The Travers report on charges for persons in long-stay care is a landmark in Irish public administration.
John Travers worked at senior level on economic and industrial policy in the Taoiseach's Department in the 1980s, and went on to chair Forfás, the umbrella body overseeing the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. He is one of a number of highly motivated and hard-working public servants, who helped bring about the conditions for the Celtic Tiger economy.
As Minister for Health Mary Harney noted in the Seanad, the Travers report cost a fraction of cumbersome tribunals. In terms of value for money, the method of inquiry chosen in this instance wins hands down.
The report was clearcut in its conclusions and attributions of responsibility. The criticism that Travers should have talked to more former senior officials and ministers does not hold water. The documentary trail is far more valuable and reliable than possibly faulty and inevitably defensive recollections. It would be interesting, however, to establish what, if anything, was on file in the Department of Finance
Running through the report is palpable anger at "long-term systemic corporate failure... principally a failure of public administration". While not dismissing a level of political responsibility, the primary duty to ensure that the legal basis of long-stay health deduction charges was straightened out lay with the public service.
There has been much talk regarding criminality and the Northern peace process of "parallel universes". "Overlapping spheres" may describe the relationship between political decision-making and public administration.
Ronan Fanning's classic history of the Department of Finance (up to 1958) gives the impression that, compared to key civil servants, ministerial influence on economic policy was often marginal.
On any given issue, the bulk of detailed work at the coalface is carried out by public servants, whose responsibility is to get it right.
There is much policy continuity between governments. Political difference typically focuses on a few issues. Long-term policy evolves as much from within departments or from social consensus as from political parties. Like Whitaker's White Paper on Economic Development of 1958, the 1986 NESC report was the policy blueprint for the economic recovery beginning in 1987, though politically sponsored initiatives such as the International Financial Services Centre made an important development contribution.
The Department of Health circular 7/76 administratively circumvented the legal, financial and political inconvenience of a Supreme Court judgment that precluded the charging of long-term patients with full eligibility for health expenses. There was a political and administrative preference for reinterpreting full eligibility, rather than stating explicitly that it did not mean what it said.
Nonetheless, there is near-universal political consensus on the equity of a substantial deduction charge for maintenance (even if Age Action marchers at the Tipperary St Patrick's Day parade were not impressed). Few advocate the Scottish system of providing long-term care entirely free of charge, now fully embraced in this week's British budget as an election sweetener.
This State, despite greater generosity in recent decades, remains frugal in its approach to social provision.
Because of cross-party culpability, emotive language has been restrained. If old people were being "robbed" for 28 years, it seems extraordinary that the Oireachtas would try to legalise the practice, if not retrospectively then for the future.
Many would agree that the 80 per cent maximum deduction, which leaves little money for discretionary spending by poorer pensioners, must not become the norm. A little extra humanity by the State can surely be accommodated by tax revenue.
The real scandal apparently is the potentially massive compensation bill. If decision-makers had been alert to this, they would have reacted much earlier.
The lack of ministerial focus on this over many administrations has been noted, with the cursory exception of John Boland. Ministers of State are often not that close to senior ministers. Special advisers, never a substitute for formal channels between civil servants and ministers, provide useful additional contacts. Part of their job is to identify and advise of looming political problems.
The Oireachtas seems to have paid equally little attention to warnings buried in lengthy reports.
The conjuncture of a more persistent Fine Gael opposition and the advent of a new Minister for Health in Mary Harney brought the matter finally to a head.
It is sad when capable, hard-working public officials quit their post, because of some omission, which rarely cancels out their previous contribution. Let those who invariably succeed in responding promptly and without fail to all their duties cast the first stone.
Yet every senior public official, however secure their employment, has to reckon with the eventuality that an unforeseen real or perceived lapse in standards may demand their having to step aside to satisfy accountability.
An administrative scandal in Germany, over sanctioned abuses in granting visas, despite clearer political involvement, has not led to a senior ministerial resignation.
Few commentators have dwelt on the judgment of the Supreme Court.
Financial compensation is the lifeblood of civil law. Rather than invoke the principle of fiat justitia without responsibility for consequences, the justification is that the State today can afford to pay.
(Charles Haughey as taoiseach in 1987 asked me to tot up the cost of Supreme Court judgments of the previous three years, which amounted to about £250 million.)
Though this one is more expensive, the costs can probably be absorbed, without prejudice to services. Beyond recent years, should estates be reimbursed, except where family hardship can be demonstrated? Some claimants seem ready to waive reimbursement.
The present debacle may have the benefit of reversing the trend of writing down as little as possible because of freedom-of-information legislation.
It is essential to any good system of administration, notwithstanding the value of informal contact and unminuted exploratory discussion, that views and communications be recorded in writing.
No dutiful civil servant should be deterred by fear of FOI, or the knowledge that, when major controversy breaks, documents (or the lack of them) become open to public scrutiny.