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Ireland is one of the most centralised states in the European Union yet it routinely fails to deliver results alleviating the country’s housing supply, reducing immigration, or fixing Ireland’s broken healthcare system. The Taoiseach, as a result of subtle shifts in Ireland’s administrative bureaucracy over the course of decades has amassed power and authority that no voter ever consented to. And yet Ireland still finds it impossible to deliver basic public policy achievements. It is bizarre that a state so centralised remains so inactive, but how did it become this way?
The Department of Taoiseach has, like the European Union, used the advent of crises to centralise its power over subsidiary branches of government. Today the Department boasts a British and Northern Ireland Affairs Division, an EU and International Division, an Economic Division, a Social Policy and Public Service Reform Division, and a Corporate Services Division. Each of these competencies is nominally held by a separate Ministry, such as Foreign Affairs, European Affairs, Finance, Enterprise, or Social Protection. So what purpose or justification exists for Ireland’s administrative double-up?
These divisions were not created at single cleanly-dated moments in time, they were formed incrementally out of temporary political necessity and without consideration for their long-term consequences on the administrative structure of the Irish state. The British and Northern Ireland Affairs Division traces its origins to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave the Department of Taoiseach an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. These functions were subsequently expanded with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 which saw the North South Ministerial Council, and British-Irish Council formed and coordinated through the Taoiseach’s office. In 2020 amidst the finalisation of Britain’s exit from the European Union, the Shared Island Initiative was created and placed under the administration of the Shared Island Unit in the Department of Taoiseach. There is no good reason that any of these functions should be conducted through the Taoiseach’s office while the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade operates an Anglo-Irish Division through which British-Irish relations were traditionally administered. However, the crises of each period, the Troubles, the peace process, and Brexit, each provided successive Taoisigh with the opportunity to personally direct national affairs. In other words, rather than taking a managerial or institutional approach to crisis management, the Taoisigh of the day repeatedly chose personal authority.
The department’s European Union and International Division traces its roots to Ireland’s 1973 EEC accession when it needed to create a standing European coordination office, and with subsequent negotiations at Maastricht and Lisbon, the Division has become a key node in Ireland’s European Union policy. Consider for instance that the current Minister of State for European Affairs receives his portfolio credentials not from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but from the Department of Taoiseach, the same body responsible for the provision of credentials to the Government Chief Whip. The effective result being that the Department of Taoiseach has the political authority to set Ireland’s European agenda at the expense of the autonomy of Ireland’s Foreign Ministry.
The Economic Division functionally originates from Taoiseach Charles Haughey and the Programme for National Recovery in 1987 which saw the Taoiseach house a permanent economic policy coordination capacity to combat emigration and economic stagnation.
The public service reform element is perhaps the clearest case of crisis-driven centralisation. It stems from the Public Service Reform Plan published in the aftermath of the fiscal crisis. Though the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was created as a separate body, stripping the responsibility for public expenditure from the Department of Finance, the reform function was duplicated into the Department Taoiseach contributing further to Ireland’s bureaucratic malaise. In effect Ireland has three financial government departments, the Department of Finance, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and the Department of Taoiseach’s Economic Division.
The practical consequence is that Ireland has quietly shifted from a cabinet-style executive branch to an executive branch of government under the leadership of the Taoiseach and his Department. In effect, the decisions made in the most important decisions of Irish political life emanate from the Department of Taoiseach and not the Ministers responsible for the main operational arms of the Irish state. This is something which the ordinary Irish person feels in their daily life, that the political class are unaccountable, that decisions are made by those at the very top without their input. But they mistakenly assume that Ministers themselves are part of the club when in reality they play pretend to the Taoiseach’s agenda. If Ireland has any hope of restoring its competencies as a state, the centralisation of power must be rewound and restored to the local authorities and the Ministers.
But this is reflective of a perennial problem of the Irish state — that its nascent institutions established in the early twentieth century were not allowed the necessary authority or provided the requisite respect by politicians to operate independently. For instance it is widely understood that to advance in the Irish judiciary that political connections to Fianna Fail and or Fine Gael is considered necessary for career advancement opportunities.
Irish politicians for generations have thrived on vague and unclear political promises or stances. Today it is at its utmost where government policy is announced seemingly at random, and long-term planning has been surrendered to the altar of the next general election.
The point of origin for this phenomenon is evidently the reign of Charles Haughey. Though Ireland has a complex relationship with this former Taoiseach for his widescale corruption, he was a man of vision. Haughey, though regularly taking advantage of his position of power for personal gain, held positive leadership qualities which no Taoiseach has held since. It is in fact Haughey’s greatest failure that he presided over part of this centralisation.
He failed as a statesman because he neglected his responsibility towards the institutions he governed and the office held. Ultimately he failed to consider that the power he wielded would be taken advantage of by his successors, or rather that the centralisation of powers in his Department would fundamentally alter the shape of the Irish government. His successors, particularly Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, Micheal Martin, Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris proved themselves to be poor leaders. If a system relies on a strong leader but it cannot provide that leadership, it is natural that the Ministries would remain capable of running their affairs independently for the common good. But not in Ireland. As a result of decades of centralisation Ireland has become a state afraid to exercise its own authority and its ability to implement policy has been neutered by politicians’ fears of public accountability.
The Taoiseach no longer uses his political authority to fulfil electoral commitments as he should, but instead the position has become a kind of civil-servant-in-chief, a position which Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has personified.
The simple question is: how can a state so centralised in the hands of the few, deliver such little result? With a stultified and frozen bureaucracy, and a political class who consider themselves civil servants and not politicians, the executive Taoiseach model of governance is at the root of all Ireland’s current problems. Local authorities have been stripped of authority and career advancements in public institutions are seen as requiring a political connection to Ireland’s centrist duopoly; a centrist duopoly that has so much power to govern the state that it has become paradoxically allergic to wielding it. That is the fundamental flaw of Irish politics.