Control so exercised over the policy of
State institutions would vitalize them, and tend to make them enter more
intimately into the department of national effort they were created to
foster. The stagnation which falls on most Government departments is
due to this, that the responsible heads rarely have a knowledge great
enough to enable them to inaugurate new methods, that parliamentary
control is never adequate, is rarely exercised with knowledge, and there
is always a party in power to defend the policy of their Minister, for
if one Minister is successfully attacked a whole party goes out of
power. We, in Ireland, should desire above all things efficiency in our
public servants. They will stagnate in their offices unless they are
continually stimulated by intimate connection with the class they work
for and who have a power of control. This system would also, I believe,
lead to less jobbery. Men in an assembly, where theoretically every
class and interest are represented, often conspire to make bad
appointments, because only a minority have knowledge of what
qualifications the official ought to have, and they are outvoted by
representatives who do their friends such good turns often in sheer
ignorance that they are betraying their constituents.
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