If the demands of a modern state require more than 15 members of cabinet, let the government put it to the people as a constitutional amendment
The Regional Independent Group, Kevin 'Boxer' Moran, Noel Grealish, Gillian Toole, Michael Lowry, Marian Harkin, Barry Heneghan and Sean Canney, at Leinster House. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times, with a total of 38 ministers. Given the controversy around the rapidly expanding numbers of junior ministers , of which up to four are “super junior” ministers, according to media reports, it is worth examining the constitutional parameters of these offices.
In 1994, however, a way was found to circumvent the constitutional limit on the size of the cabinet itself during negotiations on the formation of the three-party rainbow coalition. Pat Rabbitte, then a Democratic Left TD, was given a new position of “super junior” minister. He was to be a minister of state, not of government, who was nonetheless permitted to attend government meetings, and would therefore enjoy enhanced status compared with other “junior” ministers.
The second problem is more compelling. Following the creation of the super junior role, the Constitution was amended in 1997 to explicitly enshrine the confidentiality of cabinet “discussions”. In the case of cabinet, the presence of the attorney general is probably justified by their constitutional role as legal adviser to the government, while the chief whip and the secretary to the government also attend.
One of the quirks of our constitutional system is that correcting constitutional violations depends almost entirely on whether any one is willing to take a case. It may simply transpire that nobody does and something unconstitutional stands uncorrected indefinitely. In 1993, the Supreme Court said that cabinet confidentiality was “a constitutional right ... not capable of being waived by any member of a government.” Essentially, the public has a right to have the confidentiality of cabinet discussions observed; it is not a “right” belonging to the government that it is free to waive at its own discretion.
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