Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister State is welcome to the House. I am aware of the fact that, on one side, we have a parallel process going on where we have a number of judicial cases on this issue and, on the other side, we have a transparent process being entered into by the Government. On the basis that it is transparent and open, I welcome that. As to my colleagues who have cases down in the High Court, I wish them well. The State has deep pockets and will probably keep them there for years as they have been keeping me on a secret deal, running me through every process possible to delay the inevitable outcome. However, in this instance, I fully support the State. I fully support the Government in what it is trying to do. Can anyone in this room honestly say that a corporate entity would be run where the CEO of the organisation had responsibility for everything? I ran a business in the 1980s where I took responsibility for everything. I was the salesperson, the chief executive, the accounting officer and everything, and I was broke. I lost everything. I lost my home and everything I owned, and I learned the dearest lesson anybody will ever learn, and that is that no man or woman can be responsible for everything.

What we really should be talking about here is that this legislation is a temporary move before we go to the people and establish what we should have as a Cabinet. The Cabinet should probably, in this modern world - Senator Pat Casey mentioned it a few moments ago - have 30 Cabinet Ministers in order to handle the complex issues that come before the Oireachtas on a regular basis. I look at the Deputy Simon Harris. He is Tánaiste; he is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, which is a massive portfolio. He is also Minister for trade, which is a massive portfolio, and, stuck somewhere at the end of it, he is Minister for Defence. Can anybody in this room, whether Opposition or Government, tell me how any single individual can be responsible for all of that? How much time does defence get with the Minister? Does it get a half day a month? How much time does trade get? It needs an enormous amount of time. How much time does foreign affairs get? Then let us look at the inevitable mistake, error or problem that arises, that my colleague Senator Kyne adverted to. An issue arises and we want answers. What do we do in politics? We fire the Minister and we create all hell around them. In the last Oireachtas, however, while I spent four years trying to get a Secretary General to come before a committee and explain what was going on in his Department, the answer was, "It is the Minister who is answerable to the Oireachtas."

Let us wake up and be honest about what we are talking about here. We are talking about three extra super juniors. It is not the end of the world. It might make for better management. One of the things I would like to see happen is that we narrow down what people are responsible for, instead of having them sprawling across three or four Departments. If I am not mistaken, in the last Oireachtas, we had a Minister who was responsible for post and telegraphs, part of transport and part of search and rescue, and had some responsibility in communications as well. For God's sake, let us be honest about it.

Rather than arguing and trying to down this, let us look at it as a temporary move as we move forward. Some day, whether we like it or not, we are going to have to go to the public in this country and say to them that we need to increase the number of Cabinet Ministers and that has to be done by referendum. We are also going to have to say to them that we have to put a stop on the growth of the Dáil itself. We are at 174 Members today. In a couple of years' time, there will probably be a requirement for another ten Members of the Oireachtas and, very soon, we will have to have tiered seating down in the Dáil. Let us get real about it. Any party that finished up in government this year would have been faced with exactly the same problems on how we go forward.

It is not a time for posturing. This country has serious problems. I have heard people in here talk about housing, disability, health and all of those things, yet one individual is expected to take responsibility for a number of Departments where he or she might only get a briefing once a month for half a day. Then, when something goes wrong, that individual is brought in here and flogged to death, or flogged to death down in the Dáil, and the press and everybody else has a go at him or her. Let us look at this as a way of moving forward whereby we get a slightly better Government than we had the last time, insofar as people have fewer responsibilities thrust upon them, and that we get a much better reaction.

Let us also look at the reform of who is and how people are answerable to this Oireachtas - to joint committees, the Seanad itself and the Dáil. Secretaries General are paid a fortune, far more than any Minister. Why are they not responsible and directly answerable to committees of this Oireachtas? We see millions of euro being spent, yet these people can hide behind the ghost, push the Minister forward and let the Minister answer the question. As we know, we stay for four or five years at the most. If a new Minister goes into a new Department, something goes wrong and there is a major problem coming down the road, it is the Minister who takes the hit for it, not the people who have been managing it all along.

We need to get real about what politics is doing in this country. We need to become more supportive of our politicians. I accept that we have an Opposition, a critical Opposition that calls out Government on everything it does wrong, but we must also come together as public representatives and demand better from those who are actually doing the work in this State. In the last Oireachtas, we were talking about bicycle sheds, security guards' huts and children's hospitals. All of these things have gone on over several decades. The children's hospital is going on so long in this country that I cannot remember when it started, but it did start at about €600 million, and it is looking likely to go to €2.5 billion, and what is the answer we get? It is that we will have the best hospital in Europe. Is that a legitimate answer? It is not. How is it happening? It is happening because Ministers have too many responsibilities and portfolios. They do not have time. I do not know why anyone would even take the job of a Minister. They do not have time to deal with any one thing. My own experience, for what it was worth, was if you bring people along with you, you can actually make things work. If you try to run everything yourself, you are doomed to failure. We have seen too many failures in this country now. I will give the Government a lash every chance I get, but there are times when you have to step back from giving the Government a lash and deal with things because they have to be what they are.

I hope we will see this legislation passed. The courts will decide, in their wisdom, whether we have in some way usurped the Constitution. All my colleagues here were handed a copy of the Constitution when they were elected. It is the rule book of the society in which we live. It is the rule book that was agreed by the citizens of this country. It is the guide for all of us. I commend colleagues who have decided to go to the courts to have this legislation or agreement tested. That is what the courts are there for and that is what we should do but we must never allow a situation like the case I currently have with respect to the secret deal with the RAF. Nobody should ever be able to sign a secret deal on anything. At the end of the day, we should know. It should be open and transparent, as this legislation is. Like it or lump it, it is here and you can read it. Everything you need to know is in it and if you want to argue it, you can argue it. We should argue it and we should test everything that comes through this House.

I commend the approach being taken by Sinn Féin today. It should bring it down to the courts, which are the final arbitrator of the Constitution, and let them decide if the Constitution has been usurped. If it has, then let the Government find a solution to that but we need to stay within the Constitution. I say to Senators that as they serve here - there are lots of new Members present - whenever they have a doubt, they should go to the Constitution and look at it. They may feel somewhere along the line that somebody has set aside the Constitution in the greater need. There is a great argument for that but if it is set aside for one thing, it can be set aside for everything. It is grand when you set it aside for a greater need until that greater need is human rights, access to the courts or something else.

Before we start flogging the Government to death on this, at least it has come out in the open. It has given it to us and we can debate it, discuss it, criticise it, vote on it later on today and we can let it pass but for God's sake, let us not waste the next five years arguing over things that do not need to be argued over.