Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Healy. I will leave at least three minutes for him, maybe more. We will see.

Here we are with the first Bill of this Dáil and this Government, and we are off to an extremely bad start, both procedurally, because the debate is being guillotined, and with respect to what the Government is proposing. We are having a short Second Stage debate and then we will be straight into our amendments, all of which have been ruled out of order. We will have a tiny amount of time for that and then - bang - it will all be voted through this evening. Regarding content, the purpose of the priority, first Bill of the Government is to create an additional three new junior Ministers and one additional so-called super junior Minister. It is the highest number of Ministers, junior Ministers and super duper junior Ministers and the highest percentage there has ever been. Not far off one in every two Government TDs will be a Minister or so-called Minister in one form or another, that is, 38 of 95 Government TDs. It is incredible. It gives us a hint about what the negotiations between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Lowry Regional Independent Group and the Healy-Raes were really about. It was not so much about policy because effectively the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael manifestos were mashed together, concrete targets were left out and then the Regional Independent Group nodded that through with a tweak here or there. Instead, the focus was clearly on how many snouts can fit into the public trough.

The Government has tried, in a way impressively - with a brass neck - to say all these extra Ministers of State are needed because of the bigger population or the additional complexity of running things and so on. The Government does not believe it. The public does not believe it. No one believes that is what is really going on here. The idea that it is linked to the size of population does not hold any water. The other night, I looked up the size of the government in various countries around the world. It varies quite a bit, but there is not much correlation between the number of ministers and the size of the population. There are larger countries with fewer ministers. Denmark, for example, has a population of 6 million and 25 ministers. Other smaller countries have more ministers. It does not relate to population size. That is just cover for the real reason, which is the sharing of the spoils of power between a number of different parties and groupings. That is revealed by the fact that this is the first Bill and includes extra allowances for the so-called super junior Ministers. The next act, which I presume will be done by ministerial order - the Minister might clarify that - will be to push through additional expenses for junior Ministers.

Previously, junior Ministers had to make do on the supposedly modest combined salary and expenses of €176,000 per year. That is more than four times the national average earnings. Some of them were putting on the poor mouth, saying they are losing out because as a result of getting that, they lose access to the travel and accommodation allowance TDs get, which is a banded system based on how far away from the Dáil Members live. For those who live farthest away, it is in excess of €35,000. The former Fine Gael Chief Whip, Paul Kehoe, claim that junior Ministers were sleeping in hostels as a result. They are paid €176,000 between salary and expenses, yet somehow were unable to afford hotels and, therefore, needed these additional tens of thousands of euro in another set of expenses.

This is an idea that supposedly has no parent. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae said it has nothing to do with him. Supposedly, this idea emerged from nowhere in the negotiations and did not relate to the various people who were to become the junior Ministers saying they wanted these extra expenses.

The other clear example of the sharing out of the spoils of power that this is really about is the increase in the number of so-called super junior Ministers. What started out as one super junior Minister to facilitate Democratic Left being in government in 1994 has now ballooned into a record four. How many will it ultimately end up being if the Government is not stopped in the courts? Their role in the secret deals between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the groups of Independent TDs is revealed by the fact that two of the four so-called super junior Ministers are from the Regional Independent Group, with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael getting one each.

It will not ultimately be decided here, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the super junior Ministries are a breach of the Constitution. The Constitution is clear that the Government should have a maximum of 15 members and that it should act collectively and confidentially. The presence or attendance of these so-called super junior Ministers is clearly in breach of that. I do not know whether it was conscious or unconscious, but former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, gave away the game about this when he wrote in The Sunday Times three weeks ago that the super junior Ministries were used "to get around the rule of 15", explaining that at Cabinet they are treated as equals, they have a full set of advisers and bring their own memos for decisions. They get the extra allowances, attend and participate in all Cabinet decisions. They act as Ministers, breaching the Constitution for the sole purpose of spreading around the spoils of office. It is another grand political stroke for which ordinary people pay.

Former Deputy, Leo Varadkar went on to make the point that it is time to bite the bullet and amend the Constitution to allow for the number of senior Ministers to increase. That is fine; let us have that discussion. We are in favour of a different kind of constitution, which puts people's rights to the fore and there would not be secret discussions. Let us have a discussion in that context about how many Ministers we have. That is fine, but one cannot just get around the Constitution by this invention of the concept of super junior Ministers. If the Government wants to change the Constitution and the rules, that is fine, but it has to go to the people to do it, because the people have the right to decide.

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