Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I read the Taoiseach's announcement yesterday about the gallery of Ministers of State. On a personal basis everyone is pleased for the Members and their families. It is a signal honour to be asked to serve in Government as a Minister or Minister of State. We wish them well.

The Department of Education and Science has five Ministers of State and one Minister. The Department of Health has four Ministers of State and one Minister. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform kicks in with another four Ministers of State and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has another four Ministers of State. I do not know if the Taoiseach was having a laugh when he provided the Department of Education and Science with five Ministers of State. What is the Secretary General to do — order an extra large conference table for the ministerial meeting room? The Minister and the Ministers of State all have advisers, press attachés and personnel to hold their hand and carry out ministerial duties.

Deputy Bruton referred to sound management principles in respect of Departments. Many have management meetings to which the Secretary General and various assistant secretaries are invited. In most Departments this runs to at least six or seven people. In the Department of Health and Children there is one Minister, her senior advisers, a Secretary General, five Ministers of State with one adviser each, and the assistant secretaries. Is this additional work for the Office of Public Works? Was this a clever ruse by the brother of the Minister of State at the Department of Finance to invest in new, state-of-the-art, Irish designed ministerial furniture for all the posteriors that will occupy places around departmental conference tables? It is unbelievable.

One could draw a matrix of this. The Minister with responsibility for children, Deputy Brendan Smith, is a super junior but the super man is Deputy Jimmy Devins. He is the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. In fairy tales, when a prince or princess is born, they are given a series of titles. When Deputy Devins is introduced at some grand state function at the UN, in some marbled hall or perhaps when he meets the King and Queen of Belgium, and the major-domo holds out his staff and stamps for attention, will he read out the full and mellifluous titles to be enjoyed by this proposed Minister of State? It is a cod. His responsibilities are spread across four Departments with special responsibility for disability issues and mental health (excluding discrimination). This reads like a treaty of some kind. I presume when the Green Party was negotiating with Fianna Fáil, the brackets were square ones but subsequently when the deal was done they were converted to round brackets. That is the way it is done in international diplomacy at the UN and in various other such organisations.

One of the first jobs of the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, will be major orders of furniture and fittings for the offices of the new Ministers of State. All of them will require nice curtains, carpets and so on. We need to establish whether they will have an office, however modest, in each of the Ministries to which they have been allocated. That was the tradition where Ministers of State had multiple functions. They usually had a home Department in which they had their primary base.

My second question, which is a serious one, relates to what will be the designated functions of these Ministers of State. As someone who has served as a Minister of State, I expect any civil servant or Secretary General worth his or her salt would tell any Minister of State that unless he or she has designated functions, he or she will have office but no power. In the previous Government, perhaps because it was its second term in office, there was a growing tendency for Ministers of State to have no designated functions. At that time the Ministry of State with the largest budget, namely, the Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development, had little in the way of designated functions. Given that we are now spending in excess of €500 million and we are all committed to increasing it, I note the senior Minister began to move back to exercising his right to be in command of overseas development assistance.

A number of Ministers of State on the list before me have real jobs, including the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Noel Ahern, who is present. I congratulate him. As Members are aware, being Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW is one of the plum jobs of Government. It is probably one of the best possible Minister of State positions. In effect, he has a budget and a range of interesting responsibilities. Given his experience and connections, I am sure he will have designated responsibilities. He will make sure of that.

Let us examine some of the proposed appointments. Deputy Pat Carey has been assigned some direct responsibilities, such as for the drugs strategy and community affairs. That is an important job. However, what are we to make of the responsibilities of the poor Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan? He is to be Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, with special responsibility for integration policy. One who is Minister of State in three or four Departments is Minister of State for everything and nothing because one has no budget line and, by and large, one has no delegated functions. This brings Members back to the issue whether the Taoiseach is acting with supreme political cynicism by filling offices. To keep happy the parties that compose the Government, a plethora of Ministers of State exist with little thought given to how they will do their jobs.

I revert to the Department of Education and State which has five Ministers of State. One of the key areas in this regard concerns the development of a national preschool education system to give all children an opportunity to go to preschool. However, preschool education is not mentioned in the list of responsibilities of the five Ministers of State. Another important educational issue pertains to having a Minister of State with responsibility for universities because in investment terms, as far as continuing our economy's growth is concerned, it is education, education, education.

While we have good primary and second level systems, we must expand into a preschool system for disadvantaged children in particular. We must give them an opportunity to get involved in preschool, thereby giving them a flying start in life. At third level, the universities and institutes of technology are critical to our economic future by supplying graduates in fields such as information technology, in which there is a huge shortage, business, in which the numbers applying for degrees are falling and, in particular, in mathematics and science. There is a serious shortage of candidates who are interested in mathematics and the sciences, and all Members are aware that these are critical areas for our future.

In recent years, Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, and others have done good work by putting more money into science and technology at third level. However, no Minister of State is responsible for this issue and it is not even mentioned. There is something called innovation policy, which constitutes a Civil Service fudge by the permanent government. Presumably the Department of Education and Science did not wish to hand over a directly stated designated responsibility for the universities, the institutes of technology and higher education in general. Instead it came up with this entity which is to straddle the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of Education and Science and which has no title other than innovation policy. It is a case of adding a little bit of this to a little bit of that, putting in a little bit of salt and pepper, stirring the mix and hoping that something will emerge. In the context of this economy's present status and future development needs, I am surprised and disappointed that the Taoiseach copped out to the permanent government in this regard.

I understand the establishment cost of each Minister of State, excluding their salaries and so on, is €450,000 per year according to answers supplied last year to my colleague, Deputy Eamon Gilmore. I would not begrudge this money to the present cast of 20 were they to have serious defined responsibilities in respect of some critical areas. I feel sorry for some of the individuals in question because they will be running from one Department to another having interviews with Secretaries General, they will have no designated functions and they will comprise a hodge-podge. In some cases, they will be distributing cheques and funds to community organisations, but that will not help our economy in terms of the challenges we will face. I am sorry the Government has missed the boat this time.

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