My paper can be uploaded from <a href="Irish_Electoral_Reform-2“>here.

 

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Figure 1

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A Democratic Programme for the 21st century?

The Irish Times series continues with a thoughtful article from documentary maker Nuala O’Connor. Much of the reaction has so far been a call to offer solution. O’Connor specifically mentions the 1919 Democratic Programme. An interesting exercise could be to compose a similar document relevant to the 21^st century?

 

More free votes? But how? And for what?

Elaine Byrne wrote today that “deep-seated institutional change must rebalance the relationship between the government and the Dáil….by reducing the power of the whip and allowing more issues to be decided by free votes.”

Ireland, like most parliamentary democracies in Europe, tends to see TDs vote along party lines. The assumption is that this is because of the party whip, but of course people tend to join parties because they agree with the philosophy of the party, so it’d hardly be a surprise if all Sinn Féin TDs were to vote to against a motion to invite the English Queen to visit Ireland. Even if TDs do tend to take the lead from their whips, and I’ve no doubt on the many issues TDs don’t bother thinking too deeply about they do take the lead from their party leadership, is it necessarily a bad thing (for voters and the efficient running of the country) if people vote on party lines?

Assuming free votes are a good thing, we still need to think how to achieve them. Elaine doesn’t say how it might happen, but we can think about possible measures. You can effectively achieve free votes through the secret ballot. But isn’t this inherently undemocratic? I’d like to know how my TDs vote on certain issues. If I can’t see it (I’m not going to trust them to tell the truth) how do I know who I’m voting for?

Nor can we legislate for them. You can’t tell TDs NOT to vote on party lines. This is also undemocratic.

The most plausible way I can see us achieve this is by making TDs more independent of their party. TDs will listen to their party leadership because the leadership controls important resources most TDs want. These include jobs (cabinets seats, committee chairs etc.) and access to electoral resources (through candidate selection, campaign finance).  It’s probably the case that the Irish system, which allows voters to prefer candidates from within parties to others, makes our TDs more independent of party leadership than in most other places. We could go a bit further and have open primaries and further reduce the power of the party.

But if we look at the place where the legislature is not controlled by the government, and the legislators are unconstrained by party whips – the US – there we see as much if not more pandering to constituency rather than national interests than anywhere else in the world.

I agree with the need to separate government and the Dail, but I’m not sure that encourgaing free votes might not only be achievable in a way that might have other less desired effects.

Eoin O’Malley

 

Wider recruitment for Ministers

The Irish Times has begun a series on political reform with the underlying premise of renewing the Republic. MacConghail writing in the Irish Times points the finger firmly at political culture and recommends primarily the  reform of local government. A wider look at how the Cabinet is actually composed may also bear fruit. Ireland is almost alone in the developed world in insisting that ministers are solely recruited from the lower house. Even in the UK ministers are appointed from the House of Lords and in many European countries ministers frequently have no parliamentary expertise or must resign constituency seats on becoming a minister, this being the case in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium among other countries.. This provides an incentive to act in the national collective interest rather than in an  individual localist manner in order to ensure their own re-election. This of course requires constitutional change, but in the meantime the Taoiseach Brian Cowen could take up his right to appoint two ministers in the upcoming reshuffle from the Seanad. He  had one vacancy following the resignation of  a Green senator. Even the cautious Gordon Brown followed this route appointing  Peter Mandelson to the upper house and as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.  Surely there are many public spirited  senior business people who would do an excellent job in attracting business and winning jobs in Enterprise, Trade and Employment and could also sit in the Seanad?

 

Fine Gael’s proposals don’t hit the mark

The Irish Times reports today that Fine Gael in government it would bring in a major package of political reforms. These would be introduced in a package of referendums to be held on a single ‘Constitution Day’. The proposed reforms include;

- the abolition of the Seanad;

- a new “list” system for selecting 15 (or some other number of) TDs;

- new constitutional recognition given to four Dáil committees;

- reduction of the President’s term of office from seven years to five;

- the introduction of a public petition mechanism for the Dáil.

