During his 17-year stint as first director of the Institute of Public Administration, Tom Barrington who died on April 27th, aged 83, created a permanent institution. He was one of the very small band whose members contributed significantly to the study of public administration in Ireland. His message was unambiguous and his thinking independent and original.
After his retirement in 1977 he was free to speak and write as he wished; and that is what he did for the next two decades. His work to improve public administration and more efficient central and local government did not produce immediate results. In 1977 he felt that his mission had failed; but as consultant to the institute he continued with undiminished energy to urge acceptance of his message.
Belatedly, this message was recognised by recent moves to reform local government. Among the proposals is a new relationship between local politicians and the people with directly elected mayors and paid councillors - a fair recognition of Tom Barrington's work over 40 years and a fitting commemoration of a centenary of local government in Ireland.
Tom Barrington was born on May 17th, 1916 and educated at Belvedere College and University College Dublin.
His father was a civil servant who quickly acquired distinction; he died young leaving a widow and five children. His mother, a half-sister of Brendan Bracken, Churchill's faithful acolyte, was a daughter of J.K. Bracken, a founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Hayes's Hotel, Thurles, and a member of the Fenian Brotherhood. Tom Barrington entered the Department of Finance as an administrative officer in 1941 and was transferred to the Department of Local Government three years later where he was soon appointed private secretary to the minister, Sean MacEntee. Here his work began.
With a few colleagues, he formed a discussion group to promote increased professionalism in the public service. They founded the journal Administration, of which he was first editor, and in 1957, the Institute of Public Administration. This body had as a model the Ecole nationale d'administration, which was a conspicuous influence on the quality of government in France.
The institute laid down foundations for a Civil Service staff college and launched an ambitious series of publications. Government, however, remained as centralised as ever. But Tom Barrington continued to argue that good government would not be possible while local government remained restricted. Most people, he said, had little influence on public decision-making, and so it would remain as long as local government languished.
To draw students under instruction as far away as possible from Dublin, he organised most of his early training courses in the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney.
In his leisure, he wrote his splendid book, Discovering Kerry and later founded The Daniel O'Connell Association, which commemorates O'Connell in seminars and publications.
In 1975, he published From Big Government to Local Government and in 1980, The Irish Administrative System. These two magisterial works are his major publications, though there is also invaluable material throughout his huge output of papers.
For many years he was an executive member of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences, and of the European Group of Public Administration. He was Ford Foundation advisor on government institutions in Ghana and was a very active member of Dr Liam St J. Devlin's group, which produced radical proposals for the reorganisation of the Irish public service; its report inevitably emits tones of Tom Barrington's distinctive voice.
His membership of the Council of the Agency for Personal Service Overseas was a measure of his enthusiastic involvement in Third World development.
He was chairman of the Advisory Expert Committee on Local Government Reorganisation whose findings, now known as the Barrington Report, issued in 1991. ail Minister for Finance.
In pressing his castigation of excessive centralism and his advocacy of decentralization, Tom Barrington sometimes seemed to over-state his case. But, usually, it was a matter of emphasis. Public policy during the first 20 years of the State may have been unduly preoccupied with safe finance rather than with economic growth. In his complaint of undue concern with fiscal rectitude by the Department of Finance he did not intend to dismiss lightly that Department's achievement of restoring the country from the devastation of the Civil War, the successful raising of a large national loan, unsupported by the banks, shortly after the State was founded and the financing without inflation of a neutral country during the second World War.
Tom Barrington's work is an enduring legacy. He was one of the few civil servants who really believed that the public was entitled to know about the quality of the minds that shaped public policy.
He was courageous in expressing views which were often unconventional, but his good judgment usually led him to write and speak with balance and discretion. He was a formidable force to have on one's side in an argument, and was always a loyal and reliable friend.
He travelled widely in Africa, Asia, Europe and the US but his greatest joy was to retreat to his second home in Kerry to enjoy his garden, his books and the company of his friends. He and his wife, Aine (nee Cox) who predeceased him in 1997, were always hospitable and warmly generous.
Tom Barrington is survived by his children Tony, Colm, Ruth, Anne, Conor and Paul; and by his sisters and brother.
Thomas Joseph Barrington: born 1916; died April, 2000