Junior Ministers: The monkeys in the mercedes

Wanted: Friendly, Docile Politician for Public Relations Duties. Salary: £22,457.

Ministers for State, or "junior ministers", as they are commmonly called, earn £22,457 annually, travel in chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz and spend many of their waking hours representing the government at social functions.

Top level civil servants refer snidely to the junior ministers as the "transitional" heads of government departments and claim that the burreaucracy - and Irish taxpayers ˜would be better off without them.

"If all the junior ministers were fired tomorrow the people in their constituencies would notice the lack of one Mercedes, that's all. As far as the running of government goes, it would be smoother because there would be one less politician bungling things up," says one member of the Civil Service Executives Union who asked not to be named.

"In my opinion, junior ministers are unnecessary, they are simply perks for the boys. They get a few thoussand quid, a private secretary and a Mercedes to drive around in to make sure of re-election next time," he adds.

Several former Ministers for State say this assessment is unfair. They complain that junior ministers are overworked, underpaid and - worst of all - snubbed by the Taoiseach and Cabinet during the day to day decision-making.

"You pay peanuts, you get monnkeys," says Michael Keating, the former Minister for State at the Deepartment of Education. Keating, and several of his colleagues from the last government, claim that the £8,655 which is added to the TD's base salary of £13,802 does not begin to compennsate junior ministers for the work they are expected to do. "The Irish people get their politicians on the cheap," he adds.

"Being a junior minister is a five day a week job," says Fergus O'Brien, the last Minister for State at the Deepartment of the Environment and the only Coalition junior minister to lose his Dail seat in the February election. "Now, I'm not complaining, in fact,

I'd like to be a junior minister again. But no one ever got rich in that job."

Junior ministers were created in the 1924 Ministers and Secretaries Act as assistants to full Government Ministers and until 1978 they were called Parrliamentary Secretaries. The 1978 Miniisters and Secretaries Act changed the title to Ministers for State and limited the government to ten of these posts. In 1980, the Fianna Fail Government passed the Ministers and Secretaries Act of 1980 and upped the number of junior ministers allowable under the law to 15. (Garret FitzGerald's Coaliition Government had only filled 14 of the slots after seven months in office.)

There is no denying the fact that the 15 junior ministers cost the public a fair bit of money - exactly how much is impossible to tell. Their salary increases come to a total of £129,825, their cars and bodyguard/drivers cost £570,000 and the differential paid to their private secretaries costs another £39,495.

Plus there are the hidden costs beehind the junior ministers, ranging from foreign travel to office redecoration.

During the shortlived Coalition, junior ministers travelled to the United States, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Zambia and Tanzania - to name but a few jaunts.

Perhaps the most costly aspect of the junior ministers was a practice which ended - temporarily - with the Coalition. Until the last governnment, it was common practice for ministers leaving office to invoke the Ministers and Secretaries Act of 1924, which allows junior ministers to "make appointments in the public interest." In other words, ministers were able to make their private staff a permanent part of the ever-growing civil service.

The Coalition Government, howwever, did away with that. Liam Kavaanagh gave an undertaking to the civil service that' all advisors and staff would only endure for the term of the government.

A spokesperson for the Civil Service Executives Union revealed that he was seeking a similar promise from this Fianna Fail Government, but so far Gene FitzGerald had not agreed to meet with them.

Relations between the civil servants and junior ministers have historically been strained, at best. From the burreaucrat's point of view the junior minister is often an interloper, a party loyalist who is being rewarded with his particular government department.

During the last government there were several serious instances of fricction between junior ministers and civil servants.

When Michael Keating was named to his post he decided that a pleasant office would be the one used by the small special education branch in the Department of Education headquar-· ters on Marlborough Street. The civil servants there balked when asked to vacate their office, complained to civil service representatives and as a result Keating spent his ministerial term in a small pre-fab building outside of the stately old Department of Educaation.

And when Kerry TD, Michael Beggley, was named to the junior minister's post at the Department of Tourism, Trade and Commerce, he stepped on bureaucratic toes by appointing his personal secretary from outside the ranks of the usual private secretaries. When the Coalition Government colllapsed, civil servants in his department were threatening to boycott his corresspondence, if he didn't let his secretary go.

