Debate over the organisation and role of the public administration is welcome, but blanket conclusions may conceal a more complex picture - there is no evidence agencies perform badly, writes Muiris MacCarthaigh
THE ROLE of what are collectively termed State agencies has featured prominently in recent weeks, with many commentators calling for their number to be reduced through mergers, functional reintegration or simply closure.
While immediate concern with public spending has necessarily forced attention on the manner in which the State administration is arranged, a major stimulus for questioning the use of agencies was the establishment of the HSE and the perception that it has been unable to deliver on its promise. The criticisms levelled against it - not only charges of inefficiency and unbalanced staffing but, perhaps especially, the deficits in political and public accountability that have opened up - have quickly been extended to the State agency sector in general.
The negative assessment of State agencies has been further fuelled by the OECD's comments, in its recent report on the Irish public service, that the manner in which agencies were established "had decreased the overall accountability of the Public Service while increasing fragmentation and complexity" (report, page 39). While public debate over the organisation and role of public administration is both welcome and necessary, blanket conclusions may conceal a more complex picture.
Internationally, many functions traditionally performed by civil servants have been disaggregated and subjected to increased specialisation. In the main, agencies are a manifestation of this process. They are created to regulate, co-ordinate, adjudicate, implement, evaluate and advise on policy in a manner that is regarded as more effective than the core Civil Service and which draws on expertise not readily available within the central bureaucracy.
The establishment of an agency is also an unrivalled method of signalling political intent, and may give policy focus to a particular issue. Some may hold that agencies are established to deflect public attention away from a particular aspect of government work; but the evidence suggests that, to the contrary, they act as magnets for media attention.
In Ireland, State agencies have been an integral part of independent government. With the establishment of the Free State, a large number of boards and commissions were centralised into a small number of ministerial departments.
However, within a year of the Free State's establishment, new statutory agencies were already being established. Many are still with us and one of them - the Irish Film Censor's Office - was only recently renamed as the Irish Film Classification Office.
Over time, many different kinds of agencies have been created to serve new purposes.
The number of agencies currently in existence is keenly contested, with recent figures suggesting as many as 1,000 in existence. The lack of clarity is not helped by the terminological debate as to what exactly constitutes a "State agency" due to the variety in legal forms, structures, staffing and accountability arrangements that exist.
Research conducted by the Institute of Public Administration counted just over 200 national-level non-commercial agencies currently operating, with almost two-thirds of them less than 20 years old. We see an accelerated pace of establishment of new agencies since the early 1990s, a period that has coincided with considerable reform within the public service. Between 2003 and 2007, 39 new agencies were created, a number of which are reincarnations of previously existing agencies but with additional functions.
State agencies have also been closed or folded into other bodies when their job was seen to be done. It is sometimes quipped that the only agency to close in Ireland was the Euro Changeover Board, but in fact between 2003 and 2007, 15 national agencies ceased to exist without their functions being transferred into another agency or department.
There is some irony in the fact that the HSE's creation led to one of the greatest incidents of agency mergers and abolitions in the history of the State. But it was not the only case of agency rationalisation.
A large number of agencies also operate at the sub-national level. Approximately 80 per cent of the almost 300 local and regional bodies currently in existence were established within the last two decades. To a greater degree than at the national level, the evidence suggests that there is considerable room for rationalisation and sharing of services among these agencies. It would also appear that their relationship to local government must come under scrutiny in any administrative rationalisation.
Agency management, co-ordination and accountability has certainly presented challenges for central government. However, this is an international phenomenon and even the Nordic countries with long traditions of government through agencies routinely experience similar problems.
Recent comparative research conducted with colleagues in Norway and Belgium identifies no clear patterns in the levels of agency regulation and control across departments in all three countries.
Furthermore, evidence from other jurisdictions shows that periods of expansion and contraction in the number of agencies are not unusual. This is particularly true of those states which operate according to a developed system of administrative law, where agencies' legal status and degrees of public authority are clearly defined.
But it has also been occurring in administrative systems similar to ours. In Britain for example, many of the famous "Next Steps" agencies established as part of Thatcher's bureaucratic overhaul have quietly disappeared in recent years, reabsorbed into core departments.
In Ireland, the focus on agencies as a collective and the belief that they are an aberration rather than a normal part of modern government deflects attention from what it is they actually do. In fact there is no evidence that their performance has been bad.
The need for better means of assessing and managing performance has been recommended by the OECD, which also identified that the key to enhancing performance lies in behavioural change, not necessarily a "bonfires of quangos". Government reserves the right to reorganise the public administration as it sees fit, and has done so in the past. Administrative efficiency and the requirement to achieve value for money demands that the use of State agencies be reviewed. However, if agencies are to be merged or abolished, careful consideration should be given to the level of government to which their functions should be transferred, and to the range of functions that it may be appropriate for Government to perform. There is nothing wrong with using agencies. Given our administrative tradition, it seems likely that the State agency is here to stay. The real issue is devising the means of getting the best out of them.
Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh is a research officer in the Institute of Public Administration. His new book Government in Modern Ireland was published last month by the institute (€20)