Shortly after he was appointed British home secretary in 2006, John Reid was forced to admit that the home office was not "fit for purpose", writes Noel Whelan.
Since then he and his department have been involved in a range of high profile controversies about defects in its administration. Now he has concluded that one of the factors contributing to the sorry state of its systems is that the department and its political master cannot manage the current workload. He proposed last week that his department should be split in two.
If the British government department which John Reid heads up is too large and unwieldy, then that raises questions about that headed up by our own Tánaiste Michael McDowell which oversees an even greater range of policy areas.
Not only does our Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform have responsibility for the traditional areas of prisons, policing and the courts, it is also responsible for civil law reform and even for funding of community initiatives on equality. In addition, McDowell's department has a growing role in justice and home affairs co-operation at European level and a role in Northern Ireland policy.
In the last decade or so the department has dramatically expanded its reach because immigration policy also falls within its remit - an area which has its own department in many European countries.
The size and range of policy areas covered by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is just one of the flaws in the current carve-up of responsibilities between Irish Government Ministers. Many of our current Ministers head departments which are too large while others have relatively light workloads.
The Department of Defence has a very limited function. Our armed forces are relatively small and largely run themselves so, except on ceremonial occasions, they do not require much ministerial involvement. Indeed, in previous governments the Department of Defence was twinned at cabinet (somewhat peculiarly) with the Department of Marine.
The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs is also a peculiarity, combining as it does some aspects of Irish language policy, economic development in a linguistically defined part of the country, and a mixed bag of community and anti-drugs initiatives. Gaeltacht affairs have been overseen at minister of state level in many previous administrations without any appreciable impact on either the progress of the language or the standard of living in Gaeltacht communities.
The rural aspect of the current department's brief is also ill-defined and it's not clear where it fits in with the functions which the Department of Agriculture and Food and the Department of Environment and Local Government carry out in rural areas.
The Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources even sounds like the "miscellaneous" department. It covers policy on a very wide range of issues which are not naturally related.
The inclusion of the word "marine" in the title of this department occurred only after an outcry in 2002 when the fishing industry felt slighted by the fact that marine was not initially included in the job title of someone at the cabinet table.
We even need to reconsider whether we still need some of our more long established departments. The significance of agriculture in our economy, our society and even as an issue in our politics has diminished greatly in recent years, and in reality there is now no justification for giving this industry its own department and less reason for giving it its own minister.
If the division of responsibilities at cabinet level is ad hoc and confused, the allocation of responsibilities and titles between ministers of state is even stranger. Apart from political anoraks, most people are blissfully unaware of the names, let alone the job titles or the departmental assignments of many of our ministers of state.
The trend towards more ministers of state being assigned to a more peculiar range of functions is likely to continue however, not least because press statements from interest groups or policy documents from political parties which call for some issue or area of activity to be prioritised nearly always include a suggestion that the issue get its own minister of state.
The re-allocation of functions between departments in Ireland has usually only occurred when new governments are formed or when a cabinet reshuffle is taking place.
These departmental reorganisations have suffered because, like the ministerial reshuffles themselves, the preceding decision-making process is usually shrouded in secrecy and is more likely to be shaped by personality and political considerations than by objective organisational criteria.
Attempts at departmental reorganisation at the time of ministerial reshuffles have gone badly wrong. In the mid-1980s, for example, Garret FitzGerald attempted to establish a separate department for European affairs under Gemma Hussey. He had to abandon this innovation however when Barry Desmond resisted attempts to move him. Hussey went instead to the Department of Social Welfare and responsibility for the co-ordination of European policy stayed in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The assignment of areas and responsibilities to departments is just one of the ways the organisation of core executive government in Ireland has lagged behind developments in other countries. We need a cabinet structure which more accurately reflects the reality of the economy and society. Ideally this should be done after a detached consideration of what division of responsibilities between ministers and departments would best suit the development and implementation of policy in a modern, rapidly developing country facing a range of new challenges.
With the ministerial line-up due to be reshuffled or transformed either next June or July, a debate about what departments we should have and what areas they should cover would be timely.