What exactly do the junior miniisters do? That seems to depend on how much autonomy they are given by the minister in charge of their deepartment. Some ministers for state claim that they had clearly delineated duties, such as responsibility for an entire department. Others admitted that the bulk of their responsibilities were social.

Michael Begley, the first minister for state given exclusive responsibility for tourism, says he spent much Of his time handing out Tidy Town A wards and performing ceremonial duties like the opening of seafood festivals.

"It was really a PR job. One of the most difficult things was all the sociallising ... you really had to be a good mixer," recalls Begley who logged about 35,000 miles travelling around the country.

Over at the Department for Foreign Affairs, Jim O'Keeffe, last year's junnior minister for the Third World Deveelopment Corporation, agreed that it was the socialising - and travelling which took its toll on him.

"There was a constant round of functions and receptions at which the department had to be represented. You just couldn't relax," says O'Keeffe. "And international travel may seem very glamourous, but when you are under pressure, as we were, it became very hard work."

When it came to in-country travel and public appearances, it was probbably Michael Keating who kept the highest profile during the Coalition Government. (According to one pubblic relations firm which keeps a tally of newspaper photographs, Keating was the third most photographed poliitician last year, only lagging behind Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey).

Michael Keating boasts that in one weekend he managed to: have a Friday lunch in Killorglin, an afternoon apppearance in Cahirciveen, an evening appearance in Tralee and a late night speech to young Fine Gaelers in Cork. The next morning he went to a musseum in Killarney, met with a sailing organisation there, and made it back to Dublin in time for the second half of a provincial rugby match at Lanssdowne Road. On Saturday evening he made an appearance at the Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire and then went to the New Park Comprehensive School for a judo demonstration.

"I felt very good that Sunday morrning when I found that I hadn't missed an appearance. I certainly didn't look on that part of the job as being mostly PR either. While you're out like that, meeting people, you are thinking, gettting ideas," Keating says.

And it is hectic weekends like the one Keating describes, that are used most often by junior ministers as justification for their controversial state cars.

It is the state car and driver, they say, which enables the junior minister to schedule meetings all over the counntryside without worry about falling asleep at the wheel. If the cars go (they say), so do many of their appearrances.

Junior ministers also admit that it is 'down the country' where they are able to get the most political mileage out of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes:

"People in the country expect a miniister to be properly turned out. They want to see the ministers arriving in their little town in a big black car," says one former minister.

On the other hand, the state car is a liability in the impoverished innerrcity.

"It does give rise to a certain ammount of cynicism I suppose when peoople see a junior minister riding around like his lordship in a state car," conceeded Jim O'Keeffe, who insists that the importance of the vehicles is exxaggerated when it is Fine Gael miniisters using them and ignored by the press when Fianna Failers are being squired around in them.

At least one junior minister, Michhael Keating, recognised the potential embarrassment a chauffeur driven car could cause him in his Dublin Central constituency. Keating claims he asked for a car allowance instead, but was turned down.

"I wasn't impressed with being driven past the labour exchange in Gardiner Street every day, right in my constituency," Keating says, addding that there is rarely a "scintilla" of criticism of the Mercedes when Fianna Fallers are in the back seat.

It is not the chauffeur-driven cars, or the anaemic salaries which trouble the junior ministers most - they say it is their unclear role in government. Since Ministers for State are not full members of the Cabinet, they are not involved directly in decision-making. But, having been elevated to the posiition of junior minister, they are no longer rank and file members of the parliamentary party either.

Nearly all former junior ministers say this was one of their major headdaches.

"It was very frustrating at times ... like being in a state of political limbo," says Jim O'Keeffe. "People assume you are a full minister, they don't really know what the junior ministers are. They think you have a full voice in the government."

Yet for some junior ministers in the Coalition Government, being less than full ministers was a saving grace.

"It helped during the campaign to be able to point out that you hadn't been part of the recipe for disaster," said one former junior minister who was re-elected handily. •