Winds of change not blowing as Dáil dodges meaningful reform

Dáil Éireann sits again this afternoon after the summer recess, serene in the knowledge that alone of the five main legislative assemblies on these islands it is impervious to the possibility of effective change. 

Tomorrow’s Scottish referendum, if successful, will usher in not only constitutional crisis, but change there unseen since the ascension of James VI of Scotland as James I of England in 1603. On the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, it is worth remembering that of the army led north by King Edward II barely one third made it back alive to England.

If Scotland is lost tomorrow, survival even on that scale among the current crop of Westminster leaders is questionable. David Cameron will have disastrously miscalculated. David Miliband will have allowed an essential part of any majority he may ever have at Westminster slip away. And Nick Clegg will have underlined his irrelevance again.

The intense, if belated focus at Westminster, on the possibility of Scottish independence offers in this Irish decade of commemoration an insight of sorts into the imperial, British vision that so dominated 19th-century politics. Certainly there was a large mass of tory chauvinism that fed off a racist, derogatory anti-Irish stereotype typified in the racism of the cartoons in Punch magazine. There was a specifically Protestant feeling that did not want to abandon coreligionists on this island to the superstition of popery. But there was also a widespread and positive vision of the benignity of empire which was widely held by British opinion and which if we remember it at all now, do so only with incredulity. That vision of empire, specifically British, was imbued with a mission for civilisation and Christianity. It was predicated on a sense inherent in much of 19th-century thinking, of the inevitability of the progress of civilisation.

That this covered up cynical power politics, and untrammelled brutality, should not distract us from the fact that it was a widespread narrative; essentially a predominant paradigm of thought over decades. Looking in at the Scottish No campaign, I can hear echoes of the 19th British unionism that so dominated and ultimately frustrated Irish Home Rule. Ironically, an empire upon which once the sun never set — now at a nadir — rushed yesterday to promise more power to a devolved Scotland than was ever on offer in any Home Rule scheme for Ireland. Pivotally it is an offer, if highly generalised in its terms, signed by all the major leaders at Westminster.

Irish Home Rule in contrast was always the point of division, firstly in Ireland and then in Britain. It was roundly opposed by the Conservative or Conservative and Unionist Party as it became. It split the Liberal Party and Labour, until the leadership of the now maligned Tony Blair, was always an essentially unionist party. It may have had a fringe sympathetic to Irish nationalism, and spelt its unionism with a small u, but until Blair, in government it always upheld the status quo.

If there is a no vote in Scotland negations on further significant devolution begin immediately. That will bring major change in Edinburgh and it is inconceivable that there will not be a knock-on effect in Stormont and Cardiff. No less significantly, but for now unpredictable, is the ultimate consequence for the parliament at Westminster. All of this is without taking into account the ultimate consequence of a subsequent referendum on, a for now still United Kingdom’s membership of the EU.

If certain change, possibly tumultuous political evolution, is in the air for those four legislatures, ours is stuck in unsustainable stasis. Writing on this page on Monday, Terry Prone, who knows of which she speaks, warned our politicians at their think-ins that among the pitfalls of communication they should avoid is the term “not fit for purpose”. It sounds good, but it isn’t. It’s an overused and trite shorthand for hurling on the ditch. She’s right. So I won’t. How about banjaxed?

We have a legislature, comparable to our needs, and the requirement to rebuild confidence in our political processes that is banjaxed. This Government said as much on its way to getting elected. The now main opposition party, latterly out of government, belatedly agrees. This is not to pant after the failed state argument that some, permanently planted above the high water mark on the ditch, argue for. We do not have a failed state. More prosaically, we have a state with significant failings; there is a difference.

It is precisely because we do not have a failed state, that we have the means, but not it seems the will to fix what is broken. Amidst the many criticisms I have of this government, I have always said, so let me say it again, that on the economy by and large they have thus far done the right thing. Whether, after an excess of largess in the budget I will still sing that song, I don’t know.

The failure to propose and pass a constitutional amendment to enhance the powers of Oireachtas committees, compatible with the need to treat those brought before them with fair procedure, is glaring. The possibility, of having a credible enquiry into the infamous banking collapse remains untested. In any event, the conduct of the Public Accounts Committee is a cause of increasing concern. Its exercise of power has proven to be increasingly unfettered and unstructured. The possibility that in pursuing issues it exceeded its legal advice is extraordinarily serious. It is a fact that the all-party Committee on Procedure and Privilege, consisting of members of the very same parties whose PAC members have been to the fore in pursuing witnesses, has refused to grant it powers of compellability over some of those very same witnesses. This unfolding fracas seems set for a landmark case being taken by the former CEO of Rehab, Angela Keirns.

Let me anticipate the incoming scud missile. I am not a personal friend of Ms Keirns. I think I have met her once in the last two years and then spoke to her for about three or four minutes. On the basis of facts in the public domain, I don’t think very highly of how Rehab was run. But that, if important, is not the pressing point for our legislature as it returns today. The point is that the PAC, one part of an inadequate legislature, that previously largely delivered, is facing a legal challenge to its conduct which if successful, will have the effect of seriously undermining the limited effectiveness our ‘banjaxed’ legislature enjoys.

So as we work up a lather of excitement tomorrow over what the future holds for the other four main legislatures on these islands, we should not forget our own meeting again today. Their issues are of uncertainty and change. Regrettably our issue, is the lack of any meaningful change at all.

We do not have a failed state. More prosaically, we have a state with significant failings