Summer Holidays

Check this out also at The Irish Times site

It must be terribly hard for TDs and Senators. Being bundled like that out of the public eye for the whole summer. We all felt so sorry for them yesterday, to see them look so obviously glum and heavy-hearted as they nosed their BMWs out of the gates of Leinster House and headed off for ten weeks of idleness. They will be deprived of work and will have nothing to do to occupy thier time between now and September 24. It’s a hard station, we know. But (deep mournful intake of breath) it’s the life they have chosen.

My own first week working as a specialist political journalist was in August 2003. Arriving to work in Leinster House was like a GAA correspondent being assigned to Croke Park the Tuesday after an All Ireland football final. The political atmosphere was as spent as the PDs. We still had a paper to fill. It was thankless. Scrounging around for stories. Hoping that the odd TD playing golf at Playa de Nouveau Riche or at their Atlantic-hugging holiday home might have bothered to leave their mobiles on.

That autumn and the following spring a couple of the parties produced very impressive policy papers calling for Oireachtas reform. In the Senate, Mary O’Rourke was driving an all-party initiative to refrom that often entertaining, hugely interesting, but ultimately next-to-useless talking shop, the Seanad. It was great. And they kept on coming, the reform papers, throughout the period of the 29th Dáil. And how lovely they looked on the shelves. The same shelves already piled high with reform proposals for the 28th and the 27th and 26th Dáil…. ad infinitum.

Look at the Programme for Government. Look at the promises (included, the Greens say, at their insistence) to reform the Seanad and the Dáil. Note that a year has passed. Note that four years remain. Note that almost the exactly same promises will be contained in the next Programme for Government, for the 32st Dail whenever that might be.

This is not cynicism. It’s just stating a reality. A long time ago a Fine Gael TD Alice Glenn said that getting political parties to reduce the number of TDs and Senators would be like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. The first instinct of the political class is self-preservation. It is undeniable that the life is precarious. But the buffer zone they have created for itself is breath-takingly impressive. The Dáil sat for a total of 94 days in the 2007-2008 period. That total of sitting days has stayed unforgibably low (93 days in 2005; 96 in 2006 and 74 in the election year of 2007) despite promises each year to increase them. The House of Commons sits an average of 130 days each year. The US Congress is in session 160 days a year, almost twice as much as the Dáil. By the way, the Seanad sat on only 86 days in this political year.

The Oireachtas is also the legislature. A paltry total of 25 Bills have been passed since the Government returned a year ago. And some of these were standard bills that crop up every year like the Finance Bill, the Social Welfare Bill and the Motor Vehicle Duties Bill, all which give effect to budgetary changes. Some were necessary to give statutory effect in Ireland to European directives. Two of the bills corrected legal flaws in earlier bills. So we had the law-makers come up with a desolatory handfull of bills this year - the Immigration Bill, the Dublin Transportation Authority Bill, the Intoxicating Liquer Bill.

We don’t need to go into pay and expenses but the average basic salary for a TD is now well over €100,000. We have a total of 35 minister, 166 TDs and 60 Senators, pro rata way way more than any of our EU counterarts. And there are only two established Government backbenchers (Ned O’Keeffe and Jim McDaid) who don’t get some extra stipend for chairing or whipping committees.

Oh sorry, the committees sit during the summer, we are told. Erm, most of them will sit once, if that. That means that members (and they don’t all show up) have to come in one or two days during the summer just to show Joe Punter out there that it’s still ticking over, that the show is on the road.

Recession? What recession?

INSIDE POLITICS - EAMON GILMORE

It was election by acclamation at the end. Eamon Gilmore always had a big gale behind him. But when others did the sums (and I'll tell you there's none better at Joan Burton than doing that) they realised that they would not even give him a contest. Democratic choice is all very well, but if it's you and if you're going to be chazzled in the contest, then it's better not even to step into the ring.

The blog just about ticked over during the summer as I took the Enda Kenny philosophy on political endeavor to heart (ie stay away from it as much as possible). Anyway, it's now September and we're back in full swing. Eamon Gilmore went through the crowning process. The Senate returns next week. Sure, the debates will be more interesting (but ultimately useless). And of course, most of the attention will be on the Skiberreen Ego (ok Baltimore these days)and Mr Bombastic Eoghan Harris. All of Harris's stuff is self-serving. The duels between Ronan Mullen and Ivana Bacik will be ultimately more interesting.

And of course, there's the Anorak taking the stand at the Planning Tribunal. If it goes badly, he'll not last the course - and expect Brian Cowen to be elevated in short order.

