Let’s stop booing Bertie, but make him put his house in order instead

THOUGH it’s not my main business of the week, I want to start by saying that the booing of Bertie Ahern should stop.

I don't believe it's compulsory on all of us to welcome the Taoiseach with rapturous applause wherever he goes and he does go to far too many events. But I do think it is essential that our elected Taoiseach should be treated with respect and courtesy. And incidentally, he should be entitled to privacy in respect of his personal life as well.

That may sound a bit odd coming from me. I don't support the present Taoiseach, and I look forward to the day when he and his party are democratically booted from office. His government is mean-spirited and petty in relation to a wide range of important issues. But he is the Taoiseach we elected by a clear majority. Whether abroad or at home, he is our representative. When we boo him we boo ourselves. He and his office are entitled to respect because this is a democracy.

Mind you, I don't believe his helpers are doing him any service. The fatuous and whinging letter his brother wrote to the papers made the Taoiseach look like a little boy, and whoever hired that plane to fly over the closing ceremony of the Special Olympics, trailing its "Thank you Bertie" message, succeeded only in deeply offending everyone who saw it.

What were we supposed to thank Bertie for? On the morning after the ceremony some of the Irish athletes who lifted our hearts woke up to a very uncertain future, thanks to his government's policies. If I was in the business of booing, the one thing I would want to shout from the rooftops this week is that it is an absolute disgrace that the Dáil has disappeared for the next three months. In fact, having been back at work there since the beginning of the year, I have to say that I'm beginning to believe that the Dáil is contributing to its own trivialisation and irrelevance.

Of course, you might say, he would say that, wouldn't he? Oppositions traditionally campaign for more accountability while governments are always content with less. But really this place is becoming a recipe for disillusionment. How can anyone be expected to take politics seriously when the political system seems to have so little respect for itself? I could write a long list of the things that are wrong. But perhaps it's more important to try to outline some of the possibilities, if our national parliament is ever to seek to engage people again.

I'd almost be tempted to suggest that the whole place be torn down and rebuilt. Some years ago, in an attempt to persuade the German legislature to remain in Bonn after the reunification of Germany, the people of Bonn built a new parliament house. It's a remarkable building, on the banks of the river, supported on all sides by glass walls. The symbolism is clear this is a building designed to encourage transparency.

Our parliament, on the other hand, was built to accommodate people whose legislative work was part-time, and whose real work was seasonal. The long summer break was invented to enable lawyer politicians to catch up with the paperwork that preoccupies them during the recesses of the courts system, and to enable farmer politicians to take care of the harvest.

For nearly 30 years now, the number of full-time public representatives has outweighed the number of part-timers, but the structure of the Dáil and its working arrangements has entirely ignored that fact. From now on, since it will no longer be possible to be both a TD and a councillor, most of the full-timers will be even more full-time, if you get my drift. Yet no-one has stopped to think about what all these full-time politicians (the great majority of them able and hard-working people) should be doing. Instead, the Dáil is structured to ensure that these able people are kept frustrated and idle most of the time. The number of sitting days seems to get fewer and fewer each year, and the artificial mechanisms for debate and accountability are a guarantee of meaninglessness.

Some of these mechanisms are an insult to democracy. In the last couple of weeks a huge number of bills were pitch-forked through the Dáil by use of guillotines. A guillotine is a device for cutting debate short by means of an entirely arbitrary deadline. Every government uses them, some sparingly and some almost promiscuously. But when a guillotine is applied, the rule is that matters not reached or debated before the deadline automatically become law. In a truly functioning parliamentary democracy, matters that are not properly debated would be dropped.

All of these things combine to undermine respect for our democratic institutions (and folks, we'll only miss them when they are gone). But what is even more threatening is the increasing perception of the role of parliament, apart from its structures and operating mechanisms. Increasingly, the Dáil is seen as a place where government backbenchers have nothing to do except troop in behind the government whip (when they can be bothered to turn up), and opposition politicians have nothing to do except whinge.

We have seen how committees of the Congress in the United States can bring down presidents. Yesterday, a powerful committee of the House of Commons in London issued a report which has implications for the integrity of the office of prime minister. The DIRT committee here showed us all how politicians can truly function as investigators, and can serve the public brilliantly by working hard at their jobs.

Yet within parliament itself there seems to be no stomach for change or reform. I don't mean fiddly bits of reform, but real and significant changes to the role and functions of a modern parliament, dedicated to ensuring that the accountability of public institutions is high on its agenda. In addition to the legislative role, the investigative role ought to be a key function for our TDs. A child dies for want of a life-saving operation; kids are mercilessly exploited by the manufacturers of certain kinds of alcoholic drinks; infrastructural development is in chaos; primary schools are dangerous places to be; vested interests in some of the professions are ripping us off morning noon and night. Almost at random one could reel off a list of things that deserve to be investigated in public things where attitudes and policies would start to change very rapidly if they were put under a sustained public spotlight.

But the people who can do it are gone on holidays. Some will work in their constituencies, many will come to Dublin for routine committee meetings that won't add much to the human condition. The great majority will not be heard of again until October. When they come back it will be to an antiquated set of buildings, an archaic set of rules, a hidebound array of structures, and still more public indifference to their work. Surely it's time that our democratically-elected parliament, the representatives of us the people, began to take itself more seriously than that.