If anybody wants information on the number of state agencies:
John Collison: Government-by-Agency corner
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And how much are all these "regulators" costing, all those salaries and pensions coming out of taxation revenue? Is it any wonder then that the cost of running the state has ballooned especially since covid. Also the reason why we have the highest income taxes in the oecd, with another effective increase in the most recent budget. We are paying a heavy price for all this bureaucracy
Brendan Burgess
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balders93
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In the CSO link protocol posted
The lists can be found by first choosing a sector:
I selected Central Govt, and the next page shows all the Depts
I picked the Dept of Agriculture, and expanded it:
Ceist Beag
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Wow, haven't the horse and greyhound lobbyists done well for themselves!
Sister Sara
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Most of these organisations have nothing to do with regulation. They are merely the constructs for managing and administrating public monies in the selective fields. Sub-divisions of sub-departments of a bigger Department, if you will. They have no, or little sway over Ministerial decisions. It is simple organisational mapping.
Take "Autolease Fleet Management Ltd" for instance.
This is a private enterprise involved the leasing of motor vehicles. It trades as niftibusiness.ie It has 2 shareholders, AIB and Nissan Ireland Ltd.
The Department of Finances only interest/link is by virtue of the Irish States ownership of AIB shares.
If niftibusiness makes money, the Irish State makes money!
But excellent and very useful list all the same @Protocol
Take "Autolease Fleet Management Ltd" for instance.
| Autolease Fleet Management Ltd | Department of Finance | S12601 | Commercial Financial Corporation under the aegis of Department |
This is a private enterprise involved the leasing of motor vehicles. It trades as niftibusiness.ie It has 2 shareholders, AIB and Nissan Ireland Ltd.
The Department of Finances only interest/link is by virtue of the Irish States ownership of AIB shares.
If niftibusiness makes money, the Irish State makes money!
But excellent and very useful list all the same @Protocol
Collinson is right - it used to be that when a Minister in Kildare St. snapped his fingers stuff happened, now nothing happens....the right balance is somewhere in between these two extremes......but make no mistake about it we are at one end of the extreme here.
Brendan Burgess
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So you all think that the heads of the Department of Finance and Public Expenditure approve of the grossly irresponsible levels of spending and low levels of taxation? That Paschal Donohoe would like to be more responsible but his civil servants have captured him?
No - I think what Collinson is saying is that while Government Minister's still set strategy (tax rates, budgets etc.) so are still 'in control' in this respect (strategy) they have lost control of what one might call in a company the job of Chief Operating Officer or put another way execution of said strategy has moved away from them into arms length quangos......for example the Minister of Health is really in practise the Chief Strategy Officer for Health versus somebody with executive control.....hence the constant referring out to the HSE for clarity on things or my favourite "requests have been sent by the Minister for Health to the HSE to look into XYZ".
So in lots of instances IMO - these Minister's look on the face of it like Chairmen of their various functions........with the actual chief executive function split into 20 pieces and outsourced into a myriad of agencies hence when anything of any complexity needs to get done at abnormal speed or scale the Minister doesnt have the levers at hand to affect change hence why many Irish Times article contain within them the sentence "Minister XYZ has written to the XYZ Agency requesting that they do XYZ with the agency expected to respond in the coming months"
So in lots of instances IMO - these Minister's look on the face of it like Chairmen of their various functions........with the actual chief executive function split into 20 pieces and outsourced into a myriad of agencies hence when anything of any complexity needs to get done at abnormal speed or scale the Minister doesnt have the levers at hand to affect change hence why many Irish Times article contain within them the sentence "Minister XYZ has written to the XYZ Agency requesting that they do XYZ with the agency expected to respond in the coming months"
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Reminds of the old Norman Lamont resignation speech in which he said that the Conservative Government of the day gave "the impression of being in office but not in power."
Much of Irish political life in the last decade has this same feel when various shades of FF & FG gave the impression of being in office but not in power. It is one thing to set a strategy to build 300,000 houses and quite another to get it done. The various Minister's of Housing we've had were not incompetents their inability to get anything done during their tenure feels like a systems failure versus an individuals Minister's failure (albeit many Minister's ago they should have switched tack to address the systems failure that stymied Central Government's executive function.
Much of Irish political life in the last decade has this same feel when various shades of FF & FG gave the impression of being in office but not in power. It is one thing to set a strategy to build 300,000 houses and quite another to get it done. The various Minister's of Housing we've had were not incompetents their inability to get anything done during their tenure feels like a systems failure versus an individuals Minister's failure (albeit many Minister's ago they should have switched tack to address the systems failure that stymied Central Government's executive function.
