John Collison: Government-by-Agency corner

[Sister Sara]

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.

I doubt it would work. It just sounds like another layer of regulation.

Why would a Co-Ordinator General have "powers to compel agencies" that a Minister couldnt have? This is the part that Collison is not grasping in my opinion. It sounds like more political cowardice.

The same applies here for an organisation like the Fiscal Advisory Council. A totally useless organisation that serves only for a political purpose.
€1m or so is given to a bunch of select economists to write a few reports each year on government spending.

If government spending is exceeding budgetary targets and resulting in increased borrowing, the FAC will advise and warn that government spending is running hot and possibly out of control.
If government spending is within budgetary targets and revenues the FAC will commend the government for its prudence and advise that there is scope for additional spending on public spending.

Either way, depending on the political landscape of the day the government will point to the FAC when it is being commended, "look how good we are at managing public finances", or, the government of the day will bin the FAC report because the FAC doesn't have to answer to the public for failing to deliver much needed, and often promised, public services and infrastructure.

 

[Salvadore]

Well housing delivery is not a 7-10yr project

Well it’s at least four.

 

[TomEdison]

Why would a Co-Ordinator General have "powers to compel agencies" that a Minister couldnt have?

Becuase the law would give him the power.

This is the part that Collison is not grasping in my opinion. It sounds like more political cowardice.

Collison isn't proposing a co-ordinator general; he's proposing that Ministers take back (I assume, by law) these powers.

As for political cowardice, you could be on to something. If Ministers took back the power, that would come with accountability. Making hard decisions involves annoying people, and the "annoying people" phase of any project comes well before completion, and satisfying people. And in today's superficial social media-driven politics, annoy enough people and you won't be around to reap the rewards that come with the completion of the project. Hence, politicians actually don't want that responsibility.

The same applies here for an organisation like the Fiscal Advisory Council.

Different thing entirely. The Fiscal Advisory Council isn't a regulator — it's functions are purely advisory. There's a clue in the name. The idea behind such bodies is that, when a goverment bins its reports, there'll be a political price to be paid for that, and therefore governments won't bin them lightly. But that only works if the public expects and demands that governments adopt good, well-researched, fact-based policies and punishes those that don't.

 

[Sister Sara]

Becuase the law would give him the power.

Yes, as enacted by Government and signed off by Ministers.
My understanding of Collison point of view is that Government have outsourced too much power of their own power to regulators. A "Co-Ordinator General" sounds like somethin similar to me. Granted, it is not what Collision is proposing.

Hence, politicians actually don't want that responsibility.

I don't think that is the issue at all. I'm pretty sure that Ministers have the power to override regulator decisions if they want to. They just do not as it would put into question the purpose of the regulator in the first instance.
Instead, a Minister (or Cabinet) who is not happy with the political fallout of a Regulator decision may devise other methods to by-pass any perceived negative political fall-out, eg - increased spending, or tax cuts for a people sector, industry.

The Fiscal Advisory Council isn't a regulator — it's functions are purely advisory

True, fair point. But it is an example of how an agency is set to provide independent oversight but still be used as a political tool of Government.

 

[TomEdison]

I don't think that is the issue at all. I'm pretty sure that Ministers have the power to override regulator decisions if they want to.

They often don't. That's the whole point.

Back in the day, if you didn't like a planning permission decision made by the local government, you appealed to the Minister for Local Government, who could confirm or overturn the decision. Ministers had a disturbing propensity to make decisions on these appeals in a poor fashion/for really bad reasons, and so An Bord Pleanala was created to hear planning appeals. The Minister can't, generally, overturn decisions of ABP.

And that's a trend that has continued for some time. More and more, regulatory decisions are made by specialised regulatory agencies with statutory powers. They make decisions, rather than giving advice to Ministers on how Ministers should make decisions.

My understanding of Collison point of view is that Government have outsourced too much power of their own power to regulators.

