Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I had not intended speaking on this Bill. I listened with great interest to the contribution made by Deputy Richard Bruton on this Bill as I listened on several previous occasions to his contributions on the connection between the manner in which we do our business and govern and the job of the Executive, the public administration of the State, and both Houses of the Oireachtas. I also listened to the contribution made by Deputy Pat Rabbitte. I believe there is an emerging consensus that we cannot, as stated by Deputy Bruton, continue to do the business of this nation in the 21st century in Dickensian form. I touched on this issue the other day when speaking on the legislation on public service pay. I made the point - this point has been also made by Deputies Bruton and Rabbitte down through the years - that it is 40 years since the Public Service Organisation Review Group, PSORG, report was published, at the very heart of which was the development of one particular thesis that would have dealt with the Sir Humphreys, the paucity of challenge that exists within public administration, that would have released the talent that exists within the public service and would have given this House a far more meaningful role.

The myth of which I am speaking is the concept of ministerial responsibility, which is absolutely daft. If one reads what the PSORG had to say all of those years ago - taking up the point made by Deputy Bruton - it stated that the emergence of an ever growing number of non-commercial State-sponsored bodies was a way of simply avoiding the reforms needed in terms of public administration and politics. We now have a situation that is even worse. Again, as Deputy Bruton stated, how can we hold the Health Service Executive or any of the other quangos to account in this House? I agree with him on the issue of regulation. We are all the authors of our position in this matter. We must develop a political consensus in this State. Otherwise, we will have a public administration system which is sub-optimal, does not release the talent that exists and stultifies people with real talent. We all know from experience that there is real talent and vigour in public administration. However, the dead hand of this myth lies on public administration, stultifies it and prevents the evolution of our political system. I believe we are all to blame for this.

When one is in Government, this is a comfortable myth with which to live. One then has the creation of more and more quangos and can say particular matters are no longer the responsibility of the Minister. We have this bizarre idea in Ireland that this does not apply anywhere else, that in some mythical way the Minister of the day knows everything about every file and every fact. We see this day in and day out in this House in terms of the frustration, in particular of Deputies on the opposite benches, expressed in parliamentary questions, which should not be handled in the manner in which we must handle our business.

The myth was put in place without thinking when Queen Victoria was a little girl, and we are still applying it here in this country. We must break away from this myth which operates as an anchor on the spirit that exists within public administration. There were times when we actually allowed our public administration to show its capacity, namely, when people like T.K. Whitaker could produce his great paper, to which Deputy Bruton referred the other night, and could release the nation and challenge politics. That is where we are. I believe there is an extraordinary reality here. The evolution of quangos in the past ten or 15 years has cost us tens of millions of euros. I said privately the other night to Deputy Bruton that I had read his paper with great interest. I happen to believe we are close on this issue. Virtually every one of the quangos created did not need to be created. We must release central administration to do the job it does best, to administer and carry out the tasks of public administration, and we must focus the Minister and ministerial advisers on policy. We could then come into this House and challenge the Ministers of the day only on policy and not involve ourselves in who is or is not getting headage payments. This is not just stultifying in terms of administration - this was previously known as the culture of gombeenism or, as referred to by Deputy Michael D. Higgins, clientelism - it destroys politics too because it leads us all to focus on the lowest common denominator.

The myth is a carbuncle on the administrative system and, more important, is a cancer within the politic system. Irrespective of whether we like it, we are all involved in a conspiracy to sub-optimise the way we govern our country. The sooner we recognise and change this, the better. I do not wish to cover ground covered by other Members. I believe the evolution of the Commission was an important step forward. I seriously believe that once some of the current passions are out of our way, we should examine how we bring or drag our administration to where John Boland wanted to bring it in 1974 but was prevented from doing so by the Sir Humphreys, the vested interests who did not want this. I believe had we changed this we would have avoided the ballooning of our public administration system, with which we are now trying to deal, and would have been able to evolve and pay the talent what it deserves to be paid. For example, we could have given principal officers executive responsibility for areas of public administration, thus releasing them from mythologies that now bind them. I believe, too, that we would have changed politics. Perhaps we have come to a point in our evolution where we have to realise those truths.

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