The New Irish Constitution: An Exposition and Some Arguments. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
character of the Land Commission, the possibility that Legislation affecting land may be necessary before the Annuities generally cease, [pg 068] and the certainty that when they do cease, either generally or in any particular area, it will be desirable to remove all limitations on the functions of the Irish Legislature in reference to land, I am disposed to think it, on the whole, better to treat the Land Commission as a “reserved” instead of an “excluded” subject, and thereby make its ultimate transfer to Irish control a matter of executive action on the part of the Imperial Government. But I admit the existence of strong reasons for total exclusion, and I should not question a decision in favour of the latter course.72 Should it be excluded, I would suggest that it shall be open for the Irish Government to bring to the notice of the Lord-Lieutenant any matters in which the administration of the Land Commission seems to be defective.
In this connexion I desire to call attention to the Congested Districts Board and the power which it at present exercises of purchasing land under the Land Purchase Acts. It is imperatively necessary, if this Board is to be retained in its existing or in any modified shape, that its work of relieving congestion and improving the condition of the peasantry of the West should be brought under the supervision and control of the Irish Legislature. But if the land purchase operations of the Land Commission are to be excluded or reserved from control by the Irish Legislature, it is very difficult to defend the subjection to such control of the land purchase functions of the Congested Districts Board. How can the British Treasury be reasonably asked to become responsible for prices fixed by an Irish body over which it will have no control whatever? Such a situation would be utterly anomalous.
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The anomaly can be avoided (as suggested in my Minute appended to the Report of the Royal Commission on Congestion, 1908) by relieving the Congested Districts Board of its functions as a purchasing authority and having purchases of land made for it, on its requisition, by the Land Commission.
Having thus indicated my opinion as to the departments or sections of departments to be temporarily reserved from the control of the Irish Parliament, I come to the question of how that control should be exercised over the departments remaining on the list. In this connexion I invite reference to Clauses 20–22 of the Irish Council Bill. That Bill (Clause 19) contemplated the appointment of committees of council, with paid chairmen, to administer the departments into which public business was to be distributed under the Bill. It was my own expectation, had the Council Bill become law, that the chairmen of these Committees of Council would in course of time have become ministers for the departments concerned; but, in the beginning and until experience had been gained, it seemed desirable to give the embryonic ministers the help, and to impose on them the restraint, of colleagues. Whether the future Irish Legislature will see prudence or wisdom in this course, one can only conjecture; but one may trust that it may. In the following observations, however, and without meaning to imply any preference for “Ministers” over “Chairmen of Committees,” I shall employ the word “Minister.”73
The first Department on my list is the Treasury. Here the new Irish Administration must break entirely fresh ground and build from the foundation. An Irish [pg 070] Exchequer must be created, a system of Treasury Regulations and accounts must be evolved; an Irish Consolidated Fund must be established; and a Bank must be selected with which the Irish Government will bank. (Much pressure will, I anticipate, be brought to bear on the Irish Ministry to distribute its favours in this connexion; but, it would, I submit, be highly inconvenient to keep accounts with separate banks). At present the Chief Secretary's office in Dublin Castle has a financial section, but the new Government will derive no inspiration from its procedure. It will be better to look for precedents in Whitehall. They will show a Treasury Board composed of members of the Government but with the responsibility resting on one called the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is answerable to Parliament for the country's finances and, subject to the decision of the Cabinet, possesses complete control over them (excepting the Army and Navy Estimates). It will, I suggest, be wise for the Irish Legislature to follow this precedent, and place the Irish Treasury in charge of a Body of Commissioners (being Members of the Parliament) with a Treasurer or Chancellor of the Exchequer, specially responsible to it.
The governing principle, from the parliamentary point of view, of our financial system, is that no expenditure can be proposed to Parliament except by a Minister of the Crown.74 I trust that the principle will be reproduced in the Irish Parliament, and rigidly enforced. In no other way can an adequate safeguard be provided against irresponsible and hasty proposals for spending public money.
The Imperial Treasury at present, exercises financial [pg 071] control over every department and branch of the public service (over the Army and Navy estimates I believe the control is less effective than in other directions). This is a wholesome practice, and it should be copied by the Irish Legislature with one qualification. At present, the financial control of the Treasury is occasionally accompanied by a degree of administrative interference which I venture to think is sometimes injurious to the public interests. The Treasury is deficient in administrative knowledge; and for this reason its interference has not infrequently led to inefficiency. Some administrative restraint is, of course, inseparable from financial control; but when money is sanctioned for a particular purpose, the administrative officers on the spot can regulate detailed expenditure better than gentlemen at a distance.
The new Parliament should certainly provide a Public Accounts' Committee; and a Comptroller and Auditor-General, as under the Exchequer and Audit Act of 1866; and I suggest for consideration, that the Departments should be competent to challenge, before the Public Accounts' Committee, any over-interference on the part of the Treasury in administrative details. While I should be glad to see in Ireland the most effective check upon wasteful expenditure, I deprecate the exercise of a meticulous interference in administrative details.
The secretariat arrangements to be made in connection with the Department of Law and Justice, will depend on the extent of “temporary reservation” to be effected. If there is to be the larger reservation, during the transition period which I have suggested above, nothing need now be done. Matters will continue, during that period, on their present footing. If there is to be only partial reservation, the portion of [pg 072] the existing office staff in Dublin Castle which deals with the unreserved sections can be detached for employment under the Minister, who in this case would doubtless also hold another portfolio. When the Department is brought fully under Irish control, there will be found in Dublin Castle gentlemen specially competent to give effect to the policy of the Legislature in this Department of Irish Government.
But, whether the Judicial Department is brought sooner or later under Irish control, an early opportunity should be taken of reviewing the entire judicial organization with the view of pruning away redundancies and placing it on a more economical basis. Few will be found to deny that the existing staff of County Court Judges and legal officials of various grades is excessive; and no one, with knowledge, will maintain that a Supreme Court of 14 Judges, costing with their subordinate officers £181,209 a year, is not too costly for a country with a population of 4-¼ millions. In the House of Commons Return (Cd. 210 of July, 1911), the number of civil servants of all grades in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of England (with their 39 judges) is shown as 461, while in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of Ireland (with their 14 judges) it is shown as 257!
The administration of Education is at present distributed between three Boards and the Irish Government and the circumstances call for drastic reorganization. The Boards of National and Intermediate Education should be abolished, and a Department of Education created under the control of a Minister responsible to the Irish Legislature. Such a Minister would find ready to his hand an official staff (working under the direction of a very competent “Commissioner of Education”) which will not at the outset require any large increase.
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In the Irish Council Bill a Committee of Council for Education was proposed, which provided for the admission of gentlemen not being members of the Irish Council; the object being to conciliate public feeling which is notoriously sensitive upon this matter, and to secure special opportunities for representatives of the various religious creeds of making their views felt. I believe that the liberality of that provision was very inadequately understood in 1907; but in the altered