Some Very Special Advice

P O’Neill made an interesting post earlier to IrishElection.com about the changing influence and roles of “Special Advisors” in both Ireland and the UK.  He referenced a particular post by Backword on the UK problems.

Our system is slightly different.  TDs have never had advisors/researchers on entering Government before (this election will be the first since the “Parliamentary Assistants” were installed; previously each TD had only one secretary).
Nobody (least of all the Parliamentary Assistants) knows what will happen to them when their TDs enter office (much more of a problem if the Rainbow gets in rather than the current Gov’t - only non-office holders have Parliamentary Assistants).

The position of Programme Manager is normally given to a senior ally of the incoming Minister, and usually requires plenty of prior experience in either law, accounting or the civil service.  Most of the Parliamentary Assistants are younger and probably wouldn’t have the experience to be Programme Managers.  Wagger reckons that most of them would transfer into Special Advisors or Press Officers quite easily though.

Ministers here have a reasonably loose arrangement in terms of their “personal” staff.  They have normally two secretaries of their own appointment, plus a varying number of civil servant secretaries.  Then there is one Programme Manager, who is always a Minister’s personal appointment (he/she runs the Department in the Minister’s absence, so must be politically joined at the hip to the Minister), and a varying number of Special Advisors, Press Officers, Communications Officers, Constituency Office Staff/Managers, etc, all of whom can be Civil Servants, but some of whom are normally the Minister’s personal appointees.

Of course, the longer a party is in office (not looking at any party in particular…), the less clear the delineation between some of the civil servant posts and some of the party political posts.

All in all, this is likely to be a very interesting subject if the Rainbow gets in.