Dail Reform – the end of parish pump politics?

golfwallah

With all the calls for “real Dail reform”, of which I am all in favour, I wonder if politicians and ordinary voters have thought through the consequences on the way politics has functioned (or, dare I say, mis-functioned) in Ireland up to now.

Our current multi seat PR voting system combined with strong party whips leads to concentration of decision making on National issues in the cabinet, or a small group such as the last administration’s “Economic Management Council” or even strong individual political leaders. We’ve seen the results - over concentration last time out on macro-economic indicators to the exclusion of almost everything else. Many voters didn’t like this and showed their displeasure in the recent election.

But if we do, indeed, see real Dail reform coming out of the current political impasse on forming the next government – what will that look like? Will it mean that TDs will now have to spend the bulk of their time working in the Dail on National issues? If so, how will this impact on their “constituency work”?

I mean, there are baby christenings and funerals to go to, photo ops, dishing out local grants, pot holes to have fixed and peoples’ entitlements to follow up on. And then there is all the work in clinics and touching the flesh locally. Having elected TDs in the Dail working will leave little or no time for all this important work. And we all know what happens to TDs who give insufficient time to local issues – someone else, usually in their own party does this work for them and gets elected in their place next time out.

OMG – will this be the end of the world as we know it. Is this what we really want?

Seth Brundle

There will be no Dail reform despite the waffle!

Fr Tod Umptious

TDs spending more time on national rather than local issues can only come with local government reform not with Dail reform.

If my local councillor had more power to fix local problems the need to go to the TD to ask would not be there.

Same goes for social services, we need to remove the need for the constituents to go to the TD to find out about the status of a claim/request/application, the service itself should be efficient enough to keep them updated and informed.

That being said if the above is achieved what may you need 158 TDs for and what reforms need to be put in place to concentrate the Dail on national issues ?

You mention that the last government favoured macro indicators over micro ones, but if you have a Dail that deals mainly with national issues then won't that just be macro issues they are dealing with ?

golfwallah

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

TDs spending more time on national rather than local issues can only come with local government reform not with Dail reform.

If my local councillor had more power to fix local problems the need to go to the TD to ask would not be there.

Same goes for social services, we need to remove the need for the constituents to go to the TD to find out about the status of a claim/request/application, the service itself should be efficient enough to keep them updated and informed.

That being said if the above is achieved what may you need 158 TDs for and what reforms need to be put in place to concentrate the Dail on national issues ?

You mention that the last government favoured macro indicators over micro ones, but if you have a Dail that deals mainly with national issues then won't that just be macro issues they are dealing with ?

The kind of National issues I had in mind, over and above macro-economic indicators, include those that have been temporarily kicked down the road, are way beyond the ability of local politicians to fix and a now set to bite the macro-economic score-card where it hurts:
• Housing – we now have a huge problem that could take years to fix with impacts on wage demands, social inclusion, etc.
• Water – impacts on all sectors, e.g. health, the environment, housing, industry, commerce.
• Scarcity of employment opportunities for young people – other than job bridge, internships, emigration, etc.
• Health Services – becoming more and more overstretched as time elapses
• Scrapping of Social Partnership and growing wage demands – “partnership” as we knew it had its problems (e.g. with benchmarking pushed through on foot of an unpublished report) but we do need some form of National forum to agree in a transparent manner on how the National cake is shared as fairly as possible between competing segments of society.
• Public Sector Reform – some progress has been made but progress is painfully slow.

I agree with your point about the importance of Local Government Reform, but then shouldn't reform of how public services work be a continuous process of gradually keeping up with changes in the economic and political environment rather than leaving it until crises arise, as we seem to do?

Jim2007

golfwallah wrote: »

With all the calls for “real Dail reform”, of which I am all in favour, I wonder if politicians and ordinary voters have thought through the consequences on the way politics has functioned (or, dare I say, mis-functioned) in Ireland up to now.

So how exactly is this different from other countries??? As a dual citizen, I vote in Swiss parliamentary elections. The method of voting is different but the outcome is the same - local representatives are elected and sent to parliament on the expectation that they will represent their electorate in parliament.

When it comes to electing a government we have the magic formula which means that the government is concentrated in seven ministers, who once elected are very rarely replaced until such time as they decide to retire. And of course we have scandals and mismanagement like all other countries.

