Ministers - which are the safe bets?

[Alneyan]

I think the minister can actually handle population pretty well.

I wouldn't worry about population in the stock game, though, as it doesn't have *that* much of an impact, and implies micro-management hell. You will need to move a bunch of people (at least several hundred millions) before you have a marginal increase in production and construction rates, but that won't really happen. If you do want population without micro-management, the Organic tech tree might interest you, as it has a facility that automatically increases population every turn in a system.

Of course, if you aren't playing stock but rather Proportions, or a similar mod with a heavy focus on population, it will be a bit harder... though again, you can get away with skipping the micro-management, and just getting twenty or thirty million settlers on most of your planets.