I think it's more than just that. They have outsourced decision-making powers to different regulators, each of which has its own specialised focus. The suggestion is that they act in a siloed way, focussed only on their own issues. So a big project might have to go through a number of regulatory processes seeking planning approval, environmental approval, approval from the water authority, from the electricity distribution authority, from the highway authority, from public transport operators, from the local government(s), from authorities concerned with industrial or public safety or the conservation of heritage, etc, etc. They all have their own processes that proceed separately; they are all asking themselves different questions; they all have different priorities; they are governed by different legislation that imposes different duties on them. There's no overarching authority to drive the process forward; eliminate regulatory processes that effectively duplicate one another; make sure that things are done in the most efficient sequence, etc.

The idea with a co-ordinator general is that he will have the powers to do this.

Salvadore suggests that . . .

This isn’t a million miles from what the department of the Taoiseach does

It isn't, but the Taoiseach doesn't have any power to give directions to regulatory agencies, to modify the statutory time periods and deadlines that apply to them, or to exempt applicants from having to go through regulatory processes that effectively duplicate other regulatory processes that they have gone through or are going through, etc.

The reasons why power moved away from Ministers in the first place are valid ones — concerns about the quality of decision-making, about corruption, etc. Those concerns would reassert themselves if we not only took the power back but put it all in the hands of a single minister. I think the idea behind a statutory co-ordinator general is that the legal powers to simplify, short-circuit, override etc the siloed regulatory processes of multiple different agencies will be vested in a public servant, rather than in Ministers, and this might secure greater public confidence that they are less likely to be exercised corruptly, venally, for political reasons, etc.

 

[Sister Sara]

They have outsourced decision-making powers to different regulators, each of which has its own specialised focus. The suggestion is that they act in a siloed way, focussed only on their own issues.

Ok, I think I see what you mean.

It does have a merit where conflicting priorities, albeit legitimate, clash with one another.
Funding and budgetary constraints of respective departments, agencies can be a serious impediment to progress, as an example.
So an over-arching Regulator could compel other Departments, authorities etc to direct funding or to borrow additional funding where criteria for large infrastructural projects are being met by other Departments/agencies etc.
Something like that, as a simple example?

 

[TomEdison]

The way it is to work in the Australian case that I am familiar with is something like this:

• The government will identify particular infrastructure/development projects as being of strategic signficance to the state. (Presumably these will tend to be large-scale, complex projects.) That will be a political decision.
• Once a project is identified in this way, the co-ordinary general steps in with a brief to oversees the progress of the project. This will at a minimum involve overseeing the planning and regulatory approvals that the project requires. But if it's a public sector project — e.g. the construction of a highway or a hospital, where state agencies are not just regulating or approving the project but actually carrying it out — then his brief will also extend to the agency carrying out the project.
• He'll have a variety of powers — e.g. consolidating or eliminating overlapping regulatory procedures; prescribing shorter timelines than normally apply; etc
• I don't think he is to have any power to direct funding. But he could, e.g., direct an agency to consider and make a decision about a complex application in 3 months rather than 6, and that might require the agency to allocate extra resources (personnel, mostly) to dealing with that application, which would mean talking resources away from other applications, or hiring in extra resources. If that had funding implications, the agency could either deal with that within its own budget, or talk to the finance department about an extra allocation to cover the additional cost. There might be a trade-off between depriving other projects of resources, or spending money to hire additional resources, and the decision made might be affected by the willingness of the finance department to provide extra money. I don't think the co-ordinator general would be involved in that consideration; how the agency finds the resources to comply with his direction is not his concern.

Obviously this does require a pragmatic, realistic and reasonable co-ordinator general. Presumably whoever is chosen to fill the role would have extensive project management experience. There would be no point in the co-ordinator general issuing instructions to deal with a massive and complex application in a time that just didn't allow for adequate consideration, or in a way that would consume so much resources that other work would be essentially paralysed, and I think the expectation is that he would first of all talk to agencies about what was feasibly, and what would work most effectively.

He'd have powers to issue binding directions and the fact that he could do so is something that agencies would bear in mind when talking to him. But, all going well, most of the time things would proceed by agreement; he wouldn't issue directions, or he would issue directions agreed in advance with the agencies affected, or at least that wouldn't surprise them.