I don't see either system as being perfect, but neither are they not fit for purpose. If fact the fact that scandals and mismanagement gets identified, reported and deal with shows that they system does work.

Jim2007

golfwallah wrote: »

The kind of National issues I had in mind, over and above macro-economic indicators, include those that have been temporarily kicked down the road, are way beyond the ability of local politicians to fix and a now set to bite the macro-economic score-card where it hurts:
• Housing – we now have a huge problem that could take years to fix with impacts on wage demands, social inclusion, etc.
• Water – impacts on all sectors, e.g. health, the environment, housing, industry, commerce.
• Scarcity of employment opportunities for young people – other than job bridge, internships, emigration, etc.
• Health Services – becoming more and more overstretched as time elapses
• Scrapping of Social Partnership and growing wage demands – “partnership” as we knew it had its problems (e.g. with benchmarking pushed through on foot of an unpublished report) but we do need some form of National forum to agree in a transparent manner on how the National cake is shared as fairly as possible between competing segments of society.
• Public Sector Reform – some progress has been made but progress is painfully slow.

These are all matters for the executive branch in their program for government not the legislature except in so far legislation is required. Beyond that the Dail and more specifically the opposition are expected to hold the government accountable. The division of responsibilities between the three branches of government is a key feature of ensuring our democracy and to allow one branch to encroach on another would unacceptable.

golfwallah

Jim2007 wrote: »

So how exactly is this different from other countries??? As a dual citizen, I vote in Swiss parliamentary elections. The method of voting is different but the outcome is the same - local representatives are elected and sent to parliament on the expectation that they will represent their electorate in parliament.

When it comes to electing a government we have the magic formula which means that the government is concentrated in seven ministers, who once elected are very rarely replaced until such time as they decide to retire. And of course we have scandals and mismanagement like all other countries.

I don't see either system as being perfect, but neither are they not fit for purpose. If fact the fact that scandals and mismanagement gets identified, reported and deal with shows that they system does work.

I’m no expert on what happens in other countries and agree that no system is perfect. But the last election is just one more demonstration that what we have isn’t working very well and could be improved, given that the mood is there to make things better.

But as we all know, change is easier said than done. Being an open economy, we are very much influenced by the prevailing world view (set by the stronger economies) of how things should work here in Ireland. Before Independence, it was Britain that determined the big picture economically. From the 1920s till late 60s, it was our own desire for self-sufficiency, independence and our awe of the church that dominated. After joining the EEC and EU, our economic affairs were more impacted by decisions in Brussels and the over-arching socio-economic thinking of the likes of Milton Friedman, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Maggie Thatcher rather than anything our own guys thought up.

But, hey, our politicians still want to claim credit when things outside their control go right and our adversarial political system concentrates on blame and personal attack rather than solutions when the self-same uncontrollable events go wrong.

One good thing about the present political impasse is that issues like consensus government (in contrast to excessively strong majority rule) is coming to the fore of debate. At least our politicians are talking about it. The real proof of the pudding will be when they are pushed into making decisions and taking actions that have more general consensus than the heretofore narrowly based sectional government rule that focuses mainly on “looking after our own” first and everyone else afterwards.

I think we could also build better planned political processes that really work (most of the time) rather than the “break-fix” system of waiting for things to go wrong and relying on tribunals and the courts to try to resolve them years later.

golfwallah

Jim2007 wrote: »

These are all matters for the executive branch in their program for government not the legislature except in so far legislation is required. Beyond that the Dail and more specifically the opposition are expected to hold the government accountable. The division of responsibilities between the three branches of government is a key feature of ensuring our democracy and to allow one branch to encroach on another would unacceptable.

I fully agree that division of responsibilities between that legislature, executive and judiciary are key features of our democracy. That is not the issue I raised, which was that an over-narrow, small group of decision makers in cabinet (the 4-person “Economic Management Council”, advised by unelected advisors behind the scenes), placed too much emphasis on key economic indicators and omitted to bring people along with them. Hence many people felt left out and unrepresented in parliament and showed their disdain at the last general election.

