I have a Mandate from the people

The whip system sits in an odd position with regard to the constitution. It is certainly the intention of the Constitution to ensure a TD or Senator elected by the people is free of coercion when exercising their duties (and what else could the whip system be described as?), but unfortunately the guardian of the TD/Senator is the House itself, which is under the whip system. It is possible, but unlikely that parties under a whip system will ever vote to protect their TDs from the whip system.

Each House shall make its own rules and standing orders, with power to attach penalties for their infringement, and shall have power to ensure freedom of debate, to protect its official documents and the private papers of its members, and to protect itself and its members against any person or persons interfering with, molesting or attempting to corrupt its members in the exercise of their duties.

@MrMicro

Just cannot see how a Government would get things done without a whip system.

They would just have to manage the same way governments across the world manage without an effective whip system. They would certainly have to adjust their behavior and the way in which they introduce legislation, but that would certainly be for the best - the constitution envisages the Dail operating as a democratic brake against an out of control government, not a rubber stamp for it. If the government was forced to persuade the Dail that the legislation they were introducing was in the best interests of the country, there is a higher chance of that actually being true. No government could be appointed in the first place without majority support from the Dail.

Deleted User wrote: »

The whip system makes a mockery of democracy. Whats the point? If the Taoiseach was directly elected by the people then maaaybe it would be useful for breaking deadlocks but nothing else.

If politicians go by the whip all the time then there is no representation and the elected policitians serve no purpose. It is comparable to an elected dictatorship.

Reforms I would support would be something like directly electing the ministries and more direct democracy with maybe a house vetting the legislation before its put to the people. Every quarter people tick some boxes and approve or disapprove each of the recent proposals. At least I`m throwing ideas out there. The current system is a proven failure and I`d love to hear other peoples ideas and suggestions

Removing the whip will only allow TDs to act in a more self-serving, short term, locally focused manner in order to ensure re-election. Being forced to vote with the party forces them, through the party, to look beyond their own constituencies. Without it every piece of legislation would be reduced down to its effect locally with TDs being blackmailed to vote against it. Every TD would use the party to get elected and then work independently to get hospitals/schools/roads/swimming pools/whatever built or upgraded in their locality. At least the party is forced to look to gain/retain seats in all constituencies.

As for reforms, what we need is bigger local authorities with more power and leave that for the gombeens who cant see past their own constituency. A smaller Dail with less TDs could then focus on national issues.

Abolish the election of local public representatives or the whip system - they are mutually exclusive.

murphaph wrote: »

Precisely why we should not elect national parliamentarians locally. Ireland is small enough that TDs should be elected from a national list like in the Netherlands. Local stuff should be the remit of local government.

Initially this seems very appealing, but from speaking to people living in list countries they have a different problem to us, they don't get to fully control the order of the list (it varies from country to country) and the order of that list has more to do with how well-in you are with the party leadership than any ability as a politician (as well as regional, we need to have at least 5 TDs from Dublin kind of nonsense). We do elect morons, but we pick which ones damn it!

The lack of a whip system means that the US congress also operates on a system of earmarks, pork barrel spending and lobbying that would make the Healy Raes blush.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Why wouldn't it work? It's pretty much how the US Congress operates.
You'd have to choose whether to follow the will of the people or give up your seat. You'd be forced to be more honest instead of making phoney promises and then hiding behind the party whip as an excuse for not delivering.

Doesnt the US Congress also require that every bill have local favours tagged on to buy votes in order to get passed? Imagine that here, 80+ community centres and swimming pools just to get a simple piece of legislation passed.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Doesnt the US Congress also require that every bill have local favours tagged on to buy votes in order to get passed? Imagine that here, 80+ community centres and swimming pools just to get a simple piece of legislation passed.

Indeed, imagine a Dail full of the Lowry, Healy-Rae, Ahern, P Flynn, types with such a system....... the mind boggles.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Removing the whip will only allow TDs to act in a more self-serving, short term, locally focused manner in order to ensure re-election. Being forced to vote with the party forces them, through the party, to look beyond their own constituencies. Without it every piece of legislation would be reduced down to its effect locally with TDs being blackmailed to vote against it. Every TD would use the party to get elected and then work independently to get hospitals/schools/roads/swimming pools/whatever built or upgraded in their locality. At least the party is forced to look to gain/retain seats in all constituencies.

As for reforms, what we need is bigger local authorities with more power and leave that for the gombeens who cant see past their own constituency. A smaller Dail with less TDs could then focus on national issues.

Easy solution to this problem is to take all local matters out of the hand of national government and give them to local government. TDs would then vote with their constituency on national matters but it wouldn't cause localized politics as TDs would only have authority over national politics.

All the different reasons for opposing this seem to be summed up by the statement "Democracy is a bad idea"?

Sand wrote: »

I didn't say they did. Just that if the TDs are elected to heed the will of the party whip then why not save the expenses of having TDs and just have a party whip with a varying amount of votes depending on their parties vote return. Saves money, saves the whip the hassle of "enforcing".

