Liam Herrick: Democracy may not die by guillotine, but it’s seriously injured
Darragh O’Brien: His proposed amendments fell so far outside the scope of the original purpose of the bill they could not be classed as related. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA
The end of June and start of July are a dangerous time in the Oireachtas. Legislation, which has taken months, if not years, to progress, suddenly moves at a pace that would put Usain Bolt to shame as the Government seeks to clear its desk of bills before the recess.
Debates are curtailed and as a result, scrutiny is minimal. But within this rush to tie up legislative loose ends, there are opportunities also.
Opportunities to take advantage of the deft wielding of the guillotine and the resultant inability of the opposition to fulfil their remit to scrutinise legislation and hold the government to account.
The Government’s much feted Electoral Reform Bill is the perfect example of this.
The bill has been hailed as a “once in a generation” modernisation of our electoral processes and promises to vastly improve the quality of our democracy.
Much of what is in the bill is welcome and long overdue, such as the establishment of an electoral commission and tacking some of the myriad of issues with the electoral register.
In January 2021, the bill began its parliamentary journey with a comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny process.
For the most part, this was a worthwhile exercise with expert academic and tech witnesses giving feedback on some of the shortfalls of the draft bill and general cross-party support on improving amendments.
While the initial Dáil debates were cordial and welcoming, the senior line minister Darragh O’Brien signalled that he would be bringing forward amendments at committee stage to further enhance electoral integrity measures.
This isn’t unusual, much of the heavy lifting and complex scrutiny of bills takes place at committee stage. But then things started to go awry.
On May 31, the Government were forced to hold a Dáil debate on the legislation. This was because the amendments proposed by the minister fell so far outside the scope of the original purpose of the bill, that they could not be classed as related.
These amendments concerned party financing and donations. While important, these amendments should have been allocated time for proper debate.
When the bill re-surfaced in the Dáil, the pretence of respecting the democratic process fell apart. The Government has tacked on large amendments at the last minute without any proper scrutiny.
These amendments attempt to address cross-border funding for all island political parties, the running of draws and lotteries and the regulation of online political mis- and disinformation.
The report stage of a bill is when minimal amendments are to be made and technical issues are ironed out. What instead happened was 90 minutes was allocated to 150 extremely complex amendments, many of which were brought forward by the minister.
In response to valid questions from the opposition about where these amendments came from given that this hadn’t been discussed at any prior stage, the sole government rep present, Minister Malcolm Noonan, responded simply “no comment”.
Suffice to say that this insulting response to the parliament didn’t go down well.
The debate was guillotined on the 90-minute mark with only a couple of the Government’s amendments discussed. The rest were approved without any opportunity for scrutiny by the opposition, understanding of their logic or where they had originated.
Simultaneously, the Government has refused all attempts to deal with significant flaws in the existing Electoral Act, which have led to civil society organisations having to close.
A bad day for democracy, and one that was repeated in the Seanad on Thursday when the bill was discussed there. This was one of the final opportunities that the Government have to propose changes to the bill.
The minister has tabled 32 pages of technical and complex amendments to the bill, many of which have never been mentioned before or only tenuously relate to the original purpose of the legislation.
An entirely new section, which given its scope could have been an entirely new piece of legislation, was added as a last-minute amendment.
This new addition concerns the regulation of political misinformation and the use of “bots” by political actors and various other electoral integrity issues.
These undoubtedly deserve serious consideration, but tacking them on as half-baked and last-minute amendments to an already complex and overwrought piece of legislation serves nobody well.
Particularly in the total absence of consultation with experts in the field and on a topic that, to our knowledge, has not been legislated for anywhere else.
The amendment was deemed sufficiently examined and passed after a paltry 45-minute debate. It’s safe to say that some of what has been agreed to may be unworkable and it will the fault of the Government for running roughshod over the parliamentary process.
It is open to the Government to introduce further amendments at the Seanad report stage, which it may well do. This is even more galling given that this bill has been framed as improving and strengthening Irish democracy.
The Government should be mindful of this when the glaring flaws in this vital legislation inevitably come to light and they try to enforce the rules they themselves insisted on designing alone and ramming through the Oireachtas trying to beat the recess clock.
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