It seems to me that the reforms miss the point (though I haven’t seen the details, the ‘New Politics’ document isn’t on the party’s website yet). What is the problem with the political system? Governments have been short-termist – focussed just on the next election (who can blame them for that?). Long term planning was largely absent and governments could get away with inconsistent policies that did little to address the problems that they were set out to solve. Arguably it’s because there is little or no oversight of dominant governments which have been, or had people in them and advising them, who are self-serving or incompetent, and sometimes both.  What will these reforms to increase oversight of the government or ensure that government are more competent? Not much.

Let’s look at each proposal. The Seanad may be a talking shop, but it has made some of the more interesting and useful contributions to policy debates in recent years – Nama for instance.  Unless abolition is part of a major reform of the Dáil, its abolition is likely to decrease oversight of the government.

A list system with 15 TDs elected will allow parties to bring in people that they feel would not be elected under the current system, or allow each party a certain number of people who don’t have to spend much time canvassing. Canvassing takes up a lot of time of TDs and it’s not unreasonable to want to reduce this, but why just 15? Why not the whole lot? If the list is controlled by the party leadership you could just have a group of party hacks who are even less critical of their party than the ones who at least have some independence from the leadership because they got themselves elected.

Giving certain Oireachtas committees constitutional status might be of use if they are also given powers. But putting something in the constitution is usually of only symbolic value. Local government got it, but no extra powers and is still as powerless as ever. Only if committees are given extra powers, such as power to compel witnesses to attend and answer questions (another reform suggested by Fine Gael) will the committees have teeth. Equally one needs to see committees that are independent of government. As long as the government chooses committee chairs this is unlikely t0 happen.

Reducing the term of the presidency is an odd suggestion. The presidency is irrelevant to Irish policy making (save the occasions whan she thinks about sending bills to the Supreme Court for adjudication). Reducing this term of our elected monarch will just increase the cost of this already expensive ceremonial office. Why bother?

A public petition to bring issues to the Oireachtas is something that is normally suggested in those places where the parliament is seen as distant from its country’s citizens. That’s why one exists for the European Parliament. This can hardly be said of the Dáil. TDs are very close to their constituencies  -  too close some might say. This would solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

In all the proposals don’t address the real problems in the political system, and give the impression of being ill-thought out and headline chasing.

Eoin O’Malley

 

Rotating ministers…are they mad?

Now it seems the reshuffle might throw up another novelty; that the Green leader could stand down from cabinet and allow Ciarán Cuffe take his place. While this may seem admirable in that no minister gets too comfortable (except Éamon Ryan) it would have to shorten the odds on an election this year.

Ministers usually take a year if not more to get on top of their brief, so changing minister will ensure a period of inactivity in Environment – hardly something the Greens want. And Ryan will be in cabinet with someone who has less experinece of cabinet, making it more difficult to get their way in disputes that make it there. It will also give the impresison that the Greens are obsessed with giving everyone in the party a decent job (except presumably the amusingly erratic Paul Gogarty).

But more significantly, how will the leader of the party manage the party in government if he’s not in cabinet where the decisions are ultimately made? Who will meet with Cowen before cabinet meetings to agree the two parties’ positions? Would Ryan become the leader in government, and then allow Gormley act as a Dan Boyle/ Michael McDowell figure criticising from the sidelines? Cowen and Gormley seem to have a business-like working relationship; would this change if the more prickly Cuffe were in cabinet?

Perhaps this internal crisis is manufactured to make it more likely that the Taoiseach will give in to Green demands for a second junior minister. Cowen is likely to prefer than than having Gormley replaced by Cuffe. But I doubt the Greens are that manipulative.

 

Rearranging the deckchairs…reshuffles in Ireland

If commentators are right, it’s likely that Brian Cowen will use Willie O’Dea’s resignation/ dismissal to reshuffle the cabinet. The thinking is that a reshuffle at this time will give the government a new impetus for the latter half of this Dáil. We’re supposed to conclude that with people in new posts and some new people, the government can change its focus and renew its energies. In short it’s an attempt to make people think the Taoiseach and the government is changing course. But reshuffles can’t really change that much in Ireland because there simply isn’t the possibility of bringing radically different types of people into government.

