The Wallace fiasco

Bertie Ahern is allergic to decisions; the political system is conditioned to create jobs for the girls and the boys

The debacle over the appointment of a junior minister has served to highlight two issues of importance well beyond the significance of the ministerial appointment itself. The first has to do with the prevarication that seems to typify Bertie Ahern's conduct of his office. To dither for two and a half months over the appointment to such an insignificant role – actually there is no job there at all – is a damning insight into his style.

At present there is a Bill going through the Dáil to "fast-tract" infrastructural projects.

Isn't there something ludicrous about a government "fast-tracking" anything when it cannot even decide on minor issues over a ten week period? Isn't the real problem about all projects not the delays arising from the courts and objections but from the inability of the Government to take elementary decisions? It took years to decide on a second terminal at Dublin airport. Years to decide on whether Aer Lingus would be privatised or partly privatised. We have failed over a period of eight years now to take obvious decisions on road safety measures – how long was the issue of random breath-testing sitting around, how long did it take to implement the1998 recommendation on penalty points, how long have we wondered about the ludicrousness of allowing unqualified drivers to continue to drive.

In the Dáil on Wednesday, 22 February, Bertie Ahern was asked questions about his handling of allegations of corruption concerning Fianna Fáil deputies and former deputies and, as usual, no answers were forthcoming. While much of this was knock-about stuff, nevertheless questions arise about Bertie Ahern's handling of the issue. The most glaring issue concerns evidence that has emerged that various members and former members of Fianna Fáil retained for their own purposes political donations intended for the party.

One would have thought Bertie Ahern, as the current custodian of the interests of Fianna Fáil would have made some effort to recover monies that were intended for his party, all the more so since Fianna Fáil feels now obliged to engage in questionable fund-raising activities because of pressing debts. And yet, although we have known about all this for at least nine years now, nothing has been done.

The other issue that arises is why do we have so many junior ministerial positions at all? As we report elsewhere in this issue of Village, in 1977 there were just seven junior ministers (they were known at the time as Parliamentary Secretaries). In 1977 Jack Lynch's government decided to increase the number of ten. There was some justification for this because of the increased ministerial workload arising from our accession to the European Community in 1973. But in 1980 this number was increased to 15 by Charles Haughey, almost entirely for party political purposes and unrelated to administrative demands. Fine Gael protested and promised to reduce the number on its return to office but when it returned to office the following year the number of junior ministers remained the same. That is until 1995, when again for purely party political purposes, the number was increased again to 17, this time by a Fine Gael-led government. Fianna Fail, then in position, promised to cut back the numbers, but on its return to power two years later nothing was done.

The junior ministers positions are part of a scam whereby TDs are remunerated whether by junior ministerial appointment or through many of the farcical Oireachtas committees (by no means are all of them farcical but many of them clearly are) thereby ensuring that the average pay of all 166 TDs is about double the nominal amount, which is around €82,000. It is a rip-off and it degrades our public life. Indeed the silence about it degrades it even more.

Giving executive responsibility to people elected for reasons that have nothing to do with their executive capacities is bound to cause problems and it is little wonder that we have so many cock-ups and inefficiencies in the management of our public affairs. Politicians should decide on policy, professional executives should execute those policies. Ministers, both senior and junior, in the main, are not professional executives and many of them have no executive competence at all. To give them executive responsibility for the execution of policy is madness.

But changing this is likely to prove impossible. Politicians like executive responsibility and the status of being minister. Most of them believe they have executive capacity, even though almost none of them would get a job in a senior executive position in a private company – is there a corporation in the world, for instance, that would appoint a national teacher or a barrister to a senior executive role?

vincent browne