Agree with the above, the catch is the minister can never admit to not being in control.
My observations from the small corner I see is that the minister often gets the blame for something they had no knowledge and could have had no knowledge of but they may be also involved in areas that they should not be also (project A over B because of election).
I wonder if coalition governments have anything to do with it. Such governments make quick change very slow, an absence of top down direction creates a vacuum where those at the top of the agencies will happily fill with their own views.
My observations from the small corner I see is that the minister often gets the blame for something they had no knowledge and could have had no knowledge of but they may be also involved in areas that they should not be also (project A over B because of election).
I wonder if coalition governments have anything to do with it. Such governments make quick change very slow, an absence of top down direction creates a vacuum where those at the top of the agencies will happily fill with their own views.
This isn’t a uniquely Irish thing. The regulatory paralysis of projects, especially but not solely infrastructure/development projects, is a live issue in a lot of countries. In the UK recently there was much discussion about how long the High Speed Rail link has taken, how little progress has been made, how much projected costs have ballooned, and how so much of this is attributable to regulatory overkill, regulatory replication and siloed regulatory agencies not talking to one another. And there are similar discussions going on in Australia, both at the federal level and in several states. And I’ve seen similar comments from the US. Etc, etc.
It’s a complex phenomenon which I suspect doesn’t have a simple cause or a simple solution. But remember how we got here; Collison makes the point that in the Good Old Days, when Ministers could drive projects through, there was scope for poor decision-making (the Minister’s enthusiasm for a project does not necessarily correlate well with public benefit), wasteful spending and outright corruption. I think that’s why we have seen regulatory authority taken away from Ministers and transferred to officials who act at arm’s length. We don’t trust the Ministers; we fear they will act stupidly, venally or corruptly.
If anything, the last generation has seen further erosion of trust in politicians and in the political establishment; we trust them even less than we did when we set up independent regulatory authorities. So abolishing the agencies, or simply giving Ministers the power to override their decisions, is not a no-brainer. You don’t necessarily improve matters by switching from a system in which development can be vetoed by an environmental protection agency that considers nothing but environmental matters and doesn’t take a holistic view, to a system in which development can be progressed by a Minister who doesn’t think about environmental matters at all and doesn’t take holistic view. (Or, for the environment, substitute any other public policy consideration that you like.)
It’s also worth pointing out that abolishing the agencies, in itself, doesn’t result in a huge reduction in costs. Sticking with the environment as an example of a public policy consideration, if you say, e.g., from now on the Minister will grant approvals required under the environmental protection legislation, then environmental impact assessments will still be required, and the Minister will need staff to review those assessments and advise him on them. So the most of the staff of the agency simply transfer to the Department and, instead of advising the agency CEO, they advise the Minister, who makes the decisions that the agency CEO used to make. If you want to reduce the burden of environmental regulation, then I think your choices are:
I’m aware of a proposal in Australia to try to tackle these issues, not by transferring power back to Ministers, but by appointing a “Co-ordinator General”, who would be a public servant. Ministers will identify particular projects as being of strategic significance, and once they do so the Co-ordinator General will liaise with the project promoters (who may be in the public sector or the private sector) and the regulatory agencies involved to co-ordinate their activities and drive the process forward. He’ll have powers to compel agencies to devote additional resources to assessing and making decisions about the project; to get agencies talking to one another; to set time-scales for decision-making, and to dispense with regulatory processes that he thinks duplicate one another. This is essentially the kind of thing that Collison reckons Ministers used to be able to do, back in the day.
Will it work? I dunno. But it might be worth a try.
It’s a complex phenomenon which I suspect doesn’t have a simple cause or a simple solution. But remember how we got here; Collison makes the point that in the Good Old Days, when Ministers could drive projects through, there was scope for poor decision-making (the Minister’s enthusiasm for a project does not necessarily correlate well with public benefit), wasteful spending and outright corruption. I think that’s why we have seen regulatory authority taken away from Ministers and transferred to officials who act at arm’s length. We don’t trust the Ministers; we fear they will act stupidly, venally or corruptly.
If anything, the last generation has seen further erosion of trust in politicians and in the political establishment; we trust them even less than we did when we set up independent regulatory authorities. So abolishing the agencies, or simply giving Ministers the power to override their decisions, is not a no-brainer. You don’t necessarily improve matters by switching from a system in which development can be vetoed by an environmental protection agency that considers nothing but environmental matters and doesn’t take a holistic view, to a system in which development can be progressed by a Minister who doesn’t think about environmental matters at all and doesn’t take holistic view. (Or, for the environment, substitute any other public policy consideration that you like.)
