3 days ago
'I'm in charge', says Browne amid claims he's lost reins over his top civil servants
Embattled Housing Minister James Browne has moved to assert his authority over his department and most senior civil servant, declaring: 'I am in charge of this brief.'
He told 'Let me be clear; policy decisions are made by the minister. I lead, decide, and I am held to account for that.'
Mr Browne spoke out after the secretary general of his own department publicly said there is no need for a housing 'tsar' to help the Government meet its pre-election promise to build 300,000 new homes over the next five years. Minister for Housing, James Browne. Pic: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin
Speaking at a Property Industry Ireland conference, Graham Doyle said: 'We do not need a housing tsar – can I just clear this one up please, once and for all?
'There is a sense in some quarters that if you knock a few heads together, if you give enough people a kick in the backside, then things happen. I only wish that was the case.'
Mr Doyle's comments sparked a political backlash, with one minister criticising what they described as 'an unruly leadership class of senior mandarins who increasingly appear to believe they run the country'. Graham Doyle, Secretary General of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Pic: HSE
The senior civil servant later issued a statement saying his issue was with the use of the term 'tsar', but he is 'fully supportive of the HAO [Housing Activation Office] and wholly supportive of the Minister and what he is trying to achieve in this regard'.
But one senior figure central to the Government's housing strategy told 'When you are explaining, you are losing, particularly when the explanation is not convincing.'
Another senior Coalition source noted: 'He [Doyle] demolished the Minister's own phraseology word by word and then expects us to believe what he is quoted as saying was not what he was saying. That lacks credibility.' Housing Minister James Browne. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
They added: 'It represents another blow to the authority of Mr Browne. His top officials are running riot in that department, and he isn't even the referee. He's just a bystander.'
The latest controversy comes after the botched attempt to appoint the €430,000 NAMA boss, Brendan McDonagh, who was Minister Browne's preferred choice to head up the new housing task force.
And concern is also mounting over the political consequences of the difficulties Mr Browne appears to be having within his own department. Brendan McDonagh. Pic: Leah Farrell/
One minister noted of Mr Browne's new housing policy: 'If it is not radical and seen to be radical, public faith in our capacity to solve this crisis will melt away.
'It already is.' Mr Browne's political authority was initially weakened by the strong response of Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers, who warned his colleague's top civil servant that, while he is entitled to his own view, he will have to 'implement what the Government decides'.
This contrasted sharply with Mr Browne's initial, more diplomatic observation that differences between him and Mr Doyle were a matter of 'semantics'. One senior Coalition source noted: 'It certainly raises serious, systemic questions as to who actually is in charge here.
'There is a real contrast between the way [Health Minister] Jennifer Carroll MacNeill cleared the Children's Health Ireland Board – four gone by their own hand – and the chaos in Housing.
They added: 'I don't think a secretary general, even of [Department of Health Secretary General] Robert Watt's status, would be hanging around for long if they started calling out Jennifer.'
Another veteran Government source added: 'He [Browne] lacks authority. If Graham Doyle had behaved in that way to [former finance minister] Charlie McCreevy, he would have been booted out of the department on his return.'
Growing tensions between the Cabinet and senior civil servants have also increased unease about the longevity of the Coalition.
One experienced TD told 'Governments do not always last for five years.
'The administration Bertie put together in 2007 [a coalition of Fianna Fáil, the Greens, two Progressive Democrats TDs and four Independents] barely managed to survive for three-and-a-half years, and all that kept them together for the last year of that was the IMF coming in.
'There are a lot of similarities between this administration and the 2007 coalition. The mood is very fragile and very dislocated. There is a similar sense of absence of control when it comes to housing, crime, everything really except for health.'
