ANTHOLOGY: Lord of the Files: Working for the Government – An AnthologyEdited by Michael Mulreany and Denis O'Brien Institute of Public Administration, 625pp. €35
THIS EQUIVALENT of a bulky file is an unassuming, instructive celebration by way of anecdote of all those employees who have done the State some service, north and south, pre- and postindependence. Much of their work has little to do with file-keeping. Few readers will be familiar with the dozens of authors cited, so this book will fill gaps in knowledge.
Pace Macbeth, the politician may often seem "but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more". Anonymous civil servants can achieve a degree of immortality on file. In reviewing, say, the history of the Department of Finance, Irish foreign policy or public works, with the passage of time and the release of archives particular civil servants stand out, as much as ministers or ministers of state.
The tradition, metaphorically speaking, of locking junior ministers away in a cupboard with delegated functions but minimal access to any real policy decision-making is illustrated in this book in reminiscences of Paddy Lindsay and Nuala Fennell.
The media and the political system conspire to attribute nearly everything that happens to ministers. It makes for simple narratives with a limited cast of characters and is backed by a barrage of legislation and convention that, outside certain categories, imposes a virtual vow of silence, even after retirement, on civil servants, having denied them rights of party membership. This book allows a selection of their stories to be told, mostly well after the event.
One item I came across recently that would have been suitable for inclusion was an abject apology by Lord Ikerrin to the lord lieutenant the second duke of Ormonde in 1706 over a procurement contract awarded for army clothing without first ascertaining “it was His Grace’s pleasure that Colonel Caulfield should clothe the regiment”. It would have entailed an expensive lawsuit to alter the decision. Even more about the habitual corruption of other days, such as Wood’s halfpence, or whether “loose change” from the building of the Custom House allowed its commissioner, Lord John Beresford, to employ Gandon on his house at Abbeville, Kinsealy, as Charles Haughey suspected, would have added further colour.
Attacks on waste are nothing new. Grattan trenchantly criticised the Custom House as building palaces for commissioners and as sixth rate in architecture but first rate in extravagance. A visitor to the Round Tower at Glendalough asked a car driver, “Who built it?” only to receive the reply, “There’s nobody knows that, but seeing that it isn’t of any manner of use and must have cost a deal of money, I’m thinking it must have been the government built it.”
I was glad to find a tribute to Col John Blaquière, first occupant of what is now the American ambassador’s residence in the Phoenix Park. He acquired his architectural taste as a British legation secretary to the court of Versailles in the early 1770s, before accompanying his ambassador, the earl of Harcourt, to the Viceregal Lodge, now Áras an Uachturáin. A much later occupant of the Áras, President Seán T Ó Ceallaigh, apparently never went out without a naggin of whiskey tucked into his morning coat or evening dress. Similarly, Judge Day had gin, which he could imbibe from a quill, in an ink pot in front of him, to while away the tedium of interminable legal argument.
The novelist Anthony Trollope received a glowing testimonial for his work in the Irish post office. His travelling expenses, with costs half of those in England, were “the first good fortune of his life” (and no doubt of thousands of others since). Visiting a serial complainant in Co Cavan, he was to his great surprise royally treated. His host eventually excused his complaints: “Here I sit all day – with nothing to do; and I like writing letters.”
Farmers too liked to complain. A hundred years ago, one west of Ireland farmer, after acknowledging the benefits of the Land Acts and free Department of Agriculture schemes, conceded: “What this country is suffering from is the want of neglect.”
Statistics have many uses. One deputation from Belmullet was seeking a grant from the government in aid of poor relief, otherwise the whole district would be decimated through famine and emigration. A later deputation argued that a rail extension from Ballina to Belmullet would turn it into a well-populated and wealthy district. Challenged on the contradiction, the chairman told the chief secretary in exasperation: “Them figures were for an entirely and taytotally different purpose.”
Charles Haughey said of his half-empty department enjoying a privilege day on the Tuesday after a bank holiday: “A lot of these people think they’re civil servants in a great imperial power.”
However, when a finance official suggested in a memo that the proposed fountain in the courtyard of Government Buildings be cancelled, Haughey told his private secretary to shred it and, when asked about the official, exclaimed, “You can f****** shred him too!”
Radical ideas for reforming the Civil Service are not new. In this newspaper on December 14th, 1953, Myles na gCopaleen asked, “Why not put the civil service out for tender every couple of years?”
The Department of Finance made accounting errors in the past. When the revenue figures did not add up in the 1926 budget explanatory table, then secretary Sarsfield Hogan added £100,000 to the postal revenue with a stroke of the pen. One bright official in 1963 suggested that rates should be looked upon not as a penalty for obligations incurred but as a subscription for privileges enjoyed – no chance today in the age of entitlement.
There are passages on the disgraceful marriage bar on women and instances of clerical despotism. The section on external affairs includes accounts of the Villa Spada, until now home of our Ambassador to the Vatican but once the billet of Garibaldi’s troops liberating Rome from the papacy. Marcel Proust and the young prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) were guests at the Hôtel de Breteuil, acquired in 1954 as our Embassy in Paris. De Gaulle admired Irish wartime neutrality, even if President Roosevelt did not. It is high time Freddie Boland’s memoirs, some excerpts from which are quoted, were published. Dr FitzGerald once continued briefing Mrs Thatcher, or at least her officials, after she had fallen asleep.
On a more sombre note, there are graphic descriptions of police assassinations by the IRA, the 1974 Dublin bomb, the Omagh bomb, the Niemba massacre of Irish UN peacekeeping troops in Congo, of courageous fire and sea rescues, and of being on the emergency-ward front line.
There are one or two small errors in the material quoted. Quaternions is spelled with an "o", not a second "a". Talleyrand said " point de zèle" – "not the slightest zeal" – rather than " pas trop de zèle", and it was a bust of Louis XIV, not a statue, that was admired by President Mitterrand at Dublin Castle.
Public servants and their critics will equally enjoy this book, with enough ammunition for both.
Martin Mansergh is a former civil servant and politician
