Taking the tribal element out of Dáil will help process of reform

BACK in the Nineties I went to visit the Bundestag.

The odd thing about it was, it wasn’t in Berlin. This was back in about 1995. Germany had been reunited since 1990, and it was pretty obvious that the logical place to put the parliament was in the reunited capital city of that great reunited country.

The only people who disagreed, really, were the people of Bonn. For years, in fact since the end of the Third Reich and the building of the Iron Curtain, the capital of West Germany was Bonn. In fact all the discussion about reunification took place in Bonn, and all the necessary legislation was debated and passed in the old Parliament building there. The city had served the people of Germany well, they felt, and they wanted to keep the parliament.

So they built a magnificent new structure, the very model, they felt, of a modern and accountable parliament building. It was built on the banks of the Rhine, the river that provides a kind of artery to the whole of western Europe, and its walls were made of glass. The building was surrounded by walkways, so that citizens could see right into the heart of the legislative chamber. It was a modern democratic statement.

That was the building I visited, and I remember thinking even then what a model it could be for parliaments the world over. Instead, of course, for historic and cultural reasons, the Germans rebuilt the Reichstag in Berlin, and turned the beautiful parliament building in Bonn into a conference centre. It’s still a beautiful building, but it serves no democratic purpose now.

In a sense, the people who are arguing for the retention of our Seanad want to retain a beautiful building. The only difference is that our Seanad never served any particular democratic purpose, and if we vote to keep it, it never will.

But there is merit in the argument that after the Seanad has been abolished, as I hope it will be, there is still need to fill the democratic gap that the Seanad never filled. We still need to build a properly functioning and accessible parliament.

When he moved the Bill to enable the holding of the referendum to do away with the Senate last week, the Taoiseach said “The proposed abolition of the Seanad is part of the Government’s comprehensive programme of political reform. This is a programme that will establish a new politics in our Republic — one that is more accountable, more democratic and more responsive. It is time to create a new political system that will put people’s faith and hope back into Irish politics.”

So far, the only reform proposed to put people’s faith and hope back into politics (apart from some pretty cosmetic structural reforms of local government) is a new committee system within the Dáil, which would be more structured and more representative of the Government and opposition balances in the house.

I strongly believe that between now and polling day on the referendum, the Government should publish a much more detailed and radical set of proposals for reform. They need to challenge some of the sacred cows that have dominated the practice of politics, and turned our democratic institutions into closed and privileged places.

TDs don’t always see it that way. I worked in Leinster House for 17 years, and came to see it as a place where hard-working and committed people lived lives of deep frustration. The best of them — and many were among the best — had sought election to change things, and then had spent years — sometimes whole careers — never being in a position to change anything. Yes, if they mastered the system they could from time to time deliver something to their constituents. But they could never change the system. If they saw that something was intrinsically unjust, they might be able to help a constituent or two to escape the injustice. But they could never end it.

Even if they were lucky enough to secure promotion within the system, and ended up as a minister or junior minister, they would immediately run up against the wise old civil servant, who would shake his or head sympathetically in the face of any idea. The rewards of office within our system are not inconsiderable, as we know. But they seldom include any real sense of achievement.

Other parliaments don’t work that way. In Scandinavia, in many of the European parliaments, in the US, government negotiate policy with the parliament. They subject themselves to parliamentary scrutiny. Parliamentary commissions explore areas of public policy, and frequently remove injustices and anomalies. They challenge bureaucracies in meaningful ways. Without ever aspiring to higher office, representatives of the people can win reputations as great and serious politicians.

Three things militate against all that in our system. They are the whip system, the guillotine, and the things that committees are allowed to do. But actually, it’s one thing, because it all springs from the tribal nature of our politics. The whip system in our politics, and the excessive use of guillotines, are brutally anti-democratic and counter-productive (I’ll deal with them in more depth next week). But they all come back to the fact that tribal politics is always all about winning, about ensuring that the other side never gets credit. In tribal politics, there can’t be any such thing as a good idea if it comes from the other side.

IF OUR politics weren’t tribal, the first place any Government minister would go, if he or she wanted to introduce a new policy, would be to a parliamentary committee. In Sweden or Denmark, if the minister for education decided he had to reform or cut back on the system of supports for people with an intellectual disability in schools, he would sit with the relevant education committee, explain the problem, propose solutions, and negotiate an outcome. There’d be some point-scoring, but there’d be hard work — and no-one would be in a mad hurry to vote the minister’s proposal through.

Here, every idea has to be a fait accompli. There’s a Government decision (or sometimes not even that, just an administrative decision taken by the minister), a press release, an interview or two, and then everyone takes up a position. And even if the minister comes to realise he’s wrong (and Ruairi Quinn is totally wrong on this one) he can’t back down without losing face.

So having a number of committees, even better balanced ones, isn’t enough. There has to be a cultural shift to enable committees to enquire, interrogate, examine in real depth. And the only way to ensure that is to remove the whip entirely from committee work. When members of the Dáil are doing battle with each other in their constituencies, they can be as tribal as they like. In committee, they should be under a different kind of whip — an absolute instruction to be non-partisan when it comes to policy and ideas.

Being non-partisan doesn’t mean being non-ideological. It just means leaving the tribe at home. And that would be a hell of a start.