As another coalition government takes shape, there is a now well-established practice of negotiating about diverse pre-election manifesto commitments to produce a single ‘Programme for Government’.
All coalition partners want to see their main policy promises reflected in such programmes. One of the best ways to signal action on a policy commitment is to name a ministerial department after it. And so as ever-more diverse coalitions have become the norm in Irish politics, so has there been a parallel process of creating more departments and high-level offices of government, and signalling policy intent by providing them with multiple policy responsibilities. Smaller parties in coalitions are particularly keen to have their policy priorities reflected in the titles of their department.
There are very few ministries focused on single portfolios anymore, with almost all declaring multiple policy responsibilities. Another interesting feature of recent Irish governments has been to not alone list the policy fields a department will be responsible for, but also to list ambitions like ‘equality’, ‘reform’, ‘National Development Plan delivery’, or ‘innovation’, in their titles. The outgoing three-party coalition government equalled the largest number of departments (18) in the state’s history, but it had by far the most diverse range of policy combinations ever. For example, there is the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth; the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
This emerging trend is also not without consequence for the functioning of government. A constitutional maximum of 15 limits the number of government ministers, but there is no such limit on the number of departments, and in the outgoing government a number of ministers were responsible for two departments of state. In fact, at one stage during the last government, a single Minister was responsible for three Departments: during Minister for Justice Helen McEntee’s period of maternity leave in 2021-22, Minister Heather Humphreys assumed responsibility for that portfolio alongside her two other Ministries of Social Protection and Rural and Community Development.
Having one Minister politically responsible to the Dáil for several departments, each with multiple policy responsibilities, poses obvious co-ordination and accountability problems. More departments also means more demands on the system of policy development in Cabinet and parliament.
And with each department comes myriad agencies to be overseen and coordinated. While the number of departments has grown from 12 in 1924 to 18 in 2024, the number of other national-level public organisations has grown by a factor of almost five over the same period.
What never seems to be considered in departmental re-organisations is the transfers of these agencies under the aegis of departments and ministers that form part of such portfolio realignments. Indeed ministers are often surprised to discover the range of such bodies (some with larger budgets than the department itself) they are politically accountable for when they assume their seal of office. A crisis in one can absorb a huge amount of political energy. A case in point was the challenge faced by Green Party Minister Catherine Martin in dealing with the high-profile RTÉ payments scandal which lay within just one of her areas of responsibility within the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
There is strong evidence that how ministerial policy portfolios are aligned in government also matters. For example, placing immigration alongside security and policing will affect how that issue will be managed than were it to be placed alongside social welfare or economic affairs. Note how Fine Gael have proposed to take Integration out of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and place it in the Department of Justice.
So what might we expect in a new administration this time? While all parties’ manifestos are committed to reducing waste, finding efficiencies and improving accountability, no reduction in the number of departments is mentioned by any of the large parties. It therefore seems certain that some ministers will hold at least two departmental briefs.
Fianna Fáil have proposed two new Departments – Justice and Public Safety, and a Department of Domestic Affairs, and resurrecting the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. It also seeks to create a new National Security (Intelligence) Agency, a Border Management Agency and an Office for Veteran Affairs.Fine Gael propose to merge the Departments of Transport and Environment, Climate and Communications into a new Department of Infrastructure, Climate and Transport.
Sinn Féin do not suggest any new Departments, suggesting instead a ‘Reunification and One Ireland’ unit within the Department of the Taoiseach, led by a Minister of State, and a new ‘Immigration Management Agency’. It also proposes a Fish Ireland office based in Brussels.
Of all the main parties, the Labour Party has perhaps the most ambitious range of organisational changes. As well as a new Department of Work and Social Protection, they also call for a Department of Unification ‘under the remit of the Taoiseach’ which would later move to a ‘standalone senior Ministry’, without explaining what the difference is in this formulation. It also proposes a new Department of Digital and Communications which would sit alongside the Department for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science under one Minister. Labour also proposes a new agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum as well as an Office for Veterans Affairs.
Interestingly, the Social Democrats wish to amend the one department that has never experienced a portfolio change in over 100 years – the Department of Defence – into a Department of Defence, Security and Emergency Planning. It also proposes a new Independent Anti-Corruption Agency.
Whatever form the next coalition government takes, it will require a well-organised administration to deliver its programme. Layering new demands onto the existing policy landscape is not without cost and provokes the question about how suitable current arrangements are for delivering the objectives of modern Irish governments. Perhaps something the new ‘Planning Unit for the Future’ proposed in the Fine Gael manifesto can examine?
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