy Fitzgerald, has to show that can be seen above the skyline. Perhaps there are reforms of a kind which are not visible, and if so I would be happy to hear about them. The only reforms which are visible about the skyline are the extra 5,200 jobs which are fed into the propaganda machine that they have done this and that to relieve unemployment. Of course there is no limit, if one does not mind borrowing from the Japs and Germans, to the number of jobs one can create if one just sticks people behind desks and gets them to push paper around to one another. But someone must pay for those jobs.

We are now getting another stroke in the field of public service reform. We will get not seven or even ten but 15 of these people with "special new responsibility". I have demonstrated by reference to Deputy MacSharry's record that the stuff about responsibility can be dismissed with a horse laugh. They will be doing far less work than any of the parliamentary secretaries I worked with did, and even less than the Ministers of State before today have been doing. The work will be spread more thinly.

There is an undoubted need for more political gumption and more instructed and understanding political will in Government. The leader of my party said that in 1977 and I accept it. It cannot always be got by simply promoting persons who got into the Dáil, thus demonstrating a range of abilities which are undoubtedly very unusual and respectable but which are by no means the kind of abilities necessary to run a Department or even a fragment of a Department. If they are short of talent, there is an option open to the Government. Knowing Deputy Haughey's weakness for the cheap stroke which captures the cheap headline, I would not be surprised if he was to try this when he or the Government appoint the extra office holders. To the extent that I am suggesting this myself I will be inhibited from criticising him if he does do it.

The Constitution under Article 28 specifies that the Government are to consist of not more than 15 members, and of those any two except the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance may be Members of the Seanad. They do not have to be Deputies. A Government, newly elected, are in the happy situation that they can nearly determine about one-third of the people who will be in the Seanad. The Taoiseach has 11 direct nominations and I know from my own experience that a political party which is serious in the way it does its business can put another handful of people into the Seanad although it is not possible to absolutely control beyond a certain point the franchise of the Seanad electorate. There is a fair chance that one can put another few people one particularly wants to see in into the Seanad. Something like up to 20 people, between the nominees and the people whose election can be organised at long or short range, can be put into the Seanad by a Government out to get talent.

It has always seemed strange to me that—I am not pointing the finger at Fianna Fáil particularly but I do not think we ever did it except in the days of the first Government—the possibility of having as many as two people who are not Members of the Dáil, members of the Government, has not been availed of. I am not a complete baby in politics, although I am not as cute as many of my friends and colleagues, but I know that there would be great resentment in a political party if the people who bore the heat and burden of the day were passed over in favour of someone who has never had to get up a political sweat, so to speak, brought in from some profession or industry and put in charge of the Department. Of course he will be resented. That is one of the penalties, burdens and natural handicaps that one has to carry if one is trying to do a job properly. That is the Government, strictly so called. Any two Members of the Government can be drawn from the Seanad as long as they are not the Taoiseach himself, the Tánaiste or the Minister for Finance. When it comes to the rank of office holder that we are talking about here this afternoon, Ministers of State, there is no such limitation. It would be possible to fill every single one of these jobs from the Seanad, at least constitutionally—I am not sure if the legislation allows it, I think it does as a matter of fact, but I am talking off the top of my head now and am not certain.

I genuinely do not like saying something hurtful about the Deputies, I have nothing against them and no special reason to distrust them any more than I distrust the whole party over there. I do not want to hurt the people in these offices, but must say that even charity stops short at calling them the best men for the job. There are some exceptions as Deputy Horgan has said but, by and large, the appointments made here last December are ones of which even charity would feel ashamed to say that these are the best men for the job. If we are going to get five more of these, charity will have an even harder time in putting a face on what is going on. I hope that the Government, when it comes to making these appointments of people who are going to carry heavy responsibilities and get ahead with the job of running this vibrant, new, dynamic State with all the tasks ahead of us and so forth, will appoint people who look as though they are capable of doing these jobs, who look as though they know and understand what these jobs are and are really able to manage a Department and not have to have their hands held and their ears whispered into all the time. In that respect, I would not personally complain if the Government looked to the other House as well as to this, for people to fill these posts. I have a feeling that, since the leader of the Government is a man who cannot resist a day or two in the headlines, we may easily see a Senator or a couple of Senators appointed to one or more of these new positions. This is exactly the kind of stroke which would appeal to him, very easy to do but in this particular case, also, there is something to be said for it. So far as I am concerned, he would disarm me so far as that is worth anything to him by doing this and it would be a useful precedent as well. I do not want to rehash things again. Everything that Deputy Barry and Deputy Horgan said about this being a naked pay-off for political support, I go along with. I do think that these appointments are unnecessary. They will be particularly unnecessary if people who are not really fit to hold them are put into them. They are unecessary and extremely expensive. It is a shame, as Deputy Horgan said, that the people should be asked to pay another £½ million a year—this is a very conservative estimate—for the establishment of five men who would simply be behaving during the rest of the time they are in office in the way that the present Minister for Agriculture behaved when he was Minister of State.

