Departments should be separate

REORGANISING the government departments and combining some of them makes sense from organisational and efficiency points of view.

However, combining the Departments of Justice and Defence under one minister is a dangerous development in a democracy. There are certain essential elements of protection in democracies that include the separation of powers between the executive (ie government), the legislators (parliamentarians), and the judiciary.

In addition, in Ireland the military have always been subordinated to the civil power, and can only act in support of the gardaí unless martial law is declared.

However, experience since the foundation of the state has shown the wisdom of keeping the justice and defence departments separate, because otherwise all the security forces of the state come under one minister, and that means all the lawful lethal force of the state. It also combines the intelligence services of the gardaí and the army under one minister.

Democracy in the Irish Republic survived a number of close encounters with extremism, including the brief army mutiny in 1924, and the antics of General O’Duffy and the Blueshirts in the 1930s.

During the arms trial crisis in 1970 the separation of the departments of Defence and Justice and their respective intelligence services probably played an important role in peacefully resolving this crisis. Ideally Justice and Defence departments should be separate, in the interests of democracy. A possible compromise might be to appoint a specific junior minister responsible for Defence with authority to bypass the senior Minister for Justice in certain matters of state security.

On a slightly different vein, the appointment of a medical doctor, Dr James Reilly, former President of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), is also open to criticism, just as a former army officer would be inappropriate as Defence Minister, and a former garda problematic as Justice Minister.

Edward Horgan (former army officer)

Castletroy

Co Limerick