Whip system is not sustainable in an age of changing coalitions

There is no collective responsibility when there is no collective involvement, writes

THE recent mini-rebellion within the Green Party that saw one of its junior ministers abstain on an important bill, and its (now former) party whip vote against it, has brought the issue of the Dáil whipping system back into the spotlight.

Party whips are not unique to Ireland. Most modern parliamentary democracies, particularly those based on the Westminster model, have some form of party whipping system. As if to stress its very English origins, the term “whip” itself comes from the cruel fox-hunting tradition, where the “whipper-in” was the one responsible for keeping the hounds from straying during a chase.

Though armed with just a piece of paper rather than a whip, today’s party whips are there to ensure their TDs behave as a single horde and not run off in other directions. This is less important in Opposition than it is in Government. For Government, a defeat on a critical piece of legislation can spell the end.

So the party whips, especially the government whips, are critical to ensuring that the Government’s agreed legislative programme becomes its legislative record.

That is the theory and, as it relates to government business, it makes sense. The whips are there to ensure collective responsibility in pursuing the collective agenda.

So when the two Green TDs rebelled, they not only risked the stability of the Government by going against a piece of government legislation, they also damaged the principle of collective responsibility.

This is a particular issue this early on, as this Government is certainly not composed of parties whose representatives admire and adore each other. Indeed, you don’t have to trawl back through many of the pieces I have written here to discover that I have precious little regard for many of the ministers in the last government.

What we do have is a Government composed of three parties who have mutually agreed, after long internal discussions, to put aside deepset rivalries to work together to collectively implement a programme of government that all three have agreed.

That is what we have signed up to, even the Green Party and those around Leo Varadkar.

It is not an easy arrangement, nor is it a comfortable one. There is no point in pretending otherwise. No amount of platform-sharing media events are going to change that.

Nonetheless, defying the government whip when it is seeking to implement something in the programme for government is a clear breach of the collective decisions made at the end of June.

But whipping is a twoway street. What about all the things that are not in the programme for government and are not part of the Government’s legislative programme?

Is abstaining or voting against the whip on those occasions, on an opposition motion or on a piece of non-government business, as

SANCTIONED: Former Green Party whip Neasa Hourigan grievous a transgression as opposing the Government on its own legislation? Is it even right for government whips to apply a full whip in those situations?

In my view — and it is a view based on a long record of parliamentary service in and out of Government — it very clearly is not. How can the government whips demand collective adherence and fidelity to an issue on which the views and input of backbench TDs were neither sought nor considered?

You cannot have collective responsibility where was no collective involvement.

Yet the current whip system dictates that all government-supporting TDs must vote the same way, at the same time, whether it is a matter of government business or not.

That position is simply not sustainable. Especially not in the age of changing coalitions and cross-party arrangements. The political reality is that not every Dáil decision is the same. Not every vote demands the same immutable three-line government whip requiring that every member show up, vote and vote with the Government.

Government whips will have to move, willingly or otherwise, to having one-line and two-line whips that give government TDs guidance on how ministers view that particular issue, but still allow TDs to vote according to their own views on motions and debates that do not directly relate to government business or impact the Government’s legislative programme.

Authority is a finite resource. Exert it excessively on things that do not matter, and you may come to find that you no longer have it for the things that do. Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.

Willie O’Dea is a Fianna Fáil TD representing Limerick City constituency

‘Being smart as a whip means you realise when not to crack it’