There is no doubt that the pressure on what I might call the serious office holders is appalling and ought to be relieved. Any serious measure designed to do that—whether by the appointment of auxuliaries, co-adjutors or the simplification of Dáil business or anything of that kind—I would go along with very gladly. I spoke at length in the autumn of 1977 when the last Bill in this series was before the House, on the ghastly pressures on Members of the Government, as I was able to observe them during my time as Government Whip. The fact that we changed sides does not alter my view. Members of a government do need to be protected from being screwed into the ground by the grinding round of engagements to which they leave themselves open, which they feel they have to go along to and which people wish upon them.

I do not care what party forms a Government. My opinion of the other side is, I suppose, known to them. I am not going to make any pretence about it, the sooner they leave office, the better I shall like it. At the same time, the people did elect them and they should be given a fair chance, so long as they are there, to do the job which they were elected to do and they should certainly be protected from having their health ruined and being visibly ground down by the demands which it is now commonplace to lay on Ministers. A member of a Government is entitled to be ruthless in demanding eight hours' sleep for himself and a weekend for himself or a day or two for himself and his family every week. In fact, he is not doing a job properly unless he does so. These additional appointments must be genuine appointments of people who can really do the work so that they will relieve the pressure on the existing officers; I would support that.

I would also support, as I have said here umpteen times before, a further reform of Dáil procedure of a kind which would take the pressure particularly off members of the Government. I can claim credit for one substantial improvement in the rearrangement of the sitting hours. We do not have to sit here until 10.30 or 11.00 every night. I would go far further than that and would have done so if I had got the agreement of the representatives on the far side on the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. For example, it is insane that Ministers should have to hang around here until the end of business at a time when they are not wanted for any business of their own in the House, merely to record their votes. I realise that it cannot constitutionally be otherwise on Committee Stages of Bills but there would be a great case for postponing votes on Second and Fifth Stages of Bills in the way that votes on Estimates are postponed and in that way let the Ministers go home and put their feet up. If they feel that tired, they should do so, or go back to the office and do more work if they are not tired. There is a great case for reform along these lines. Even if this particular move which the Bill here today represents will do something to alleviate the personal, physical, mental and moral strain on Ministers, it will at least have that much to be said for it, if no more.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): This Bill proposes to amend the law in at least two ways, firstly by providing that the Minister for the Public Service may be a Minister other than a Minister for Finance. With that amendment I agree. To have it obligatory for a Minister for Finance to be a Minister for the Public Service is wrong. He is not the appropriate Minister, because he would always have a vested interest which might not necessarily be in favour, or in the interest, of discharging his duties as Minister for the Public Service in an impartial and objective way.

The Bill also proposes to amend the law by increasing from ten to 15 the number of Ministers of State who may be appointed. I am against that amendment and very much against it at this time. It is inappropriate, at this time of national recession, national cut-back and at a time when the Taoiseach and other Ministers are exhorting people to tighten their belts and work harder, to add another £½ million to the Exchequer bill by appointing five new Ministers of State. It is not right to appoint five new Ministers of State now under this administration, because such evidence as we have goes to show clearly that the nation is not getting value for money. Thirdly, these new Ministers of State should not be appointed because the evidence clearly goes to show that the appointments are being made at the request of the Taoiseach in order to repay political debt incurred by him during his election as Taoiseach.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is making charges again.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): It is a political charge.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No. I have already said that it is in order to suggest that it is a reward for political services but what the Deputy is saying is different.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): If it will please the Chair——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy need not worry about pleasing the Chair. The Chair is merely anxious to ensure that no Member of the House is accused of dishonesty.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): I am making a political charge only. The five new Ministers of State are being appointed by the Taoiseach to reward the appointees for political services rendered to the Taoiseach. We are now living in a time of national recession, national stringency. Every time the Taoiseach has spoken since assuming office he has told the nation that it is living beyond its means, that it is not working hard enough, that it is borrowing too much and that our balance of payments is haywire. As evidence of that some stringent cut-backs appear in the Book of Estimates and some mean reductions have been made. For example, a scheme that is very important in my constituency and in the western constituencies known as the local improvements scheme and which was extended under Deputy Lynch's administration from under £2 million to £2,750,000 is being cut back this year to £2 million. Does Deputy Calleary not know this?

