Dáil is but a stage for political posturing – so let’s just hand it over to the actors
THERE is, it has to be said, an element of painting-by-numbers to a lot of Irish political activity. We could probably get an app to do a lot of it. You know: The OpposeMatic (™). Could be pre-loaded with a suite of standard opposition responses to government proposals, as well as a thousand motions and resolutions to randomly deploy instantly.
“The government has missed an opportunity.” “Budget (insert year) is the worst budget ever presented to this house.”
“I’m calling on the minister to declare a national housing/healthcare/wifi emergency.”
“The minister for (insert portfolio) should resign immediately.”
“If my crowd were in power we’d be doing the thing that your crowd promised to do the last time my crowd were in power!”
The cockpit of our democracy, Dáil Éireann, is for the most part the equivalent of a political performance piece – and not a good one at that. The national budget is not decided there but rubber-stamped. It holds debates that never affect the outcome of the issue being debated, and spends hours debating and passing motions that are not binding in any way.
Backbenchers are frog-marched in by the whips to use up debate time. It is literally, at times, a time-wasting exercise. It would be as good a use of public money if we let the Abbey populate the house with trainee actors who could at least give entertaining or powerful Sorkinesque speeches without doing any harm at all.
The tourists would like it, and the occasional speech would go viral, making foreigners think we’re serious about this stuff. Until they noticed the same passionate Irish socialist getting devoured by a man-eating settee on Doctor Who six months later.
In short, the Dáil is effectively an electoral college to elect or remove a Taoiseach, which is its sole serious duty, and most stuff after that simply doesn’t matter. The Ceann Comhairle could just as easily be taking out the winning balls for the Lotto live on the floor of the house.
Its committees have improved in recent years, it must be said, but their job is often done more cheaply by RTÉ Investigates.
To be fair to our elected representatives, most of this is not their fault.
We set up an almost carbon copy of the British parliamentary system because we didn’t really know much better. The problem is that it is not designed for the predominant culture in the country and so we end up with a very superficial system not reflecting how we actually do public business here.
As a people, we don’t like making actual decisions in public. If you were to design a parliamentary chamber to represent the Irish form of decision making, it would be a huge cluster of snugs with fellas whispering to each other, pausing occasionally to peer out on the sneak to see who else is talking to whom. And take names.
It’s actually how our labour arbitration works, officials travelling from room to room so nobody loses face and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
The current Dáil structure is simply un-Irish.
Take how we as individual voters decide whom to vote for. We’re electing members of a national legislature yet we apply the criteria of an old Brehon chieftain, measuring their performance by their prowess as local fixer and disperser of favours. We’re only short of requiring them to hunt and skin a wild boar. In Tipperary they carry their chap around the town held aloft on a golden shield (I’m only half joking here).
There’s nothing inherently undemocratic about it. Electing a public representative to act as an intermediary between the citizen and the often complex machine of the State is a perfectly reasonable act.
But let’s be upfront about it. We don’t want local legislators: we want a local chief and should admit it.
For all their national political contributions, the Healy-Raes, Lowrys and Aherns provided genuinely world-class interaction between their constituents and their government, and their voters voted accordingly.
The floor of a national parliament existed in the past because there was nowhere else to debate the direction of the nation. That simply isn’t the case anymore.
If anything, the Dáil is the last place a genuine national debate is held because our national leaders don’t really like taking positions that admit voters can’t have everything they want. Paid for by the imaginary bottomless pockets of an Irish C Montgomery Burns.
The problem is that there’s hardly anyone in our political system whose job is to speak (and act) for Ireland as a whole. Michael D can talk for Ireland (boy, can he) but without the responsibility of having to make spending and policy choices. He remains the only person in our State directly elected by every parish in the land.
Ironically, de Valera quite fancied the idea of a US-style, directly elected head of government but felt the Irish were too used to the parliamentary system and also that he’d be accused to trying to establish an all-powerful dictatorship.
As it happens, the Constitution has concentrated quite a lot of power in the hands of the Taoiseach.
But what Dev never saw coming was a generation of elected leaders who were quite happy to be in power without any idea as to what sort of country they wanted to create.
I mean, if we’re not going to have decisive leaders then we might as well have Andrew Scott, Sharon Horgan or Aidan Turner as Taoiseach. At least they’d be easier on the eye and give Justin Trudeau a run for his money.
Our national leaders don’t like taking positions that admit voters can’t have everything they want