It’s also worth pointing out that abolishing the agencies, in itself, doesn’t result in a huge reduction in costs. Sticking with the environment as an example of a public policy consideration, if you say, e.g., from now on the Minister will grant approvals required under the environmental protection legislation, then environmental impact assessments will still be required, and the Minister will need staff to review those assessments and advise him on them. So the most of the staff of the agency simply transfer to the Department and, instead of advising the agency CEO, they advise the Minister, who makes the decisions that the agency CEO used to make. If you want to reduce the burden of environmental regulation, then I think your choices are:
- Put more resources into the regulatory agency, so that submissions are considered more quickly and decisions are made sooner.
- Reduce the regulatory requirement so that, e.g., a wider range of projects doesn’t require regulatory approval at all.
I’m aware of a proposal in Australia to try to tackle these issues, not by transferring power back to Ministers, but by appointing a “Co-ordinator General”, who would be a public servant. Ministers will identify particular projects as being of strategic significance, and once they do so the Co-ordinator General will liaise with the project promoters (who may be in the public sector or the private sector) and the regulatory agencies involved to co-ordinate their activities and drive the process forward. He’ll have powers to compel agencies to devote additional resources to assessing and making decisions about the project; to get agencies talking to one another; to set time-scales for decision-making, and to dispense with regulatory processes that he thinks duplicate one another. This is essentially the kind of thing that Collison reckons Ministers used to be able to do, back in the day.
Will it work? I dunno. But it might be worth a try.
More money is rarely what motivates highly successful people and the skills and attributes that make them aren't often a great fit for political life.
One example:
Iarnród Éireann wants to eliminate seven level crossings in north Cork, in conjunction with Cork County Council
They applied to ABP for a Railway Order, which is a form of planning permission.
Now, in my opinion, this should not be a requirement. They should simply apply locally to Cork Co. Co. for PP.
Here is what is on their website:
Last I heard, 37 months had elapsed, without any response, yea or nay, from ABP.
The Eiffel Tower was built faster.
Iarnród Éireann wants to eliminate seven level crossings in north Cork, in conjunction with Cork County Council
They applied to ABP for a Railway Order, which is a form of planning permission.
Now, in my opinion, this should not be a requirement. They should simply apply locally to Cork Co. Co. for PP.
Here is what is on their website:
Railway Order
- Iarnród Éireann lodged a railway order for the Cork Line Level Crossings project to An Bord Pleanála, who held an oral hearing for the application in September 2022. A decision is awaited.
Last I heard, 37 months had elapsed, without any response, yea or nay, from ABP.
The Eiffel Tower was built faster.
balders93
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Looking into this, an inspector's report recommended the order be granted with conditions in May 2023.
In July 2024 the decision was to make the railway order with conditions
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This isn’t a million miles from what the department of the Taoiseach does. They dip in and out of other departments’ policy responsibilities in order to either coordinate responses or to give focus to an issue of particular importance.
Make no mistake, political will is what drives progress. The trouble with all the examples in this thread is that they are all long term in nature and therefore of little value to a government concerned only with what can be achieved in advance of the next election.
Imagine being responsible for making a decision in relation to say a major transport infrastructural project, only for the opposition to be the ones cutting the ribbon several years later.
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Well housing delivery is not a 7-10yr project....meaningful uplifts can be achieved inside the lifetime of a government.....the fact this Government since about 2016 has failed to meaningfully move the dial speaks to some kind of systems failure because the poltical desire has been there to do something about for a long time and I mean Simon Coveney, Eoin Murphy, Darragh O'Brien these we're not incompetents, low IQ or low energy Minister's and housing dominated the political backdrop in which they operated.....no I think Collinson has it about right the ability to execute from Kildare St. has in some sense been atomized and dispersed out to quangos and courts....and I'm sure each decision to do that (in isolation) looked like a model in good governmental governance & oversight....combined they created a lollapalooza effect that meant the Minister for Housing "gave the impression of being in office but not in power" as Lamont said.
exactly we were able to deliver big projects like the port tunnel, Luas, motorways, huge hotels like Citywest etc and 80K houses per year during the celtic tiger years, we also built large infrastructure projects during the cash strapped 80s so we used to be able to do this stuff but not since around 2016 as you said. Therefore the real problems are the bureacratic , legal and regulatory regime that have become enmeshed in everything. When we were poor we didn't have the money to pay for all this regulatory burden , now alot of the money the government takes in to run the state is actually spent on all this bureacracy.