Mr. Calleary

I have a longer memory than Deputy Fitzpatrick.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is in order to refer to the cost of the five appointments but if we are to go into specific instances in the Book of Estimates as they affect the Deputy's constituency that would not be in order.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): I was about to say and Deputy Calleary does not like to hear it——

Mr. Calleary

The Minister will answer it.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan):——that the local improvements scheme vote last year was £2,750,000; this year it is being voted £2 million when it would need £3.5 million to do the same work. At the same time we are appointing five new Ministers of State at a cost of £500,000 per year. This is being done at a time when Deputy Connolly, Minister of State, today admitted that he would not give a grant to a man who had no bathroom to add a bathroom to his house. These are facts.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Would the Deputy get back to the Bill before the House? He is not entitled to go over every Estimate in making his case. He is well able to make his case without that. That is only getting in small points.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): I am well able to make my case and I am entitled to say what this £500,000 could be spent on.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No, if the Deputy followed that line he could go on mentioning things for the next 24 hours.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan-Monaghan): I do not want to do that but this money could be spent on restoring the cuts in the local improvements scheme or in providing grants of £600 for toilets and bathrooms for people who have neither toilets nor bathrooms. In this time of economic stringency and recession it is wrong to appoint five additional Ministers of State at a cost of £500,000. If the economy were buoyant, no shortage of money, no request to other people to work harder or cut back on spending or do with less there might be something to be said for appointing these Ministers.

I shall not go into personalities but there is no doubt that the Taoiseach has not availed, when filling the ten offices of Ministers of State, of the best material available in his own party. And that is an understatement. It is also true that some—and I emphasise some—of the Ministers of State appointed obviously misunderstand their duties and do not accept that it is their duty to serve the country. They have stated that it is their duty to look after their own constituencies. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would appear from their statements since they were appointed that is what they regard as their duty—some of them. I shall not sort them out and name them. I think we must assume that the same criteria will be followed and the same qualifications accepted when the Taoiseach is appointing the next five and that he will go on the basis of rewarding people in his party for political services rendered to him and totally disregard whether those being appointed are the best qualified for the posts. That is why I am completely against the appointment of these five additional Ministers of State at this time.

Mr. L'Estrange

One time it was: "Where were you in 1916?" Now it is: "Were you at the Four Courts in 1970"?

(Interruptions.)

Minister for the Public Service (Mr. G. Fitzgerald)

Not only does everything I said in my opening adress stand but having heard the Opposition speakers it is obvious that they themselves were not convinced of the validity of the objections they were offering to the Bill. First, may I thank them for their interest and their contributions? At least they welcomed some sections of the Bill and eventually I think it developed into a political issue on the question of appointing extra Ministers of State. It is not necessary for me to stand here to establish or uphold the integrity of the Taoiseach. His record in the House, his service to the Government, his experience in government and his undoubted contribution in government over many years give him advantages that are perhaps not available among the Opposition parties and which perhaps they would like to have.

I think I established at the outset the many reasons why it is now necessary to appoint extra Ministers of State. Opposition speakers spoke of the additional cost. Some of them are people with business involvement and cost is important. I am sure that Deputy Barry will appreciate as much as anybody else that that cost is an investment in greater government efficiency and greater availability for a population which deserve the highest performance at government and public service level. This is the essential point in these additional posts.

I was very amused at Deputy Kelly who launched a rather unfair attack on the civil service and the lack of necessity for extra civil servants being appointed between 1977 and January of this year. He took pride in claiming what a great thing had been done for the country by imposing the embargo on the decision taken by that Government. Every Deputy knows that that embargo on both pay and recruitment was a major problem in later years. The results of it were part of the problems which this Government had when they came into office. He claimed to be proud of that achievement.

Mr. P. Barry

Has it been lifted on recruitment?

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Long ago.

Mr. P. Barry

Will it stay lifted?

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Yes. It was lifted by this Government. The Deputy's Government put it on. Deputy Kelly took pride in it.

Mr. P. Barry

So do I.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Deputy Horgan does not. I appreciate the reasons why he does not. I want to tell Deputy Barry and Deputy Kelly that they succeeded in keeping numbers to a particular figure. Deputy Kelly did not say—I found this in my Department as did many of my colleagues in their Departments—that certain essential services to the public were allowed to run down through lack of staff. Surely our people need a better service from our public service than that? That was the position that existed when we took office. I took exception to a very selective reference to the Minister for Agriculture, whom I have known for many years and know to be one of the hardest working and most dedicated Members of this House. His commitment to political life in his Opposition days and his Government days has been a very complete one.

