Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Deputy does not think I live in some kind of exclusive domain away from the people who elect us to this House. I was at a public meeting with 350 people in the Red Cow facility the other evening. I have to say it was very engaging and positive. I was in Tuam yesterday with 250 people. A broad range of issues, including the economy, rising confidence, job opportunities and Irish Water, were discussed.

I have said to the Deputy in this House on many occasions that if he wants me to change the system of Taoiseach's questions, I will do so. I will give the Deputy, as the leader of his group, and the leaders of the Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin groups, the opportunity to table a Priority Question each week if they want to ask something that is of more urgent need from their perspectives. That offer has been refused on a number of occasions. As the Ceann Comhairle is aware, when these questions come up, many of them are outdated because the Cabinet committees have moved on. That is open to the Deputy all the time. When Cabinet committees have met, I can inform the leaders of the groups that they have met. We can put that in place for their information.

I was in this House during the 1980s, and indeed prior to that, when the structure of the Cabinet meant that its business took a very long time to complete. The Ceann Comhairle would have been a Minister of State in that Government. Some of those meetings went on for 14 or 15 hours in the absence of a structure to co-ordinate the decision-making process. Government is about making decisions at the end of the day, after proper Cabinet collegiality and discussion about them. The Government of which I was briefly a member between 1994 and 1997, under John Bruton as Taoiseach, had a facility of programme managers for each of the Ministers. They met to tease out where issues might be controversial or not agreed or whatever. That was a three-party Government. I think that system worked very well because issues that required political decisions were brought to the attention of the leaders of the parties. That meant there was an effective Cabinet response. I think meetings lasted between an hour and three quarters and two hours, on average.

Along with the then Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, I set up the Economic Management Council to streamline the way business is actually handled here. It is not for me to comment on the investigation that will take place with the banking inquiry. Clearly, the situation that arose before the bank guarantee and before the IMF arrived here was that the connection that should have been in place to bring really important issues to the fore did not exist. In this case, the Economic Management Council does not in any way replace the Cabinet. It is a measure of knowing the issues that are important, urgent and need to be addressed. They are addressed at the Economic Management Council, but only before they are more fully addressed at the Cabinet itself. It is a method of understanding important issues that are likely to cause problems, or require political analysis and decision, before they are brought to the Cabinet for decision.

The Economic Management Council, which has been given the status of a Cabinet sub-committee, has four members. It is open to this sub-committee to bring in other Ministers - they have attended in the past - to discuss issues that are important to them. It streamlines the work of the Government and allows the Cabinet - the members of the Government - to focus on areas to which they really need to give their attention. If there is a problem about any of the issues under discussion, they can be identified and the Cabinet can make its decision, or not as the case might be. It is not in any way some sort of secret organisation. It is merely a streamlining process for the bringing to the Cabinet of all the issues that require Cabinet decision. That is what it is about. It does not take over from the Cabinet. It does not take away from the Cabinet because that is a matter for all the members of the Government to sign off on collectively. It allows for issues that need to be teased out further to be identified, for the collective responses of members of the Cabinet to be received and for decisions to be made. That is all it is. It makes for more effective working of the Government itself.

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