Governing Ireland: From Cabinet Government to Delegated Governance

The structures of Irish government were once considered reliably stable, professional and efficient. The economic crash of 2008 swept away all such sureties. How did we fail to foresee the challenges and avert a crisis that has undermined the state in every respect? Initial explanations have focused on the absence of robust mechanisms to challenge policy, a lack of imagination and expertise in policy design, and inadequacies in policy implementation and evaluation. Others still have pointed to the inability of traditional structures of decision-making and oversight to manage the multidimensional nature of modern policy problems, as well as an increasingly complex administrative system.

This new book offers a fresh and sustained scrutiny of the Irish system of national government. It examines the cabinet, the departments of Finance and the Taoiseach, ministerial relationships with civil servants, the growth and decline of agencies, the executive's relationship with Dáil Éireann and other monitoring agencies, the impact of the European Union, the courts, the media and social partnership. Distinguished academics are brought together in this volume to reassess Irish governance structures in the context of much greater diversity in policy processes and delegation in government. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Irish state is governed, including practitioners and students of Irish politics.

CONTENTS

1 Introduction: The Context for Governing Ireland

Eoin O'Malley and Muiris MacCarthaigh

2 An Overview of the Irish System of Government

Frank Litton

3 The Apex of Government: Cabinet and Taoiseach in Operation

Eoin O'Malley

4 Ministers and their Departments: Inside the ‘Black Box' of the Public Policy Process

Bernadette Connaughton

5 The Department of Finance

John Considine and Theresa Reidy

6 The Core Executive: the Department of the Taoiseach and the Challenge of Policy Coordination

Niamh Hardiman, Aidan Regan and Mary Shayne

7 From Agencification to De-agencification: the Changing Bureaucratic Model

Muiris MacCarthaigh

8 Monitoring Irish Government

Shane Martin

9 The Exercise and Impact of Social Partnership

Maura Adshead

10 When Europe Hits Home: Government and the European Union

Jane O'Mahony

11 Government and the Courts

David Gwynn Morgan

12 Government and the Media

Joseph O'Malley

13 Conclusions: Reforming Government

Muiris MacCarthaigh and Eoin O'Malley