 

[Purple]

David McWilliams has a rather good article on this topic in today’s Irish Times.
Look out Ireland, our economy could go the way of Argentina

David McWilliams: Look out Ireland, our economy could go the way of Argentina

Ireland acts as if the good times will last forever

www.irishtimes.com

 

[joe sod]

Look out Ireland, our economy could go the way of Argentina

its behind a paywall but presumably it will be up on McWilliams own site shortly. He seems to have changed tact recently, before he was saying the government should be spending more and didn't need to worry about taking on more debt to build infrastructure. Now he is saying the state apparatus is ineffective and is wasting the money they are getting from Corporation tax, more or less the same points the Collisons are making.

 

[letitroll]

And that's a trend that has continued for some time. More and more, regulatory decisions are made by specialised regulatory agencies with statutory powers. They make decisions, rather than giving advice to Ministers on how Ministers should make decisions.

Which is another way of saying that power has been moved from institutions & structures that are under democratic control to being under the control of unelected unaccountable technocrats.

Its been spoken about before but the apartment standards guidelines, the banning of bedsits - these are acts of technocrats living in leafy suburbs of South County Dublin who can't quite fathom that a bedsit is a perfectly fine solution for certain people, with a certain budget and at a certain point in their lives.

Technocrats and bureaucrats, of course , also live in fear of any career risk and so extreme risk aversion in decision making emerges which is unwarranted, slows things down unnecessarily and is certainly not conducive to fixing complex problems at speed.

Technocrats, bureaucrats, consultants, regulators, planning authorities, judicial reviews.....put enough of them into the mix...and its equivalent of putting glue in your petrol tank.

 

[Sister Sara]

Its been spoken about before but the apartment standards guidelines, the banning of bedsits - these are acts of technocrats living in leafy suburbs of South County Dublin who can't quite fathom that a bedsit is a perfectly fine solution for certain people, with a certain budget and at a certain point in their lives.

It was Minister of State for Housing and Local Services, Michael Finneran (FF), that enacted statutory instrument 543 of 2008, as a function of Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, under John Gormley (Greens).

The matter was discussed with Housing Agencies, Tenants forums, Landlord reps, and opposition TD's.

In the end, a political decision was made by the governing parties and not technocrats or regulators.

 

[letitroll]

In the end, a political decision was made by the governing parties and not technocrats or regulators.

Sure - but technocrats told the Minister's these weren't a good idea......and in a Government system where a Minister has devolved into a manager of technocrats, the technocrats start telling the Minister what to do and not the other way around.

 

[Sister Sara]

Sure - but technocrats told the Minister's these weren't a good idea......and in a Government system where a Minister has devolved into a manager of technocrats, the technocrats start telling the Minister what to do and not the other way around.

But that is not true. Here is the Regulatory Impact Assessment that includes Submissions (under Annex 1) from many quarters of Irish Civic Society that were willing and prepared to contribute.

 

[Protocol]

Now he is saying the state apparatus is ineffective and is wasting the money they are getting from Corporation tax,

The huge increases in CT receipts started in 2015. They have grown, massively.

From about €5bn pa to over €25 bn pa.

What have we to show for it?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but:

• no motorways built
• a few National road projects, but not a lot
• no offshore wind farms even started
• Tram in Dublin - no extensions started (okay, the extension to Broombridge was finished by 2017)
• Metro in Dublin - construction has not started yet
• DART - lots of planning, yes, but no construction started on the four lines
• National railways: four projects underway by 2025, but none finished yet

Okay, there has been some progress:

DART fleet - framework contract signed for 750 vehicles, first 185 vehicles ordered, some delivered to Dublin
NCH - nearly finished

 

[Dr Strangelove]

From about €5bn pa to over €25 bn pa.

Gonna be €32bn this year

 

[joe sod]

The huge increases in CT receipts started in 2015. They have grown, massively.

From about €5bn pa to over €25 bn pa.

What have we to show for it?

