ABSTRACT
The considerable variety of administrative bodies that was a feature of Irish government before independence was only temporarily reduced to near uniformity when the new state took over. In 1976, the Minister for Public Service told the Dail that it is not possible to give a precise definition of the term 'state-sponsored body'. The legal form of state-sponsored bodies is that of a statutory corporation or of a public or private company incorporated under the Companies Acts with a minister or ministers holding some or all of the shares. The situation is the more complicated and confusing because both inside and outside the central administration's penumbra of state-sponsored bodies are organizations of many kinds. The essential feature of state-sponsored bodies, it might be thought, is that they have some degree of legal and operational independence of the central administration. The essential feature of state-sponsored bodies, is that they have some degree of legal and operational independence of the central administration.
