The tendency to set up agencies and bodies at one remove from the government is "an abdication of responsibility", Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan said yesterday.
His outspoken declaration, made to the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, came as he strongly rejected calls to set up a Garda authority.
Responsibility for the Garda Síochána could not be placed in the hands of an independent authority because the Garda also acted as the State's security intelligence arm, he said.
"A government cannot abdicate responsibility in these matters. I can't be left as the Minister for Justice in a position where I have to beg the chairman of an authority to urge the Garda to take a particular course of action," Mr Lenihan said.
However, the Minister, who departed from his script, expanded the scope of his remarks beyond the Garda authority by continuing: "That isn't a viable way of running a country. That is not a very fashionable point of view, but we have gone down the road a little too far - I am not talking about the Department of Justice, but right across the range of government business - of setting up agencies and bodies at one remove from the government to whom the government can then abdicate responsibility for dealing with certain matters.
"I subscribe to the old-fashioned point of view that we have a general election. The purpose of it is to create a majority in the Dáil who will then unite around a government and who are then accountable for running the country and the people can get rid of you and replace you with someone else if they don't like how you run the country.
"This tendency to establish a lot of agencies and bodies at one remove from the government is a form of abdication from governmental responsibilities and I don't agree with it," he said.
The creation of new State agencies has accelerated sharply under the leadership of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, particularly with the establishment of the Health Service Executive (HSE).
Mr Lenihan said tougher legislation to target those who traffic people for prostitution is needed "urgently" and will be put in law before the end of the year.Describing the early passing of the law as "a number one priority", he said: "We are well behind other European countries on this. I have asked the Attorney General and the parliamentary draftsman to expedite that."
He said traffickers and brothel keepers "who profit from human misery" should now be targeted by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
Mr Lenihan said there was "no doubt" the drug gangs operating in Dublin, Limerick and elsewhere "pose - to use an American phrase - a clear and present danger.
"The value of human life has been set at nought by members of the gangs at the centre of this pernicious trade. We have seen a spate of savage killings."
Mr Lenihan said the State's battle against drug gangs was "going to be long and has to be relentless".
