‘Electoral system in need of reform’

By Conor Ryan Political Correspondent

Thursday, November 19, 2009

POLITICIANS are beholden to the will of individual constituents rather than the good of their constituency at large.

This is according to Transport Minister Noel Dempsey who told an Oireachtas Committee the electoral system was in serious need of reform and the present model rewarded the wrong endeavours.

He said systems that did not modernise and adapt were doomed to failure.

And Mr Dempsey said the way TDs were elected favours those who looked after individuals’ requests regarding medical cards and social welfare claims rather than broad policy measures for the community as a whole.

"In our system, I believe, we act not as public representatives but as private representatives for each constituent that contacts us," he said.

Mr Dempsey said the system had resisted reform for the past 20 years.

And he said it was a testament to the shortcomings in how we elect our representatives that since the fall of communism not one of the new democratic structures adopted the single transferable proportional representative system that we use.

He told the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution TDs are asked to perpetuate problems in their day-to-day business rather than solve them.

"We go through the bureaucracy to try speed the process up [for individuals]. We do that because in our electoral system instead of making bureaucracy more responsive we just do these tasks that are set to us by our constituents," he said.

Mr Dempsey fielded questions from his Oireachtas colleagues and claimed constituencies should be reduced to a single seat.

In addition county councils should be scrapped in favour of regional structures with district units at a lower level.

The minister said both he and Brendan Howlin of the Labour Party had tried to reform local government as ministers for the environment, but not enough change had taken place.

Many deputies and senators expressed support for adoption of a system of electing TDs which mimicked the German list system. This would see a portion of each Dáil elected by a general vote on parties rather than on constituency politics.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, November 19, 2009