Again, the party whip doesnt formulate party policy, that comes from within the party, the membership, which can come from different levels, general membership, parliamentary party, etc. Just having a party whip is just like an independent TD, they get to decide their own stance on issues.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

In a country this small the lines between local and national can be quite blurry. Look at the health service for example, Reilly is building primary care centres as part of a national plan. Of course, he is making it local by making sure his constituency benefits most. This is the kind of situation that our multiple seat constituency system creates, if Reilly didnt do this his constituents would not be happy and probably would reelect him. Nobody is saying that "Democracy is a bad idea", just that giving TDs free reign to"represent" their constituents is not a good idea.

It's more, do we want politicians deciding whether we get new care centres? (Or more accurately, if money is available for them) Of course we do. Do we want a specific politician deciding where those centres are going to be? No, that's not such a good idea.

The same people being the Legislators as well as the Executive that is the issue. This is just a fundamentally dumb idea. It's got nothing to do with our STV system really, First Past the Post and List Systems have the same problem, just expressed slightly differently.

Sand wrote: »

Why bother with the hassle of a TD and his/her expenses if you really want party HQ to run things? Just give the various party HQs a certain amount of votes each, job done.

Because TDs aren't completely robotic servants of their masters? They do break away and/or take over the party sometimes you know.

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

Yes, that's it. If I vote for a TD from a particular party its because I want him to follow the policies dictated to him by that party.

Based on what? Stated party policy? Because as soon as they have the security of an untouchable 5 years in office, stated party policy is almost always revealed as a bait and switch. Can you remember the last time it wasn't?

When you join a political party, you do so in the understanding that you will be subject to the whip system. If you have an issue with that then perhaps you should not join a party?

Personally I am against the whip system but that is how political parties choose to operate and party members choose to abide by this system.

nesf wrote: »

Well that's the thing isn't it, and sorry for missing your post. You have to divide politicians into pragmatists and idealists (I'm being very generous and calling parish pump politicians idealists). You need both but they behave rather differently in this regard. For pragmatists you put up with crap so you can push through some of what you want. There is usually a line you won't cross but it's normally pretty far away. An idealist tends to want to neither compromise on policy nor indulge in horse trading over policy. The line for them is quite close.

Now whips and coalitions tend to bring in pragmatists, no whips and individual voting tends to bring in idealists. If you bring in the latter, which gives what you want in terms of accountability, you will bring in a hell of a lot more pork barrel politics. It's very important to remember here that there are downsides which ever way you go and greater public control over TDs very much has problems.

My solution to this would be to decentralize all local matters to local government, leading the Dail to only vote on nationwide legislation. That way there could be no parish pump in the Dail as the Dail would have no power over local matters in the first place, and one could then have the accountability I'm proposing without worrying about it encouraging a Dail full of Healy Raes.

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

Policy and broad ethos. I don't expect parties to adhere rigidly to everything over the course of five years, since conditions change in that time, but I would expect them to broadly follow it, yeah.

How does that fit with the current government's promises of a new approach to the crisis - not one more cent, labour's way, tax on a person's home is immoral etc

While I agree with you that circumstances change, the current lot got in and then U-turned on practically everything they had promised before polling day, and have actively made things worse (for the average Irish citizen) IMO though Enda's determination to be a "good European" first and foremost.

I do think that the whip system makes a farce of our so-called democracy as it just leaves 95% of the TD's making up the numbers (and getting ridiculously well paid for it) with the real power/decisions (whatever is left after the EU imposes its will anyway) centralised around the Cabinet table, Politburo style!

I also think we need limits on how many successive terms a party can be in government (ditto for the position of Taoiseach), and would even favour reducing the term from the current 5 to 4 years.

I don't see how we can consider ourselves a democracy with our current whip system. You vote for a politician based on their principles and then the party they are in comes into conflict with said principles and have to vote against it. It's actually sustaining parish pump politics. If you take away a politicians ability to stand on his/her principles what more can they do only fix the local roads!

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

If I'm voting for a member of a party, I'm voting in the expectation that they will vote in line with the party whip.

If I wanted a TD who voted in line with whatever he/she felt about an issue I'd vote for an independent.

So you only look at the party manifesto when voting?

Godge wrote: »

I disagree completely. For a start the US is still the largest world economy and surviving the recession better than Europe.

The bollocksed comment was referring to politics, not the economy.

And yes, it would be an unholy mess. The problem in the US parliamentary system is the lack of a whip culture and the ability of individual Senators and Congressmen to add their own pork barrel projects to a piece of legislation in return for their support of it.

Having strong States does not stop this.

The lack of the whip system is one of the best things about US democracy, but how does having strong States not prevent parish pump politics? Federal politicians ideally wouldn't have any influence over purely local matters in such a system.

hardCopy wrote: »

I'd see the whip as being the only way to force through any reform in a parliament full of conservative backbenchers.

I don't see the whip as the one who's going to reduce the power of the whip to be honest.

Any endorsement of the whip system serves to reduce to power of the voters. It ensures that you have no effective way to vote for a policy.