The first Department on my list is the Treasury. Here the new Irish Administration must break entirely fresh ground and build from the foundation. An Irish Exchequer must be created, a system of Treasury Regulations and accounts must be evolved; an Irish Consolidated Fund must be established; and a Bank must be selected with which the Irish Government will bank. (Much pressure will, I anticipate, be brought to bear on the Irish Ministry to distribute its favours in this connexion; but, it would, I submit, be highly inconvenient to keep accounts with separate banks). At present the Chief Secretary’s office in Dublin Castle has a financial section, but the new Government will derive no inspiration from its procedure. It will be better to look for precedents in Whitehall. They will show a Treasury Board composed of members of the Government but with the responsibility resting on one called the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is answerable to Parliament for the country’s finances and, subject to the decision of the Cabinet, possesses complete control over them (excepting the Army and Navy Estimates). It will, I suggest, be wise for the Irish Legislature to follow this precedent, and place the Irish Treasury in charge of a Body of Commissioners (being Members of the Parliament) with a Treasurer or Chancellor of the Exchequer, specially responsible to it. The governing principle, from the parliamentary point of view, of our financial system, is that no expenditure can be proposed to Parliament except by a Minister of the Crown.(74) I trust that the principle will be reproduced in the Irish Parliament, and rigidly enforced. In no other way can an adequate safeguard be provided against irresponsible and hasty proposals for spending public money. The Imperial Treasury at present, exercises financial control over every department and branch of the public service (over the Army and Navy estimates I believe the control is less effective than in other directions). This is a wholesome practice, and it should be copied by the Irish Legislature with one qualification. At present, the financial control of the Treasury is occasionally accompanied by a degree of administrative interference which I venture to think is sometimes injurious to the public interests. The Treasury is deficient in administrative knowledge; and for this reason its interference has not infrequently led to inefficiency. Some administrative restraint is, of course, inseparable from financial control; but when money is sanctioned for a particular purpose, the administrative officers on the spot can regulate detailed expenditure better than gentlemen at a distance.