But the money has gone somewhere, probably into the bureaucracy and legal system, it's just that the people that build things and make things happen haven't got it this time, they did in the Celtic tiger though, that's the difference.

Even the banks haven't benefited that much this time, it's only the last year really that banks share prices have started to do very well, the bureaucracy and regulatory environment has frightened foreign banks from the Irish economy , Ulster Bank and KBC fled. I know ptsb is up for sale now but don't know whether anyone has been sniffing around at it, didn't hear of anybody building a big stake in it to take it over?

 

[TomEdison]

these are acts of technocrats living in leafy suburbs of South County Dublin

Ministers are also drawn largely from the class that lives in leafy suburbs.

Sure - but technocrats told the Minister's these weren't a good idea......and in a Government system where a Minister has devolved into a manager of technocrats, the technocrats start telling the Minister what to do and not the other way around.

Ministers have been "managers of technocrats " since, I don't know, about 1920 in all developed countries.

It's pretty much unavoidable that, when it comes to making policy, ministers are going to rely heavily on advisers. Ministers aren't chosen for their expertise in the subject matter(s) that their Departments deal with and, even if they were, they'd still need advice. The main point of a professional, non-partisan civil service is to provide the Minister with advice from people with experience of administration in the area concerned.

Ministers are free to take other advice, of course, and there is no shortage of it offered. But most of it comes from sources with an interest — usually a financial interest — in the matter concerned, and much of it is self-interested. Therefore Ministers — particularly the ones we judge to be good, successful minister who acheive things — normally listen carefully to the advice of their civil servants.

But we need to distinguish between making policy, and regulating. When it comes to making policy, Ministers are supported by advice from their Departments and, as mentioned, by other advice. And they very often bring theor own principles,priorities or goals to the table and ask their Department to advise on how best to ensure that policy reflects them, which the Department does. But in the end of the day the Minister has the final say; he has to be happy with the policy. As Sister Sara points out, it was the Minister who made the regulations that led to the end of bedsits.

Regulation is a different matter. If someone applies for planning permission for a residential development, and permission is refused (whether because bedsits are involved or for other reasons) that's a regulatory decision. Ministers are not involved there.

Making policy is a political matter. Ministers have the ultimate decision (and the ultimate responsibility). What we have transferred away from Ministers is not the making of policy; it's the application/enforcement of the policy made, which isn't (and shouldn't be) a political matter.

 

[TomEdison]

But the money has gone somewhere, probably into the bureaucracy and legal system, it's just that the people that build things and make things happen haven't got it this time, they did in the Celtic tiger though, that's the difference.

The healthy budget surplus resulting from inflated corporation tax receipts has substantially been devoted to:

• Reducing the general government deficit (over 30% of GDP in 2010).
• Paying down national debt (debt-to-GNI* ratio down from over 160% in 2013 to around 90%)
• Ending austerity-era cuts in health, education, and capital investment,, esp. capital projects under the National Development Plan
• (More recently) creating financial buffers (the National Reserve Fund, the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund

As for people that build things not getting the money like they did in the Celtic tiger era, adjusted for inflation public capital spending was 45% higher last year than it was in 2005 (a Celtic tiger era year that I picked at random).

 

[nest egg]

Has Collision answered the question he posed? On the one hand, I see he's advocating putting power back into the hand of the politicians. On the other, recognising that politicians have shown themselves to be unworthy of that power.

There's a view here that power needs to be consolidated to get things done, the debate is who should yield that power, the politician or the public servant?

Even if you get rid of the quangos & succeed in centralising power, most of the major deficits the country faces require solutions which span the length of multiple government terms, needing long term thinking and action. The politican however always needs to think in the short term (you or I would do similar in their shoes). The public service can act in the long term, but lacks sufficient accountability to do so at the necessary pace, deferring decisions to the politican.

For as long as the above is allowed to continue, the current issues will.

 

[joe sod]

The public service can act in the long term

the public sector treat the long term as a theoretical concept like the mathematical concept of infinity ∞, a very very large number that can never be reached but is needed for mathematical formulas to work.