There is something quixotic about Micheál Martin’s suggestion that Ireland may need a referendum to expand the cabinet beyond its current 15-member limit. The Taoiseach has been careful to frame it as an opening of debate rather than a firm proposal and it is easy to see why. Any referendum on adding more senior politicians to the national payroll risks activating precisely the kind of anti-establishment sentiment that the Government will be most anxious not to provoke. The populist jibe of jobs for the boys would be irresistible.That said, the underlying argument deserves a fair hearing. Modern government is more complex than it was when the constitutional limit was set. Energy security, digital infrastructure and climate policy, for example, each demand sustained political direction. Coalition arithmetic places its own pressures on portfolio distribution. Comparable democracies operate with more flexibility. Germany’s current cabinet runs to 17 federal ministers, the Netherlands to 18, Denmark to 25.But there is a more fundamental question lurking beneath the debate which the Taoiseach, tellingly, has failed to mention. The reason Irish government feels so overloaded at national level is not that the cabinet is too small. It is that virtually everything – from major infrastructure to relatively routine administrative matters – ends up on a minister’s desk because there is nowhere else for it to go. Ireland is one of the most centralised states in the EU, with a local government system that is among the weakest in Europe.Martin cites marine policy as one area crying out for dedicated ministerial attention, with responsibility for offshore energy, fisheries and undersea infrastructure currently scattered across several departments. The fragmentation is real but it is at least partly a consequence of having no functioning regional tier capable of anchoring coastal and maritime development where it actually happens. More of that work could and should be driven from below. That is where the real governance deficit lies, and it is where the Taoiseach would be better off directing his energies.