Time for some downsizing of the Dail?

Sleepy

In the 'Election Time' thread, Rebeller posted the following which I was initially going to respond to in that thread, however I think this is something which warrants discussion in it's own right.

Rebeller wrote:

If Fianna Fail are re-elected to office it will be final confirmation for me that democracy does not work.

Democracy isn't perfect and never can be given that it's essentially mob-rule dressed in a tux. However, humanity has yet to come up with a better form of governance so we have to work with Democracy for now. There are a lot of measures which would help improve how it works in Ireland, primarily imho, the reduction of the number of representatives and the re-defining of a TD's role.

All politics are local is an attitude which needs to be garrotted and buried in a very deep grave. Electing councillors is a local matter, electing governments is a national one. People need to realise that voting for John-Joe because he got their path fixed is not a good idea and that they should instead be voting for Michael because he's a good administrator, has the ability to run a ministerial office, the vision to plan for the future, the sense to do his job at a national level and leave the local stuff to the council and the honesty not to allow himself to be bought by the highest bidder.

Make it illegal for TD's to interfere in local matters. We as taxpayers do not (or at least should not) pay our TD's to fix footpaths, attend local funerals to have the face be seen, run 'constituency' offices etc. We elect and pay them to run our country's public services and to legislate for change.

I believe a reduction of numbers of TD's would help remove some of the 'parish pump' tendencies from Irish politics. It's harder to convince someone to vote for you purely because your house is near theres if their house is in another 'locality' within a larger district than if they're someone you've gone to school with and been a neighbour of since childhood.

If we look at our nearest neighbour, the UK with a population of 60.6 million people, they have 646 members of parliament. In our own country, with a population of a little over 4 million (4,062,235 according to our last census), we have 166 sitting TD's. This is a difference of each parliamentary member representing nearly 94,000 people as opposed to our own 24,000.

Now, I'm not holding up the British House of Commons as a perfect example of democracy at work but I've never seen their media comment on the same level of local politics interfering with the governance of their state (nor heard one of their citizens refer to such) as can be clearly seen in Ireland.

Personally, I think a reduction of our number of TD's would benefit Irish Democracy (not to mention the obvious savings to the exchequer of having less salaries and expense accounts to pay). Any thoughts on this?

mike65

My only thought is the blinding obvious one - it won't happen because for it to happen would require an act of selflessness on the part of TDs and all potential TDs.

Mike.

Nuttzz

as the population increases there is no need to down size it, a small group controlling power is not the way forward, i'm all for more accountability though

Sleepy

mike65, you're entirely right. I don't see it happening because like most of my political beliefs it's simply too sensible for our TD's to accept! :P

Nuttzz, do you see our population growing to 15m over the next few decades? Just using the British levels as an example, we've *way* too many of them.