FROM THE outset, our State had an excellent record in respect of ensuring that public resources would not be abused for personal or political purposes. This tradition was established by our first Cumann na nGaedheal government and after 1932 was sustained by its Fianna Fáil successor
An example of how rigidly the rules were from the outset applied in order to protect the interests of the taxpayer was given in Elaine Byrne's column on these pages earlier this week. She recounted that in the early days of the Civil War the new government installed itself in what until then had been the headquarters of the Irish Department of Agriculture and what was then that department's College of Science - now Government Buildings. They were joined there in some cases by their wives as well as by some senior civil servants, and there they came under a kind of siege by republican snipers.
For a period food was brought in from Mills Restaurant in Merrion Row. But many months later the secretary of the Department of Finance, JJ McElligott, furnished the members of the government with a bill for their sustenance, the purchase of which, he said, had not represented an appropriate use of public funds!
(My mother was not among the wives present, as she was a republican and remained in my parents' rented home in nearby Marlborough Road - communication being maintained by visits to Government Buildings on the part of my brother Pierce, then eight years old. Seán and Margaret MacEntee lived across the road from my parents - four years later she became my godmother - but Seán was meanwhile besieged by the Irish Free State Army in O'Connell Street. In what might be described as an appropriately symmetrical response to this reciprocal siege, on alternate nights my mother and Margaret brought their children to stay in each other's houses.
Over 60 years later Pierce, briefly home from Rome where he then lived, accompanied my daughter Mary when she came to view the new office to which I had moved within Government Buildings. We went up on to the roof, and Pierce was able to point out from childhood recollection that behind one chimney there were stairs providing access from the College of Science below. He suggested that I should point this out to those responsible for security - who I am sure were already well aware of it!)
Sorry - that was a rather long parenthesis!
Returning to my theme, I believe that when it was thought no longer necessary to transport ministers in armoured cars, they then travelled, like everyone else, by tram - with State transport provided only if they had to make an official journey outside Dublin. However, the murder of Kevin O'Higgins in 1927 led to a radical change in these arrangements. Thereafter the Army insisted that it provide guards to ministers' houses and also that ministers travel in cars provided by the Army and driven by soldiers, with a back-up car carrying additional soldiers. I seem to recall that each car had a submachine gun installed, and each soldier carried a rifle and two hand guns.
When this protection was withdrawn in 1933, my 13-year-old brother Fergus and I prepared spears and bows and arrows with which to repel any subsequent IRA attack, but happily we never had occasion to deploy this weaponry.
Anyone who has read Máire Mac An tSaoi's autobiography, (and if you haven't, you should), will know how faithfully that Fianna Fáil government followed the example of its predecessor - for example by rejecting personal gifts of any significant value that might be seen as capable of influencing future decisions.
For that generation it would have been inconceivable that a politician should accept money, for either personal or political purposes, which might be seen by anyone as possibly affecting any decision that they might make.
That sense of public propriety was transmitted to the next generation of Irish politicians. When, 31 years ago, I was elected to the leadership of Fine Gael, my predecessor Liam Cosgrave warned me to be vigilant about financial contributions to the party by anyone who might have an interest in a current or possible future political decision.
"Don't allow anyone to accept anything of that kind for the party," he said.
In the light of later events - including the revelation that councillors of more than one party came to access financial contributions (whether or not subsequently defined by their purveyor as bribes) from developers in respect of whose interests they would later have to vote - I have concluded that all such contributions should be banned by law. Political parties, and also their election campaigns, should be financed solely by membership contributions and funds raised by lotteries etc, supplemented to the extent that may be necessary by State grants.
When ministers travel abroad on official business, their travel and hotels are paid for by the State and they receive a small daily allowance for incidentals. In my view they should not allow themselves to be placed under any kind of obligation to State enterprises by accepting hospitality from such bodies - and each secretary general should be under an obligation so to advise them.
Extravagance at State expense should, of course, be avoided. As foreign minister I vetoed the renting of suites in hotels in which I would be staying, unless the sitting-room was going to be needed for an official meeting of some kind. Moreover, as I would be travelling locally with our ambassador, I instructed that no additional car be hired.
I also recall that after our first EU presidency in 1975 the Foreign Affairs entertainment allowance was cut so drastically that it had almost run out by mid-March 1976. Part of the solution to this was to entertain the visiting prime minister of a Commonwealth-subordinate legislature at a club of which I am a member, rather than in the Department of Foreign Affairs - which saved quite a lot of money.
I am not advocating penny-pinching. But ministers, civil servants, and above all State bodies financed by the exchequer have a duty at all times to remember who is financing them: the Irish taxpayer.