Dan O’Brien
We need more advisors — not fewer
GOVERNING is not easy. Even in the best of times, running modern states is a vast and complex endeavour. The range of things governments do in developed countries such as Ireland continues to expand, despite fact-free claims by some of a ‘neoliberal’ plot to downsize the state.
The state, which is by far the biggest economic actor in an economy, is undergoing a step change as a result of the Covid-19 emergency. Massive new interventions are being undertaken to cushion the blow that the pandemic has dealt humanity.
Even before the virus changed everything, the direction internationally was towards a more active state. Covid, as it is almost now cliched to say, has been an accelerator of many trends; it has super-charged the trend towards bigger and more active government.
There are many positive things states can do, but there are also downsides to concentrating even greater power in the hands of government. Bureaucracies are usually driven as much to serve the interests of those who run them as they are to benefit those they exist to serve. They are also generally less efficient than private businesses, which face the disciplines of the market.
Given these natural weaknesses, it is all the more important to do as much as possible to address public sector inefficiencies and the inertia which all too often takes hold when pressure to improve is absent.
One way of doing that is ensuring that ministers are as effective as possible. And one way, in turn, to ensure this is to allow them to have a team of effective operators around them whose interests are aligned to their own.
The benefits of ministerial advisers are not discussed much in Irish political discourse. Indeed, the opposite is the case. As has been the case over the past week, advisers are a source of constant controversy. Underpinning criticism of the numbers of advisers the Green Party leader is appointing, and a government decision to share advisers among junior ministers, rather than allowing each minister have their own, is a view that advisers are a waste of taxpayers’ money or, even worse, a make-work scheme for party hacks.
These views are badly misplaced. Ireland needs a better system of ministerial advisers, more of them, and a vetting system to ensure appropriate people are appointed, and are seen to be appointed.
A non-national political structure of which Ireland is a part — the European Union — provides a good example of the constructive role advisers can have. Each Commissioner in Brussels gets to pick a team of seven advisers. They include a chief of staff and a deputy chief of staff role. These ‘cabinets’ (from the French) do not come cheap. With 27 commissioners, there are around 200 well-paid advisers in the Brussels bureaucracy at any given time.
This system has existed since the Commission was established. It is not subject to criticism for the simple reason that it works well. Another reason nobody advocates changing it is because in most countries it is recognised that politicians can only be effective if they have a good team to advise them and direct their bureaucratic machines.
The Brussels cabinet system helps commissioners work with their de facto ministry (known in Brussels jargon as a ‘Directorate General’). It ensures that they have the capacity to drive their agenda and not to become mere passengers in a juggernaut driven by permanent civil servants.
These structures are one, and only one, reason why the Brussels machine is among the most efficient bureaucracies anywhere in the world. Anyone who has worked in or around the Commission may have issues of various kinds with it, but few deny that, person for person, there are few governmental structures anywhere in the world that are more effective.
In Ireland, the widespread use of advisers dates back only to the early 1990s and even most civil servants — who can have difficult relations with advisers — agree that good ones make departments work better. They reduce the number of mistakes by seeing dangers around corners that civil servants might not see. They can act as Rottweilers to drive change or become mediators with the permanent government, playing good cop to the minister’s bad cop.
The need for advisers is even more necessary in Ireland than in most other countries because of the unusual tradition that all ministers be sitting TDs. Many democracies either prohibit ministers simultaneously double-jobbing as parliamentarians or have a mix of sitting MPs and non-MPs running ministries.
Given that constituency work takes up more time in Ireland than in most other democracies, thanks to the nature of the electoral system, the notion that TDs could arrive in departments with their ministerial seals and get much done without assistants is fanciful. And that is even more the case if ministers don’t see eye-to-eye with the senior civil servants in their department, either for reasons of policy or personality.
Despite the real need for ministers to have advisers who are loyal only to them, scepticism about the need for hired help exists among the public and in many parts of the media. While there have been some dubious appointments over the years, most advisers either deliver for their ministers or move on; few politicians want an adviser who makes life harder rather than easier.
But perceptions matter in politics. Because scepticism, and even cynicism, is so deeply engrained about advisers, change is needed in the way they are appointed so that those who get the roles are qualified for them and, even more importantly, are seen to be qualified for them.
This would not be difficult to achieve. A small independent body of, say, three people could be created to vet proposed appointees. Ministers could be obliged to write to the body setting out the skills, abilities, and backgrounds of those they wish to hire.
The body could interview some or all proposed appointees to ensure that its members are satisfied that the individuals would bring something to the efficient functioning of government for the benefit of citizens.
Such a system could change the very negative perception of ministerial advisers and allow the public to see that when government functions better, everyone benefits.