Our sham parliament is back today. They should have stayed at home

THE Dáil is coming back today, and it’s a complete sham. For the remainder of the week, it will be an exercise in phoney accountability.

It would be better if it didn't meet at all. As of yesterday morning, the Houses of the Oireachtas weren't even able to say (on what is one of the best websites in the country) what the Dáil would be discussing during the week. They had no details for today or tomorrow.

On Thursday, for about two hours, deputies will be invited to discuss The Fourth Report of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs. Because I work there I know that a debate is scheduled for this afternoon on the EU presidency. Important enough stuff, you might think. But actually, it's not a debate at all. The Taoiseach will come in to the House to read a prepared statement, and then, sorry, he has to leave.

As the opposition leaders read their prepared statements into the record, they will be listened to by a no-doubt fascinated Dick Roche, and nobody else. When they have finished, he will thank them for their thoughtful and insightful contributions, and of course for their co-operation during this time of challenge for our great little country.

When the Dáil sits, there is always the expectation that the Government will have to account for itself, may even be embarrassed. After all, the Dáil is the place where the Government must enjoy confidence.

That's why, on the order of business each day, the Taoiseach must be on his mettle. That's why parliamentary questions are considered with care and attention to detail. That's why the spontaneous opposition leaders' questions to the Taoiseach are often fraught affairs, and why every vote demands the skills and efforts of the government whips, since any defeat in a vote is a disaster.

But not this week.

This week, from start to finish, there will be no order of business, no parliamentary questions, no leaders' questions, no votes of any kind, no challenge to the Government, no accountability in any real sense of the word. There will be no stage during the week when there will be any need for more than a handful of deputies in the House. The business ordered will be bland and anodyne, pure pap. There is simply no point to it at all.

Why, you might well ask, is this happening? The truth is that the Government's intention originally was to bring the Dáil back next week.

They were shamed by the opposition into reducing the length of the Christmas recess, and this is their solution an earlier than usual week of more than usually meaningless activity.

The Government had been planning to send the Dáil away for five weeks, and it was only after protest by all the opposition parties that they reduced that break to four still two weeks too many. And they filled the extra time with nothing. Even the discussion on the EU presidency this afternoon, structured as it is, will mean nothing because there will be no opportunity to question the Taoiseach on the issues involved. And the fact that he is dong it today means that he won't have to return to the subject during any of the weeks when he might have a more challenging time.

Some deputies have been back in the House for a while already, that's true, working on the committee stage of the Education for Persons with a Disability Bill. But true to form, despite a lot of work, the minister for education was unable to see his way to accepting the vast majority of amendments proposed to that bill. This week's efforts in the Dáil will only add to the air of unreal charade that surrounds our parliament, and will copperfasten the growing impression that this is a government that increasingly hates to have to account for itself.

Is it any wonder that what goes on in our parliament, under the increasingly disillusioned gaze of the public, fails to inspire trust? Is it any wonder that the people employed by the newspapers to write parliamentary sketches have to concentrate on a sort of sneering humour that belittles everyone involved? After the local elections this year, none of our TDs will be councillors.

The ending of that dual mandate has given rise to the possibility that, for the first time ever, we will have a corps of full-time national legislators. As things stand right now, they will have less to do than ever before.

THE structure of parliament is Dickensian sitting days are designed for a time when it took many hours to travel to and from Dublin, and the extraordinary long recesses date from an era when TDs had to attend to their businesses or practices, or save the hay, or correct exams.

Just as bad as that is the design of parliamentary procedure whose sole function, it often seems, is to protect decorum. The primary obligation on the ceann comhairle of the Dáil is to preserve the dignity of the House he has no function whatever in relation to, for instance, compelling ministers to answer questions, or in ensuring that the answers they give are truthful. A dignified chamber, where ministers are under no real obligation to account for themselves is a bit of a joke.

That's one of the reasons why, when people want accountability, the last place they look for it nowadays is their own parliament. We have established far too many tribunals in recent years, at far too much cost and with not nearly enough results. And the reason we have done it is that there seems to be no other way to secure accountability when that is necessary, as it frequently is.

It actually doesn't have to be that way. Many of the issues being inquired into by tribunals have to do with the operation of public policy. With certain changes, they could, and should, be dealt with by parliament. In other jurisdictions, parliament is seen as having an investigative role as well as a legislative one. Indeed, the investigative role is often the one most feared by government.

There is no reason why we couldn't order our affairs here to ensure that our national parliament is fully equipped to carry out this often essential role on our behalf. When the government of the day is a tiny bit afraid of parliament, democracy and accountability are well-served. When the government of the day treats parliament as a national joke, democracy is in danger of being undermined. Isn't it time that our parliament put an end to the joke and stood up for itself?

Final note: An awkward piece of writing on my part last week made it look as if I was accusing Jack Marrinan, the former general secretary of the Garda Representative Body, of character assassination in relation to the Derek Fairbrother controversy. That wasn't my intention, because I know that nothing could be further from the truth, and I hope no such inference was taken.