I move:
That Seanad Éireann approves the following Order in draft:
State Guarantees Act, 1954 (Amendment of Schedule) (No. 2) Order, 1965
a copy of which Order in draft has been laid before the House.
State Guarantees Act, 1954 (Amendment of Schedule) (No. 2) Order, 1965.
The Institute of Public Administration has sought assistance from the Government in the matter of financing its accommodation requirements.
The accommodation at present occupied by the Institute is at times found inadequate, so that it is necessary to rent outside accommodation on a temporary basis. There has been an expansion in the Institute's activities in recent years, particularly in providing training courses for civil servants and local authority employees and overseas training, i.e., of students from the developing countries, and due to the establishment of the School of Public Administration.
To cope with this expansion, the Institute has arranged to purchase a house adjoining the two houses which the Institute already owns. Funds are needed to cover the purchase and to reduce the Institute's bank overdraft. Arrangements have been made to borrow the necessary funds on a long-term basis, subject, however, to principal and interest being covered by a State guarantee. The Government have approved the giving of the necessary guarantee and to implement this approval it is necessary to add the Institute to the bodies scheduled to the State Guarantees Act, 1954, with a maximum amount of £30,000 to be guaranteed. The draft Order of which this motion seeks approval will implement this intention.
I should like to welcome this Order. It may not be out of place—I trust it is not out of place—to remark, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, that you yourself were a founder member of this organisation. Though I have never had the honour of being a public servant, I have been a member of the Institute for many years. Indeed, in recent years, I have been a member of the executive committee. I have been so impressed with the value and importance of this work that I have been anxious to support and assist it in any way. I trust I have now declared my interest in the matter.
The Institute now has 1,200 members throughout the public service as well as the support of all the county councils and corporations in the country, the Civil Service departments and nearly all the State-sponsored bodies as group members. Its activities are very wide-ranging and deserve the support of this House. In the past year, it had 48 training courses covering a wide range of different matters—career development, the development of personal skills and new techniques. In addition, its School of Public Administration has been providing a type of post-graduate course in public administration for people drawn from various parts of the public service and some people overseas. It is also responsible for the provision of diplomas in local and central administration and for assisting notably in the training programme we have had here for people from developing countries, particularly Zambia, 50 public servants from which have been trained at the Institute.
Another development is the fact that it established, several years ago, a social research committee and asked the United Nations to provide an expert to recommend on social research here, which is bearing fruit in widening our social research activities.
Thus, in many different ways, the Institute has contributed to raising the standards of public servants. It has helped public servants to perform effectively their functions of advising the Government, of putting before the Government alternative policies and of helping the Government to formulate the kinds of policies needed for the economic, cultural and social development of the country. Some of us at times feel that the Government do not always seem to benefit by this advice. However, any step to assist this Institute, through the untiring efforts of its staff, to improve the standard of the public service is worth taking.
The work of the Institute and of its staff, as I have observed it at close quarters over the years, has made a significant contribution to the progress we have made in many quarters. Accordingly, I should like to welcome this Order which is designed to ensure that the Institute will have adequate accommodation to carry on its important functions and I am very glad to have an opportunity of supporting it.
I am quite sure that any institution, such as the Institute of Public Administration, which does anything to improve the public service must command the support of the House, and indeed of the public. Indeed, in so far as the Institute of Public Administration endeavours to achieve that laudable object, I quite warmly support it. Of course, the Institute, having started off from being a body with the intention of effecting some improvements in the administration of the public service, of making them aware of their responsibilities and of helping them to develop their potentialities, has grown into quite a large organisation. We should be pleased to note that, as well as our missionary efforts abroad, we are now, through the agency of the Institute, helping to train public servants for the emergent nations of Africa. In the Institute, they will of course get the kind of training and background and outlook upon human liberties and democratic institutions that we should like to see growing and developing in the young nations of Africa.
What Senator Garret FitzGerald has said about the work the Institute has been doing is entirely true, but it is necessary, I think, to issue some words of caution as to the kinds of things that may develop, if indeed they are not developing, in the public service of this country. It would be difficult for me to assess the extent to which the Institute of Public Administration has been responsible for this. I cannot help recollecting an article written by one of the leading members of the Institute of Public Administration in its journal Administration some years back. The purport of that article was that where Ministers of State do not know their job and are not doing their job, it is the duty of public servants to push them into doing their job and, in effect, to take over and do what the Ministers are not doing. I did not think that this matter would come up for discussion this afternoon or I should have more extensive quotations from the article in question. I remember being appalled at the time to read that it was the duty of public servants, where Ministers fell down on their job, to push them into doing what they considered was in the public interest. The public service was to take over, and be the arbiter of what was right and necessary to be done in the public interest.
Mobutu must have read it.
They have some African students down there.
That is what I thought the Senator was referring to.
This is the astonishing thing. One cannot but wonder, when one sees the kind of legislation that has been passing through Parliament in recent times. If one looks back at the Succession Bill, at certain sections of the Land Bill, at certain sections of the last Finance Bill, there is no doubt that these are not all the products of respective Ministers; these are the outcome of the views of public servants who think the Minister does not know what is right and proper and urgent to be done. It is because of that that we have this kind of legislation which is not acceptable to the public but which is being foisted upon Ministers and being passed in spite of all the grumbling and protests of the public at large. That is a very unwelcome trend. A warning should be given to the Institute of Public Administration to lay off a policy of that kind.
