Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill, which is a step in the right direction. I welcome that the people will have an opportunity to make their views known on this matter in the autumn. In fairness to the Taoiseach, he made this commitment in 2009 and he is now following through on it. That is to be commended.

We have 226 national parliamentarians in a country of 4.5 million people. That is far too many, and we need to trim the numbers because if we are trying to reform our country and achieve a more efficient public service, it must start with the national Parliament.

This Bill is not the first Thirty-second Amendment of the Constitution Bill to be introduced in this House. I introduced a Bill last year with the same title but it was on Dáil reform. Abolishing the Seanad will be a decision of the people but if that happens, it is crucial that we have significant and meaningful reform of this House in place by then. We can run the country effectively with one Chamber but it must be a proper working and effective Chamber. Having been a Member for just over two years, my belief is that this House is not working as it should be working.

We need fundamental reform of the way we do our business here. I do not believe the Dáil is able to hold Ministers and the Government to account in the current format. We must seriously examine what we are doing here because we did not get to where we are since 2008 by chance. Something was fundamentally wrong in this country and, ultimately, the buck must stop with the national Parliament. Our parliamentary system has failed because the IMF is here, effectively running the country, and that means that something went wrong along the way. The problem is not just the Seanad. There are many questions to be answered in terms of this House.

My Bill proposed 101 Members here elected from single-seat constituencies maintaining the transferable vote system. In response to some of the issues raised by Deputy McDonald earlier, minorities are represented in this country by our voting system but that is the system I proposed and I believe it would work well. It would allow parliamentarians get on with the work of Parliament and not be concerned about what their party colleague in their constituency is doing, the leaflets they are dropping, the roads they are tarring or the potholes they are getting filled when they should be scrutinising and contributing to legislation.

In terms of what we can do immediately in this House, we need to reform the Topical Issue debate. One can wait up to a month to have one's issue selected for that debate. When one is selected one might get a Minister of State responding, if one is lucky, but sometimes a Minister of State from another Department is sent to the House to reply. My colleague, Deputy Flanagan, gave the statistics earlier. I have gone through them also and they are appalling.

We need to reform Leaders' Questions. As a back bench Deputy I cannot raise a matter of urgent importance with the leader of our country on Leaders' Questions. I do not have an opportunity to do that. That opportunity exists in other parliaments.

The Order of Business remit is farcical. We can only ask about promised legislation. The remit is far too narrow. We must reform it and give Members on all sides of the House an opportunity to raise relevant matters.

We need to have meaningful debate in this House, and we must seriously examine the Whip system. That became an issue recently regarding the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill that is due to come before the House but in the overall scheme of things, the Whip system restricts the working of Parliament. I accept the Whip is necessary in terms of overall budgetary issues but on the micro issues of the day, a way to get good law passed is to give each Member an opportunity to make their contribution, and make up their own mind. That will bring out the best in Governments and Ministers bringing forward legislation.

While I welcome that we are moving towards the abolition of the Seanad, it is only a step in what must be a huge reform process. We should not be under any illusion that the abolition of the Seanad alone will not improve matters in this country. Hand in hand with that we need to see fundamental reform of this House because unless that happens, we will not achieve the type of change we really want.

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