Though they excite political anoraks, reshuffles don’t have a happy history (in Ireland or elsewhere). In the UK they happen so regularly that ministers never get long enough in their job to actually make a difference and political observers just use them as a way of gauging power between Big Beasts in the cabinet. The British prime minister Jim Callaghan was right to warn against them. He felt that the threat of the reshuffle was more effective than the reshuffle itself.  Callaghan’s logic was that ministers worked hard with the threat of a reshuffle over them, whereas those expecting promotion stayed loyal in the expectation of preferrment. After a reshuffle, some ministers might get lazy and those not promoted get shirty.

In Ireland, Garret FitzGerald as Taoiseach had a problem. His government was unpopular. Relations between some ministers were tetchy because they kept coming up against each other in cabinet discussions. Some ministers were a bit stale, others were not terribly competent. A reshuffle he reasoned would rid them of the incompetent (or at least move them to places they could do less damage) and revitalise the stale. But he fluffed this attempted reshuffle when he found people wouldn’t move and because of the questionable legality one of his proposed new ministerial jobs. Instead of renewing his government it probably quickened its demise and he further lost authority within it. Even had he planned it better and been more forceful on those unwilling to move it’s not clear it would have made a difference.

The logic of the cabinet is that you get fifteen or so minds looking at a problem. Where a minister proposes something, these fifteen people then subject it to scrutiny. These fifteen people will be the elite of the political system, and should be among the best minds in the country. Different people with different skills, different priorities and different points of view will ensure that any proposal will get a good grilling and only the best ideas will get through. The problem is that in Ireland the Taoiseach has a very limited bunch to choose from for his cabinet – probably more limited than any other parliamentary democracy.  He can only choose from those on his side of the Dáil (there is a possibility of two senators but for various reasons this is impractical and politically risky). After you remove the infirm and insane (the intoxicated can make it through!) this means for cabinet and  junior ministers, Taoisigh only have about two people to choose from for every one job.

While many of these will be bright, some we know are not. And because only those with seats, and usually safe seats get near cabinet, we tend to see Irish cabinets are populated by a remarkably homogenous group. They’re all going to be good at serving the needs of their constituents and want to spend a good deal of time there. They’re all closely concerned with the upcoming election (no bad thing but it might encourage short-term thinking). They’re all going to have spent much of their adult life in and around the Dáil. They’re all going to be quite similar.

So if the logic of cabinet government is that proposals are subjected to scrutiny by fifteen independent minds with different perspectives, in Ireland we get fifteen minds, but just one (or two) perspective(s). This limits the usefulness of the cabinet meeting as a forum to thrash out policy ideas.

A number of taoisigh have publicly or privately expressed their unhappiness with this.  They would prefer to be able to bring people in from industry, academia, the arts or wherever. This is normal, or at least not unusual,  in other countries where being elected to a constituency is not a prerequisite to being in the executive. In fact in some countries, would-be ministers have to resign their seats to get into government. This has the effect of distancing the legislature and the executive and in thus making the parliament more vigorous in its oversight of government. To do this would take a change in the constitution, but if it meant that government and the Oireachtas did their jobs better it would be worthwhile.

Eoin O’Malley

 

Formal submissions by TCD students on electoral reform

Formal submissions by members of the TCD Junior Sophister Irish Politics class at the formal sitting of the Joint Committee on the Constitution in the TCD Exam Hall- Declan Harmon, David Dehoe, Barra Roantree, Julianne Cox, Eliska Drapalova, Talya Houseman, Kimberley Moran, Ciara Begley, Barry Cahill, Daniel Philbin Bowman and Colm Quinn.

This was the first time in Trinity’s history that a fully constituted Joint Committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas sat in Trinity. 

Barra Roantree

 

Justice Frank Clarke, Prof Ken Benoit, Jim O'Keeffe TD, John Bowman, Minister Noel Dempsey, Senator Ivana Bacik, Seán Ardagh TD

 

Letter to the Citizens of Dublin

The need for political reform by Henry Grattan