Public Service - Too many poiticians ?

8under

A lot of focus has been placed on the number of civil servants /public servants that are employed in Ireland. One area of public service, the temporary one, i.e politicians is an area to focus on for a moment.

In Ireland we have 166 TDs for a population of of 4.487 million people. That is one representative TD for 27, 030 people.

In the US, there are 435 representatives for a population of 311million. This works out at one representative for each group of 715,000 of the population.

If we applied the US formula to our situation, then we would have only 6 TDs, OK.. 7... I will be generous and round up.... thats 7 TD's serving in the Dail....

Lets not get into our senate or county councillors for the moment.

Discuss...

n97 mini

Come the next election there will be less TDs, 162 I think, but I would agree that it is still too much.

But more to the point the political system here is geared too much towards doing favours and parish pump politics etc.

Jhcx

I've always wondered why we have so many politicians. like how is there a job for all of them. I think 6/7 would be too little but why not just have the 26 or 2 to each county divide them up into Norths and Souths

Anyway im way out of my known locality coming to these parts of the woods i have no reason to be in Political sector of boards dont belong here. But i agree that there are too many. but its a corrupt system and no one is going to leave unless the boot starts kicking

mikemac1

We had a thread a few weeks back on proposals to reduce the number

At the moment it's limited by the constitution, if you want to make a radical change we'll have to vote on it first

The report just worked around with the limitations they were under
It's messy, counties merged, others split, they did the best they could by looking at towns and cities and population centres

For example, a lot of Tipp has gone to Offaly and then North and South got merged
Tipp had been split since the Brits were here!



So OP, it you want to see major change it's up to the voters
There are limits in the constitution and it's for voters to decide what they want

And while you want less I think there may be a lot of reluctance to change.
If your TD is a local man and you can phone them on issues are you going to vote them out of existence?
I don't know but I think a lot of voters will not

8under

mikemac1 wrote: »

We had a thread a few weeks back on proposals to reduce the number

At the moment it's limited by the constitution, if you want to make a radical change we'll have to vote on it first

The report just worked around with the limitations they were under
It's messy, counties merged, others split, they did the best they could by looking at towns and cities and population centres

For example, a lot of Tipp has gone to Offaly and then North and South got merged
Tipp had been split since the Brits were here!



So OP, it you want to see major change it's up to the voters
There are limits in the constitution and it's for voters to decide what they want

And while you want less I think there may be a lot of reluctance to change.
If your TD is a local man and you can phone them on issues are you going to vote them out of existence?
I don't know but I think a lot of voters will not

Sorry about the spelling in the title ..I am new to this.

I just wanted to highlight the fact that if we compare ourselves to the US we are over represented. I am sure there are many other examples around the world that will agree or disagree with this view , no problem. The point I am trying to make is that our politicians are not leading by example in terms of number cutting particularly when it comes to the rest of the PS.

Not to mention parish pump politics, cronyism, etc, etc . but these are different issues to be dealt with also...

mikemac1

8under wrote: »

Sorry about the spelling in the title ..I am new to this.

click edit
click go advanced
You can change it then

I never even noticed the spelling

Farmer Pudsey

And we have not even cinsidered the amount of Councils, and town&city councils, we have far too many. 100 td's would be enough. abolish all present councils and replace with about 10 to cover the country.

Tea drinker

n97 mini wrote: »

Come the next election there will be less TDs, 162 I think, but I would agree that it is still too much.

But more to the point the political system here is geared too much towards doing favours and parish pump politics etc.

Well the answer is here, with 166 guys running around there's ample time for BS and local messing. TD's should be looking at the big picture, the national one, not messing about getting votes opening pubs. This actively encourages irresponsible behaviour.
Are the county councils not capable of doing their job?

Yourwellcum

8under wrote: »

A lot of focus has been placed on the number of civil servants /public servants that are employed in Ireland. One area of public service. the temporary one i.e politicians is an area to focus on for a moment.

In Ireland we have 166 TDs for a population of of 4.487 million people. That is one representative TD for 27, 030 people.

In the US, there are 435 representatives for a population of 311million. This works out at one representative for each group of 715,000 of the population.

If we applied the US formula to our situation, then we would have only 6 TDs, OK.. 7... I will be generous and round up.... thats 7 TD's serving in the Dail....

Lets not get into our senate for the moment.

Discuss...

While I agree we have far too many politicians in this country, the US is a bad example. They also have State Legislatures and City and Town Councils etc. The parish pump is alive and well in the US also.

Remember "All politics are local"

8under

Yourwellcum wrote: »

While I agree we have far too many politicians in this country, the US is a bad example. They also have State Legislatures and City and Town Councils etc. The parish pump is alive and well in the US also.