The allegations by Deputy Kelly were selective. He selected a series of speeches which were issued to him from the GIS. It is time that Deputy Kelly grew up in relation to his contributions in the House. There is no way that the number of speeches issued through the GIS should be the criteria by which a person doing a reasonable amount of work in his Department is judged. It is most unfair of Deputy Kelly to be selective in that way and to use criteria which in my opinion are not fair criteria in asserting the performance of a very committed Member of the House for many years.

Deputy Barry quoted from some newspapers. It is true to say that the compliments paid to Deputy MacSharry, the Minister for Agriculture, during our term of the Presidency of the EEC were widespread through all the media. It was unfair of Deputy Kelly to go into that sort of detail in relation to that Minister.

Some of the Deputies referred to the Minister of State appointed last December. I do not have to defend their performance in the House. I do not have to defend them individually or collectively because their constituencies have for many years returned most of them, well realising their work rate and their commitment to their jobs. I believe that all of them are not only fitted but also experienced and concerned enough to be appointed to the posts they now hold. I have no doubt that the Taoiseach and the Government in appointing those five people will have the same concern that they be people suited to hold the posts, that they be people who will be able to give the extra commitment needed at Government level.

I want to quote an independent person, an extract from No. 20 of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service. This is their opinion:

We are satisfied that the responsibilities of Ministers of State are significantly greater than were the responsibilities of Parliamentary Secretaries and we take this into account in our recommendations.

That is what an independent body had to say about the Ministers of State.

Mr. Horgan

They said a lot of other things.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Some of those have already been taken into account.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Not an awful lot.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

Is that a lobbying voice?

Mr. P. Barry

I hope that is on the record.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

The Leader of the Fine Gael Party, Deputy FitzGerald, in December last criticised in a political way the new appointments. I do not agree with this criticism but I do not deny him the right, as an Opposition Member in politics, to make such a political criticism. He went on to say that he, too, was satisfied that there may be need for more than ten Ministers of State, as was said when the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 1977, was introduced, by the Opposition people on that occasion also.

Deputy Barry said that if this Bill was introduced before the EEC Presidency he would have supported it. There is an added work load during the period of the country's Presidency of the EEC. There is no Member in the House, if he is honest, who will say that the work load of the Government and the Ministers has not increased very substantially for the reasons I pointed out so clearly in my opening statement. I believe that only the best possible service should be provided for our public. The appointment of those extra Ministers of State will help very much, in conjunction with the many changes which are taking place in the whole public service area, to give the country and our people a better and well deserved service.

I mentioned the unfair attack on my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture. I could not be happier about his commitment and his performance. Those people have performed well not only in this House but in their constituencies, and who has greater knowledge of whether people are working than those people who have consistently returned all of them over long periods?

I wish to refer to a comment made by Deputy Barry when he referred to something as being a smokescreen. I do not think he meant it sincerely and neither did Deputy Horgan.

Mr. Horgan

I did.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

I was making that point because it gave me an opportunity, as Minister for the Public Service, of mentioning in this House our belief in the importance of the Oireachtas and in certain things that have taken place; it will be a major step forward when the Ombudsman Bill is introduced here. I mentioned that because I thought it was relevant in the context of a Second Stage speech on this measure before us. Any criticisms offered were purely political. There were even insinuations by some of the Members which they would love to believe that there are divisions in our party.

Mr. L'Estrange

What about the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste?

(Interruptions.)

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

They tried to insinuate——

Mr. Horgan

We not only tried, we succeeded.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

They should be forgiven for their sins. Any decisions taken in our party were taken in an absolutely democratic way.

Mr. L'Estrange

Is the manifesto going out the door?

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

In that democratic way a decision on a new Taoiseach was taken and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that that Taoiseach has and deserves to have the full loyalty of this party and it is a reflection on both Opposition parties that they had little or no other contribution to make here this evening than to be mischievous enough to imply that there are divisions in Fianna Fáil.

I want to contradict one point that Deputy Barry made. He said that I would have been unaware of this until the day it was announced in the paper. If that was the kind of Government the National Coalition operated, then that may well have been the style. But I can assure the Deputy that that has never been or is not the case in a Fianna Fáil Government. The Government are fully aware of any such developments, plans, programmes and so on——

Mr. P. Barry

The Minister knew the day before.

Mr. G. Fitzgerald

I knew days before. I am satisfied that no one single point that has been made against the opening speech I made here has altered any opinion I expressed here. I believe we are going the right way. I believe it is in the interests of the public.

Question put and declared carried.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.