The new Parliament should certainly provide a Public Accounts’ Committee; and a Comptroller and Auditor-General, as under the Exchequer and Audit Act of 1866; and I suggest for consideration, that the Departments should be competent to challenge, before the Public Accounts’ Committee, any over-interference on the part of the Treasury in administrative details. While I should be glad to see in Ireland the most effective check upon wasteful expenditure, I deprecate the exercise of a meticulous interference in administrative details.
The secretariat arrangements to be made in connection with the Department of Law and Justice, will depend on the extent of “temporary reservation” to be effected. If there is to be the larger reservation, during the transition period which I have suggested above, nothing need now be done. Matters will continue, during that period, on their present footing. If there is to be only partial reservation, the portion of the existing office staff in Dublin Castle which deals with the unreserved sections can be detached for employment under the Minister, who in this case would doubtless also hold another portfolio. When the Department is brought fully under Irish control, there will be found in Dublin Castle gentlemen specially competent to give effect to the policy of the Legislature in this Department of Irish Government.
But, whether the Judicial Department is brought sooner or later under Irish control, an early opportunity should be taken of reviewing the entire judicial organization with the view of pruning away redundancies and placing it on a more economical basis. Few will be found to deny that the existing staff of County Court Judges and legal officials of various grades is excessive; and no one, with knowledge, will maintain that a Supreme Court of 14 Judges, costing with their subordinate officers £181,209 a year, is not too costly for a country with a population of 4-¼ millions. In the House of Commons Return (Cd. 210 of July, 1911), the number of civil servants of all grades in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of England (with their 39 judges) is shown as 461, while in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of Ireland (with their 14 judges) it is shown as 257!