The Senator is going outside the scope of the motion.
We are voting money.
Is this an Instititute for Ministers, as Senator O'Quigley seems to imply?
I am talking about the Institute of Public Administration. We are now proposing, in this particular Order, to add its name to the State Guarantees Act of 1954 for particular purposes.
Surely that does not come into a matter of this kind?
If we are to pass an Order of this type, we ought to be very careful that we are not encouraging this particular body to go along lines we think it ought not to go. I think it is perfectly in order, upon this motion, to discuss this matter. We will provide under this Order moneys to a body which has produced books in relation to democratic government which I think are wholly unacceptable to the people of this country. A warning should be given to them that this is not the line along which they should proceed. I think it is perfectly in order to deal with that. However, a Chathaoirleach, if I am not in order, I certainly do not want to pursue this line.
The Senator might talk to Senator Garret FitzGerald, who is a member of the outfit.
Senator Garret FitzGerald has his views and is entitled to them. While I do support the Institute in principle, I do want——
The Chair would like to point out that it is not satisfied that criticism of public officials is in order on this motion.
The Institute of Public Administration is not a group of public officials. I believe it is a body quite distinct from the Civil Service and from local government service. It is an Institute which provides certain services, as the Minister indicated in his speech. If we are to provide moneys for this Institute, I think we ought to lay down some guide lines to indicate where we think they ought not to go. I do not want to widen the debate upon a motion of this kind and I certainly want to keep within the ruling of the Chair.
There is a widening unduly of the debate. The Chair is not anxious at any time to restrict debate but the widening of debate unduly is always a source of worry.
Since, as I have said, I am not opposed to the passing of this Order, I shall content myself with saying that the Institute, now that it is seeking direct financial subvention from the State by means of this guarantee order, should realise the limits beyond which it ought not to go. Having said that, perhaps the warning may be sufficient.
I should like to continue the debate on this matter, which appears to be a debate among the Fine Gael Front Bench in the Seanad. I think Senator O'Quigley, on reading the statements he has made here this evening and reflecting upon them, will realise that in drawing attention to an article by an individual which appeared in a journal published by the Institute of Public Administration, he has drawn conclusions from this which are not warranted. Furthermore, he is tending to make recommendations which he himself would be the first to condemn, having looked at them in cold print. It is not correct to say, as Senator O'Quigley has suggested, that the obiter dicta of an official of the Institute of Public Administration or every suggestion in an article in the Journal is the policy of the Institute of Administration.
Except that he happens to be the Director of it.
I have been a member of the Council of this Institute since its formation and was, I think, a member of the executive committee at the time of publication of this particular article. It cannot in any way be sustained that anything that happened inside the Institute of Public Administration suggested in any way to the general public that what was stated in this particular article and was paraphrased here today was at any time the policy of the Institute of Public Administration.
I should, moreover, like to say that I think the suggestion inherent in what Senator O'Quigley has said—that when granting money to a particular body, we should review what has appeared in an individual article in the organ of that body and that we should issue a warning that this money is being given because they are bodies worthy of support but that this sort of thing must not be published—is not going to help anyone. This is an indirect censorship of the most undesirable kind and not in keeping with the liberal attitude which Senator O'Quigley normally displays in this House.
Senators
Hear, hear.
It would be very bad that the Institute of Public Administration should be curbed in any way. If administration in this country is to be improved, there are many things which must be done. One absolute pre-requisite is free discussion. Without absolute free and uninhibited discussion of the defects of public administration in this country, whether they be the defects of civil servants, the defects of Ministers, the defects of Deputies or the defects of Senators, unless these are discussed openly and without any inhibition, we will make very little progress towards curing these faults. It is up to those of us who are Members of the Oireachtas to see—in our own particular spheres, whether we are members of political Parties or not—that the standard of Deputies and Senators is one which becomes increasingly less subject to criticism and to see, through our organisations and through our working here in the House, that this country gets Ministers who are as able, as patriotic, as energetic and as well informed as they possibly can be. If we work towards this end it will not matter what anyone says in any journal in this country concerning the way in which any particular body in the public service should carry out its duties.
I feel it is due to Senator O'Quigley himself that I should disagree with him on this point and point out the disparity between his views in this particular speech and his general attitude in the House.
I have beside my bed at home, not fully read so far, a book published by the Institute of Public Administration, How Ireland is Governed, and I think the writer would have wanted to add a further chapter after listening to the debate on the previous Bill before us today and on this motion. It is a very instructive book for Members of the Seanad and I suggest they read it.
There is another on the two Houses of the Oireachtas.
I am referring to the excellent debate we have had on the previous Bill.
I agree with everything Senator Dooge said.
Thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Sul a gcuirim an Seanad ar athló ba mhaith liom beannachtaí na Nollag agus beannachtaí na hathbhliana a ghuí do gach Seanadóir, do na cléirigh agus d'oifigí an Tí agus don Aire. Nollaig fé sheán agus fé mhaise dhíbh go léir.
The Seanad adjourned at 6.15 p.m. sine die.