Incidentally, Sunday Indo have had it in for Cowen all summer. It's extraordinary how they initially went on the attack on stamp duty, pulled back during the election campaign (amid rumours of a back-Bertie-at-all-costs deal hammered out at Castle Martin) and - once FF had won - kept writing up Bertie while renewing their ridiculous attack on the anointed one.

* Sorry. Forgot to add in an amusing little bit from Gilmore's biography.

"Eamon's interests outside of politics include cooking. He is an avid sports fan and is a passionate follower of his native Galway in both the hurling and football. His local village team Caltra won the all Ireland club title in 2004. Recently he consoled himself following the disappointing results of the recent election by watching the Galway hurling team. Unfortunatley no matter what Galway do Kilkenny always seem to win the title."

Gilmore is one of six Oireachtas members from Catlra and Ahascragh (the three Kitt siblings; Ronan Mullen and Mary Harney who was also born there). As a fellow Galway man and long-suffering hurling supporter, I can safely vouch that he go no consolation whatsoever in the game.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE INVISIBLE HOUSE

EARLY next month I will be four years in this job. In all that time, I’ve failed to do one thing for which I have felt not a smidgen of guilt.

Hands up! I have never been in Seanad Éireann. Ever. I’m not even entirely sure where the chamber is, down the end of a musty corridor.

I’d say that perhaps 20 times in those four years, I’ve tuned in to a debate on the internal TV here in Leinster House or read the transcripts of debates. Mostly I catch it on - saddo moment coming up - Oireachtas Report on RTE.

When did the last Seanad wander on to our radar screens? Well, whenever Mary O’Rourke came out with a quirky or eccentric rumination? Or when she had a nasty row with Brian Hayes? Or when the university senators made interesting speeches? Or very occasionally when a minister (Michael McDowell in particular) gave a bill its first reading there?




But at all other times, it was a little like air. It was there, we knew, but you never really got to see it.

And over the course of the next week we will begin to see the shape of the new Seanad, which was Ireland’s quasi-democratic version of the House of Lords at the time of the foundation of the State. Of the 60 seats, 43 are indirectly elected (by county councillors, TDs and senators); six are elected in the most elite fashion by the graduates of two third-level institutions (TCD and the NUI); while 11 are handpicked by the Taoiseach. And for the most part, with the exception of the third-level toffs and a couple of career senators, it has become a half-way house for those who either lost Dáil seats or want to win one.

Sure, you get a high quality of debate from time to time. But it reminds you of the old saying that it’s like a lighthouse in a bog — brilliant but useless.

Sure, there were lofty aspirations when the House was first founded, to allow for a diversity and plurality of voices. But as early as 1928, the first report on its reform was published. In all, a staggering 12 reports suggesting reform have been published, the most recent in 1997, 2002 and 2004. And what reform has actually taken place during all those years — the square root of damn all. It has been long-fingered and ignored.

The last report by the Seanad itself identifies its “two main problems” at an early juncture. I quote:

“1. It has no distinctive role in the Irish political system; and 2. Its arcane and outdated system of nomination and election diminishes senators’ public legitimacy.”

They are big problems all right. Put another way, the Seanad is a useless talking shop which is only slightly democratic and has no real powers.

Am I being overly cynical? Not a bit. Here’s what the report goes on to say: “The legislative process set out in the Constitution gives the Dáil the final say in everything. Therefore, in the eyes of many members of the public, the Seanad is seen as weak, ineffective and of questionable value. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that the Seanad is dominated by the Government.”

But the reforms suggested by the Seanad itself weren’t exactly radical. No conflict with the Government. No more formal powers over the legislative process. More scrutiny of EU affairs (God!). Allowing MEPs a to speak in the Seanad (guaranteeing them anonymity in two separate fora).

True, there were some genuine recommendations in relation to electoral reform. But then you see that the committee of senators want their numbers increased from 60 to 65. What poppycock! If truth be told, we have the highest number of parliamentarians pro rata anywhere in Europe bar tiny Luxembourg. The Netherlands, three times our size, has the exact same number as we do — 220 in total.

And if our politicians were honest about it they would admit there are few arguments for retaining the Seanad. But our political system is too intimate and we don’t have the stomach for an impersonal “all or nothing” system in Britain. So it’s there as a consolation prize for TDs who have lost out (the PDs and Greens were both opposed to the Seanad but have successively bought into it). And as layers of dust have gathered over a dozen reports in the past 80 years, one feature has remained consistent — there is no appetite to reform it.