COMMENT: Are our ministers spread too thin?

AS the city’s bus fleet remained locked inside depots for a second week, discommoding 400,000 angry commuters, Shane Ross may have come to regret describing the Department of Transport as “a doddle” on ‘The Late Late Show’.

His political rivals were quick on the attack, accusing Ross of being “asleep at the wheel” as the Dublin Bus industrial dispute escalated and city traffic came to a standstill for the second week running. 

But with both sides in the row poles apart, would earlier or more hands-on intervention by the minister have made much of a difference? The drivers’ pay grievances pre-dated the appointment of Ross so it’s highly unlikely that he would have been able to bring about an immediate resolution on taking up office.

For his part, the minister claimed he had not been invited to meet with the unions, nor did he want to give the impression that the Government would be writing a cheque to settle a dispute between Dublin Bus management and workers.

There is little doubt, however, that Ross – wearing his Minister for Sport hat – was seriously distracted by the Rio controversy. In the week leading up to the minister’s now infamous showdown with Pat Hickey, Ross was under considerable pressure to react politically to unfolding events in Brazil.

Fortunately for Ross, Fáilte Ireland has managed to avoid becoming involved in any scandal because tourism is also part of the minister’s brief. Surely there are only so many fires that one person can be expected to put out.

Let’s just think about that for a second: three important, yet disparate departments, all under the watch of one minister – and that’s on top of his duties as an Independent Alliance TD for Dublin-Rathdown. I suspect that Ross would need to be multi-tasker of Herculean proportions to get through the in-trays on his departmental desks.

So is this part of the problem? Have we over-complicated the role of ministers by giving them too wide a brief? Would it be better, for instance, to reduce the number of junior ministries (frankly, some of them sound almost makey uppy!) and appoint separate senior ministers to core areas such as Transport, Tourism and Sport. 

Personally, I’d be happy to give Shane Ross a chance to prove his effectiveness as a minister in any of these three roles – just not all of them together.