There are ways and means to bring people along – it’s difficult but not impossible. However, overemphasis on macro-economic indicators (mostly influenced by things not directly done by government) and finger pointing and blame to deflect attention from under-performing on things that really matter to the majority is what recent governments have been relying on for re-election.

This formula for government is no longer working and needs changing. The current “talks” between politicians might produce something better. But this is unlikely with our multi-seat PR system, where local issues predominate over national issues and politicians who ignore this reality are punished by not being re-elected.

Labarbapostiza

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

If my local councillor had more power to fix local problems the need to go to the TD to ask would not be there.

This might come as a surprise to you, and be hard to believe. The TD is a Teach Daila, they have no influence over the day to day operations of the councils.

People have an illusion that their TD geshes the road fikshd.

Filling pot holes is something the councils schedule. If you ask a TD to gesh the road fiksd, they don't have to do anything, when the council do the work they get the credit. And this is what goes on. The TD takes credit for parish pumps they had nothing to with.

Labarbapostiza

golfwallah wrote: »

Before Independence, it was Britain that determined the big picture economically. From the 1920s till late 60s, it was our own desire for self-sufficiency, independence and our awe of the church that dominated.


After joining the EEC and EU, our economic affairs were more impacted by decisions in Brussels and the over-arching socio-economic thinking of the likes of Milton Friedman, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Maggie Thatcher rather than anything our own guys thought up.

There are two incorrect points here. We didn't get banking independence in 1922. The Punt was tied to Sterling. This meant Irish banks had their head quarters in England not Ireland. The Bank of England dictated lending policy within the Irish system. We only began to break free of this system in the 70s, after joining Europe. It made a very big difference.

We're tied into a global system and our politicians have very little room for maneuver, and the majority of politicians are far too stupid to even grasp the basics of macroeconomics.

HalloweenJack

I personally believe a system where you vote for parties instead of individuals (independents aside) would be better.

Bear with me as this is far from perfect and I'm sure I haven't thought it all out clearly. Hopefully you can get an idea of what I mean.

Parties wouldn't be able to put politician names on the ballot paper and TD's cannot be elected to represent constituencies they are based in, registered with the local party branch or are originally from. When all the votes are in, TD's are assigned to constituencies that they are least connected to and can only serve one Dail term per constituency. So even if they do build up a reputation in their one term representing whatever constituency it happens to be, they know that after the next election, even if re-elected, they'll be shipped off to a different one.

We'd continue with PR-STV and parties could run as many candidates as they want but the votes would work this way: all votes go to FF 1 until they reach the quota, then surplus passes onto FF 2 and FF 3 etc. In theory, FF could only get 3 TD's in that constituency if the people really wanted 3 FF TD's as noone would know who the TD will be, he won't be a local and he'll only have a limit of one term per constituency. If the TD does a good job, then it would lead to people voting for the party again as there's no chance the TD could be reelected to represent that constituency again. If he does a bad job, then people would be wary of voting for a candidate for whatever party because they'll only have the party's record to base their vote on. They won't know who they'll potentially get as TD, they only know it won't be the last guy.

Canvassers could only canvass in the constituency where they are members of the local party branch but they would have to focus on the party's national policies as no member of the local branch will actually be elected to represent that constituency.

I think if it could be applied, it would give power back to the parties.

An example of a ballot list would be something like this:
FF 1
FF 2
FF 3
FG 1
FG 2
FG 3
Lab 1
SF 1
AAA 1
SD 1
Renua 1
A O'Connor (Independents could use their names)
D Maguire (Ind)
M Moriarty (Ind)

Labarbapostiza

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Canvassers could only canvass in the constituency where they are members of the local party branch but they would have to focus on the party's national policies as no member of the local branch will actually be elected to represent that constituency.

Do you think the Gombeen men parties would go for that?

I'm originally from je country. To get elected in most places you must be a local man with rural connections. For instance a school teacher from a good farming family. I know how they canvas. They tell the bog dancers, the Labour candidate is secretly pro-abortion, and is going to take their farms from them.

If you look into it, the farmers were protected from austerity measures. They didn't pay the universal social charges. Programs like the farm assist were exempted. They had a good recession.

HalloweenJack

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Do you think the Gombeen men parties would go for that?

Of course not but it's my suggestion for moving away from voting for the local lad who shook enough hands, kissed enough babies and promised to stir things up in the capital.