Remember "All politics are local"

I was just using the US as an example but let's take the UK and include their figures. So,

USA ..1 representative per 715,000 population

UK... 1 MP per 98,000 pop,

Ireland 1 TD per 27,000 pop.

So if used the US ratio we would have only 7 TDs and if we used the UK ratio we would have only 46 TDs.

I know there are other aspects, The Senate Upper House. House of Lords, The Seanad and County councils & LAs etc etc etc., but lets just focus on the standard representatative, in our case TDs, we seem to flooded with them !!

The rest of the PS & CS has seen major culling of numbers, now lets see our TDs lead by example... How about a 15% cut in TD numbers for a start. That would still only drop the 166 to 141 TDs.

tayto lover

100 TD's is still too many.
Two per county, 2 for the cities of Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Galway and 8 for Dublin City equals 68. That's plenty.

Nodin

8under wrote: »

A lot of focus (..........). thats 7 TD's serving in the Dail....

Lets not get into our senate or county councillors for the moment.

Discuss...

You're forgetting that each state has its own representative congress, senate and governor and theres municipal offices on top of that.

The UK is a bad example as their system is strange, to say the least of it. If you want to make some comparison, you'd have to look up some place with PR of similar size to us.

golden lane

why not have two per county, those being paid representitives.....and two more per county being volunteers.....

Lantus

There are not only far too many TD's but we have virtually no local government at all which is where we should refocus all our political effort.

I would change national level TD's to around 40-60.

But, the big changes come at a local level. Currently county councillers are just lobbyists with really limited powers. They 'ask' the county manager nicely if they feel something should be done but they can't insist on it. They cannot hire, fire or question the integrity of any staff member. The county manager has that role and he is an unelected friend of whatever government is currently in power.

I would abolish every county council as they currently stand and instead set up a smaller number (6 to 9) of municipal areas. These bodies would run each area they cover by an elected number of residents with a civil service employee structure below (without all the duplication we have currently) and privatley appointed contractors competatively tendered on no greater than 12 month contracts.

Of key importance the tax bill of each area would need to be balanced at a local level. The place of residence and place of work determining where tax should flow to and the directors of each area being respobsible for balancing the books. Some tax must go to national level.

This would have the effect of us being much more accountable and respinsve to the services and needs in our area. If we want better then we can vote directly for this. If we want less tax then all we need do is decide which services we want to cut.

An end to the age of entitlement and the begining of fiscal responsbility.

I would also have people vote for annual budgets at an AGM to bring them into the decision making process. People can see the effect of the tax they pay and also the implications of what happens if they dont.

ArmaniJeanss

8under wrote: »

So if used the US ratio we would have only 7 TDs and if we used the UK ratio we would have only 46 TDs.

Or we could use Luxembourgs ratio (60 MPs, 500K population) and have around 570 TDs.

Ireland's ratio of population to parliamentary seats is quite close to the ratios in Sweden, Norway and Finland, and within 10% of the ratio in Denmark.

There's also a rule of thumb that suggests that the number of seats in a country's parliament will tend to be approximately the cube root of the population. Look up the cube root rule, or the names Taagepera and Shugart who were the researchers.

Norway has a population of 4,952,000. The cube root is 170.4, and the number of seats in parliament is 169.

Ireland has a population of 4,588,252. The cube root is 166.2. Pretty close, I would have thought.

By the way, when the number of seats in the US lower house was fixed at 435 in 1911, the population was about 92 million, and the cube root rule would have suggested a house size of about 450 representatives.

Tabitha Tusdar

n97 mini wrote: »

Come the next election there will be less TDs, 162 I think, but I would agree that it is still too much.

But more to the point the political system here is geared too much towards doing favours and parish pump politics etc.

cut the huge number of useless local councillors that we don't need and we could save a massive amount

inforfun

Holland has 150 for 16,696,000 people.

There will always be a minimum required so the 7 based on the US average isnt going to work.

But then again, as with many things in life, it is not about the quantity, it is about the quality.

Damien360

It would be a simple process to cut the numbers of TD's. Every 3 seater becomes a 2 seater, every 5 becomes a 4 etc, etc.

Senators. Can anyone actually tell me what good has come from the grandstanding that occurs in there ? Cut the lot.

But then we need a cull of councilors. They were paid very nice expenses in the view that it would cut out corruption. That has'nt worked so cut the generous expenses. Put it back to a non-paid position. That will have them fleeing for the hills.

While we are at it, who decided to pay politicians redundancy packages from a position that by its very nature has a career lifetime that can as little as 4 years and they volunteered to do this knowing full well all the implications of taking up the position.

Cool Mo D

Damien360 wrote: »

It would be a simple process to cut the numbers of TD's. Every 3 seater becomes a 2 seater, every 5 becomes a 4 etc, etc.

