There’s only one system that matters, and it’s broken

There were four gardaí outside the examination hall at Trinity College last Tuesday evening. I asked them who was attending an event (on electoral systems) in the hall and was worth assaulting. They thought about the question, and acknowledged that they had no idea.

The event was both a seminar and a sitting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, chaired by the admirable Sean Ardagh TD. The event was boring - not quite excruciatingly so, but very much so. More than that, it was entirely pointless.

Presentations to the Oireachtas committee were given by students from what was called the sophomore class. The use of the word ‘sophomore’ was a clue to the pretension of the occasion.

It is a term used in the US to denote second-year students, and was probably used in Trinity a century or so before there was a United States. Its etymology is from the Greek sophisma (‘clever device’), from sophizesthai (‘to devise, become wise’).

There should have been a rush to the door when the word was uttered. Instead, the 300 or so in attendance seemed impressed.

The presentations were doggedly serious. There were references to proportional representation in New Zealand, and to list systems in Germany and Denmark.

The purpose was to devise a system to improve the standard of our elected representatives and have TDs apply themselves to the great issues of the nation, rather than the little issues of their constituencies.

Ardagh’s committee had conducted a survey of TDs which found that more than half of their working time was spent on constituency-based work and less than 40 per cent on legislative work. Ardagh solemnly said last Thursday:

‘‘For every hour the average TD spends on legislative work, an hour and 25 minutes is spent on constituency-based work."

His survey also found that most TDs wanted to change the electoral system to an arrangement which would improve their chances of keeping their seats. What a surprise! The sober sophomore students of Trinity did not have the benefit of this survey last Tuesday night, but they might have guessed.

None of them wondered why TDs spent any time at all on legislative work, and why they didn’t spend all their time sucking up to their constituents by pretending to do them favours to which they are entitled anyway.

For there is no point in doing legislative work, as the legislature does not legislate. The executive arm of government (ie, the cabinet) does the legislation, and the Dáil meekly concurs.

Neither does the Dáil hold the government of the day accountable, either in the Dáil chamber or in committees, because the government always has a majority and will obstruct any attempt at meaningful accountability.

Yes, of course, at the committee stage on legislation, amendments are sometimes accepted by the relevant minister.

But it is entirely at the discretion of the relevant minister whether to accept amendments or not.

The Dáil will not override him or her because the party whips system ensures that the Dáil remains the creature of the government of the day, although members of the government of the day might admit occasional concessions to representations from the opposition.

The Dáil is not entirely irrelevant.

It is an important platform and is effectively used as such, notably by Brian Lenihan, Enda Kenny, Richard Bruton, Eamon Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte, Joan Burton, Mary O’Rourke and a few others.

But let’s not pretend that a speakers’ platform is the same as a genuine independent legislature or an arena where the government is held to account for the running of the country.

The political scientists, who organised the Trinity event, and the species of political scientists generally, respond wearily to this observation with the dismissive observation ‘‘It was always thus’’, as though that makes it okay or that there is no point in going on about it.

But what is the point of changing the electoral system or of devising clever ways to get cleverer people into the Dáil, when the Dáil is fairly irrelevant anyway?

Incidentally, it is not the case that the standard of TDs is low.

There are several backbenchers on all sides - and even a few frontbenchers - who are impressive. For instance, the aforementioned Sean Ardagh, Sean Connick, Sean Fleming, Ned O’Keeffe, Tommy Byrne and Jim O’Keeffe, to mention only the few who now come to mind. But they are wasting their time, for the most part.

Look at George Lee. He was doing a hugely valuable national service as economics correspondent for RTE. He and David Murphy, together, were delivering sharp and informed insights into what was happening to the economy and to the financial institutions, until Lee had a rush of blood to somewhere and decided to go into politics last summer.

He has been missed in RTE’s coverage of economics and financial affairs Lee has disappeared into the thickets of the Fine Gael backbenches.

You expect him to emerge on a high-profile RTE documentary some night to tell us how lonely he is, and how much he wants to come home.

Maybe, most of the time, it doesn’t matter if we have a charade for a democracy, but I think it matters right now. This crowd in government has got us into an unholy mess through its incompetent management of the economy, and through its negligence in letting the banking crisis engulf us. It has also deepened an injustice at the heart of our obscenely unequal society.

There is nothing we can do about them until the next election.

But then, all we will be able to do will be to vote in an alternative crowd who, by and large, are committed to doing nothing at all about the obscenely unequal society; and who will be just as unaccountable as the present crowd, because that is how the system operates.

Meanwhile, amuse yourselves with the aforementioned sophomores in discussing electoral systems, if that’s what amuses you.