Ombudsman says parliament ‘sidelined’

OMBUDSMAN Emily O’Reilly has called for widespread political reform here – claiming TDs’ and senators’ decisions are too tightly controlled by their party whips – and has blamed poor corporate governance for the overall downturn in the economy.

Addressing the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) and Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounting on good governance, Ms O’Reilly said: “Unfortunately, the model of government set out in the Irish Constitution has become more of a fiction than a reality.

“In practice, the Dáil and to a slightly lesser extent, the Seanad is controlled very firmly by the Government parties through the operation of the whip system. For all practical purposes, and I very much regret having to say this so bluntly, parliament in Ireland has been sidelined and is no longer in a position to hold the executive to account.”

During her speech, Ms O’Reilly referred to the convoluted way in which the compensation claim – on behalf of the families of a fishing crew who lost their lives at sea off the Co Donegal coast in the early 1980s – she lodged with Government last year was rejected, as a prime example of the shortcomings of Ireland’s parliamentary system.

“Tinkering with the nuts and bolts of government, in the absence of reforming our parliament, is not enough; it is to overlook the elephant in the corner.

“A modest proposal for parliamentary reform would be for the main political parties to agree to relax the very rigid party discipline now there and to accept that TDs should have some freedom to follow the dictates of their own conscience,” she said.

Ms O’Reilly added that almost all decisions of importance are now taken by the executive – save the election of a Taoiseach – and are rubber-stamped by parliament. She also quoted from a recent speech made by Transport Minister Noel Dempsey in which he claimed: “We should return Dáil Éireann to a central place in public thinking.

“It should be the battleground for ideas, the location for intellectual debate – where the brightest and best work in concert to achieve optimal results over the long-term, not cheap point scoring in the short-term.” She pointed to “the spectacular failings” in the banks and in Fás as“real-life examples of what is not good governance” and predicted the pending report on the Dublin Docklands Development Authority could add to that list.