At one level, the trouble in Foreign Affairs arises from the fact that the law on civil service employment (and one could say the same about appointment or dismissal) is antiquated and that attempts to bring it into line with the needs of modern government have not been sufficiently thorough.
Despite various changes, the strict legal position remains that the appropriate minister decides. Indeed, it was only about a year ago that several hundred District Court proceedings were capsized because the High Court ruled that the Minister for Justice was obliged personally to appoint each District Court clerk; though common sense eventually prevailed in the Supreme Court.
Plainly, the power of the minister could create the danger of nepotism or political favouritism. In many areas this has been avoided by the establishment of the Civil Service Commissioners.
Few people would dispute Prof Joe Lee's comment about the Commissioners: "Perhaps the major achievement of the early years, and it remains one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the State."
But the Commissioners' remit extends mainly to initial appointments to the Civil Service and does not cover the large area of promotion. As a matter of strict law, these are left to the minister. In reality, until the 1980s, they were governed largely by an agreement dictated by the public sector trade unions, who favoured the principle of Buggins' turn, by which posts went to the next in order of seniority in the grade below that in which the vacancy arose.
To meet this difficulty, the Top-Level Appointments Committee was established by Garret FitzGerald's government in 1985. The great feature of TLAC was that candidates from all departments could apply for posts at assistant secretary or above, not merely those from within the department in which it arose. The other feature was that the deciding agency was a committee composed mainly of secretaries of government departments.
Instead of TLAC, the Department of Foreign Affairs has an approximately similar body, the Management Advisory Committee.
That word "advisory" is significant. Governments can seldom bear finally to surrender finally their historic authority, so neither TLAC nor the MAC was made a matter of law but depend merely on memoranda or understandings. This feature, of course, underpins Mr Andrews's remark that he had done nothing illegal.
But that remark takes us to the heart of the matter. This is that while the rather antiquated law may have allowed Mr Andrews to do as he did, a convention was flouted. This was a convention which brought the law into line with reality, by separating out certain personnel and management functions and requiring the Minister to cede control over them to those who had more time and expertise and could pursue a consistent system which enjoyed the confidence even of disappointed candidates.
Incidentally, one might note a previous episode of similar character: a failed attempt by Mr Charles Haughey to transfer Mr Sean Donlon from his position as Irish ambassador to the US to that of Irish ambassador to the UN. Here the Government appears to have been motivated by a preference for an ambassador to the US of a more republican outlook than Mr Donlon was perceived to be. It seems rather hard to argue against the view that this was a policy issue on which the elected Government was entitled to have its way.
By contrast, the ground on which Mr Andrews seems to have taken his stand was that he knew, of his own knowledge, a few of the candidates for promotion and was impressed by their abilities. This view appears to have been based on personnel or managerial considerations which really should have been left to the appropriate machinery: the Minister is expected to intervene only in rather extreme circumstances.
The other major theme of this imbroglio is the conflict between the Minister and the secretary-general.
Although the minister has the ultimate legal and political responsibility for what goes on in his department, in reality senior civil servants inevitably assumed a great deal of authority. Naturally, the minister was reluctant to bear responsibility for all of their acts or omissions; while the civil servants involved could hide behind their anonymity which followed from the ministerial responsibility doctrine. The net result was that no one carried the can, at any rate publicly.
To meet this gap in the system, the Public Service Management Act 1997 attempted to impose some responsibility on civil servants, to match their authority, by making them liable to answer questions before Oireachtas Committees. In consequence, it also gave the secretary - rechristened the secretary-general - greater status than before. He is now vested with "the authority, responsibility and accountability" in respect of a large area of departmental activity.
Naturally this change will strengthen his position vis-a-vis the minister, in real as well as theoretical terms. The reason is that in the event of a difference of view between the two, the secretary-general will be in a position to say to the minister that he may have to take some outside responsibility in respect of some action and, therefore, is entitled to authority in respect of it.
This background is instructive in relation to one of the later features of the Andrews episode to emerge. This was the story that what led to the initial breakdown of relations was that it was Mr Padraic MacKernan, who, in Mr Andrews's absence, and at the Taoiseach's instigation, signed the statutory directive to waive the Official Secrets Act. This was in order to facilitate an investigation into Foreign Affairs documents leaked during the last presidential election campaign.
Was this management of the Department or, on the other hand, policy or politics which is naturally reserved for the Minister? One would think that it was the former, since any political discretion had already been exercised, by the Taoiseach (and it is possible that one of the things troubling Mr Andrews was in fact having the Taoiseach looking over his shoulder).
I suggest that in view of the 1997 Act, the Andrews episode is only the beginning of a process which is likely to lead to a bumpy ride for several ministers before (on an optimistic view) the new system settles down with some kind of convention to fix the boundary between the areas of responsibility of the minister and secretary-general.
The final issue raised by the episode - as so often - is one of enforcement: if a civil servant believes that a Minister is behaving imprudently, what, if anything, should he or she do about it? Here a cardinal factor is that the civil servant should not leak to the news media. This is fundamental because any breach of the principle would violate the notion that it is the minister who speaks to the Dail and public, on behalf of the department.
The new joker in the pack here is the Freedom of Information Act, which came into effect only this April. For if an inquirer under the Act asks the right question (and he may be guided in this by a leak), all kinds of interesting disagreements may now be dragged into the light of day. All this may be a gain for transparency and open government. But it does erode the authority of the minister, who is ultimately responsible to the Dail.
On the most general level, what this episode may show is that there is a conflict between old and new ideas of government (not a surprise) and that there has been a dangerous lack of appreciation of this discrepancy and of any attempt to reconcile the two. Unless some rapid thought is given to this problem, our government system is likely to suffer.