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More mercs, less accountability
Read more about: Democracy, Government, Health
On the same day that Bertie fills his 20 junior ministerial slots, a jarring note from the Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly –
“Over the years there has been a hiving off of functions which were traditionally within the remit of ministers and their departments and the creation of new single-purpose agencies, for example, FAS, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health and Safety Authority.
“The practice of creating new agencies has accelerated in more recent times. There are now over 450 such bodies in existence, only a handful of which come within my remit as Ombudsman even though, paradoxically, many do come within the scope of freedom of information legislation.
“Other accountability mechanisms are also lacking in that they are subject to little or no parliamentary oversight and there has been a diminution in ministerial responsibility and control over functions which formerly were part of the relevant department.”
So while Bertie defines ever more detailed portfolios for the juniors, many government service functions are now handled by quangos or the private sector. Doubtless one aspect of public frustration with these bodies is to have their TD write a letter on their behalf, which as O’Reilly explains, is probably not doing a whole lot of good, but does keep the TD in office to vote for more quangos. A bizzarely self-perpetuating system.
There is an absolute reliance on outsourced goverment in this country. A very interesting study on this revealed the extent to which there is no knowledge what so ever of many of these bodies, their costs and actions. There is very little coordination and thus audit becomes a nightmare.
Bringing these bodies under the remit of the ombudsman at least begins to open the process of governance in a vast number of areas open to audit for the first time in a long time.
The long term solution is to transform the Ombudsman function into an Administrative Court. This exists already in France and, more pertinently because it is in an anglo-saxon legal context, in Canada. The advantage of of a full blown court is that any decision has the full force of the law.
Access to such a Court is relatively easy, as all procedures are written. There is no need to hire an over paid legal team to represent the victim of administrative abuse.
The other interseting aspect of such a court is that decisions are binding on the administration. If they don’t respect the decision they pay.
Gordon
When will people realise that policies and quangos are not substitutes for real politics and political debate? Are we witnessing the privatisation of politics and the growth of non-democratic management of this State?