Just on basic maths, this is a non starter.

Being in a 5 seater going to a 4 seater would be a 20% drop in representation, but 3 seater to 2 seater would be a 33.3% drop in representation, so not even throughout the country.

Damien360

Cool Mo D wrote: »

Just on basic maths, this is a non starter.

Being in a 5 seater going to a 4 seater would be a 20% drop in representation, but 3 seater to 2 seater would be a 33.3% drop in representation, so not even throughout the country.

Cut as above and re-draw the lines. Not difficult at all.

8under

Damien360 wrote: »

Cut as above and re-draw the lines. Not difficult at all.

It can be done simply. First of all we have the 2011 census figures which shows the latest population spread.

Then decide on the ratio, 1 TD per X,000s of the population

Then starting from the centre of the major town /city in each county, work outwards allocating a seat based on each X,000 of population.

Forget , traditional boundaries and previous party hotbeds etc., etc, base the seats on a equal number of the population. Obviously there would have to be sharing across county borders, so what, we are talking national politics/representation.

The big issue is how many TDS in total ?, certainly a lot less than 166 imo. I want quality not quantity with the focus on national issues and "higher quality" TD.

ArmaniJeanss

tayto lover wrote: »

100 TD's is still too many.
Two per county, 2 for the cities of Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Galway and 8 for Dublin City equals 68. That's plenty.

This is a fairly bizarre idea. The archaic county system is barely functional for the GAA, and to want to implement it into the running of the country.
So Leitrim with 30,000 people gets 2 TDs, and Kildare with 230,000 people also gets 2 TDs.

8under wrote: »

It can be done simply. First of all we have the 2011 census figures which shows the latest population spread.

Then decide on the ratio, 1 TD per X,000s of the population

Then starting from the centre of the major town /city in each county, work outwards allocating a seat based on each X,000 of population.

Forget , traditional boundaries and previous party hotbeds etc., etc, base the seats on a equal number of the population. Obviously there would have to be sharing across county borders, so what, we are talking national politics/representation.

The big issue is how many TDS in total ?, certainly a lot less than 166 imo. I want quality not quantity with the focus on national issues and "higher quality" TD.

Whilst the logic is somewhat sound, its far from simple, its incredibly complicated. Which is why the Boundary Commision tend to take about 12 months to come up with a few tweaks. Redesigning it from scratch would be quite the task.

ArmaniJeanss

Oh, and it's worth always bearing in mind that this would all need a constitutional amendment as we are currently guaranteed 1 TD per 30,000 in the constitution.
And I actually don't think upping this figure to say 1 per 80,000 would actually pass.

Because people, whilst they may think there are too many TDs in the country as a whole, are quite content with their own representation. When its pointed out to them that such an amendment would mean that say, Leitrim, Longford or Carlow might never have a TD again then you have a game changer.

And then when the smaller parties and independents point out that they are the ones who'll suffer (how many non-Tory/Labour/Lib MPs are elected in English constituencies, maybe 10?, How many non Republican/Democrats are in the Senate, 3 I think?) I believe people will decide that such an amendment would be an attack on democracy and not worth the money it saves.

I'd have it at about 1/3 to fail, 9/4 to pass.

Farmer Pudsey

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

So Leitrim with 30,000 people gets 2 TDs, and Kildare with 230,000 people also gets 2 TDs.
QUOTE]

The us senate works on this premise where each state has two senators. 1/3 of the house goes for reelection every two years.
So if we set up two houses a senate where every county elected two senators with a five year term of office and a Dail base on equal representation with the same lenght of term. Maybe with 100 seat's elected. You could also allow the Toiseach of the day to appoint 10 TD's. This would allow him to bring in expertise at cabinet level and also allow for a stable majority. In the event of the toiseach losing the confidence of the house his appointed TD's would have to resign and a new toiseach elected.

People maight have a value for the senate then if we felt they were not elected by an elite. The senate could be elected by first past the post and the Dail by PR. The toiseach could appoint his cabinet from either house as at present but which is rarly done Dr Jim Dooge was the last such cabinet minster. A cabinet of 10 minsters and 10 junior minsters with committee a mix of both house.

[Jackass]

Personally I think there should be far, far less TD's in the Dail (less than 100), but I feel there should be more regional and local Government, with a mayoral system for the cities and regional Governments for the provinces, to give better access to funding and decision makers at local level and freeing up our national Government to focus purely on Economic issues.

I think the lower house etc. should be abolished.

If we're making comparrisons though, I think the U.S. system is completely different to ours and it's not fair to make comparrisons to a Federal Government when there are regional Governments, however I do think their system is highly flawed also.