Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

Declining participation in election after election is a dangerous and unwelcome trend in any democracy. The performance is not simply confined to issues of efficiency or our ability in this House, under our present outdated rules, to do the job for which we are elected. Far more dangerously, we are faced with repeated allegations of sleaze, fixing, back-handers, preferential access and the illicit purchase of favourable decisions from the powerful in high office, in breach of their duty to keep faith with the public trust.

It is a constant source of anger for my party members, and for those in other smaller parties and some Independents, that allegations are repeatedly directed against a core group who long ago made their home in the largest party in this State but that their defence to these charges is to encourage the popular belief that "You are all the same, everyone is at it".

That claim is not now and never has been true. It is spread so as to foster cynicism and indifference among the public, to alienate the people from the conduct of public affairs — their affairs, their business — and to enable the guilty to fade into the murky and corrupt backdrop of their own painting.

Dáil reform is about securing one all-important objective. It is not simply a Labour Party objective. It is a constitutional imperative. The Government is responsible to this House. For a Government to be formed and to survive, it must secure and maintain the confidence of this House. The only test by reference to which any proposal for reform must be judged is whether it assists this House in securing Government accountability.

We cannot blame anyone else for the low esteem in which we as members of this profession are held unless and until we are satisfied that we have done everything to ensure that our own house is in order. We live in the age of benchmarking, when every public servant is being asked to give evidence of a commitment to modernisation, flexibility and an enhanced service to the public. There is no reason TDs, who are nowadays well paid, as well as being accountable public servants, should be immune from that.

We have to modernise. We have to adapt to the world around us. We have to accept that the people we serve are entitled to see the fruits of our work, the better to be able to make informed judgments about our performance. It is true that much of the work of a parliamentarian, work demanded by our constituents and work to which they are entitled, is invisible. Much of what the public sees, especially as filtered through the media, does not inspire a great deal of confidence and trust.

Fixing that, however, demands much more than changing the rules and procedures, however outdated. The task of parliamentarians is often described as "to legislate". The late Mr. Justice Liam Hamilton, in a ruling in the course of the beef tribunal, put it differently when he stated:

It is, inter alia, the duty of the Members of the Oireachtas to elect a Government, to legislate and to look diligently into every affair of Government. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents and to inform and be informed by them.

The narrow vision of the role of parliament as a Legislature cannot be sustained. We cannot be benchmarked by reference to the number of Bills processed by the end of the year. If that were the only criterion, then the Dáil, sitting two and a half days a week for a smaller number of weeks in the year, would have a higher productivity than the House of Commons, which has a five-day week and shorter holidays.

In our democracy, in addition to making law, the Dáil identifies who should form the Government of the day, and part of the job of Opposition is to establish that better alternatives exist. It must seek to ensure that the Government is accountable to the people and must provide a public platform for discussion and the investigation of major issues. It must approve the raising of taxes and the way that money is spent. It must watch, appraise and criticise the activities of the Government and the public service. It must provide a forum for individuals to raise issues and grievances indirectly through its Members.

All these are essential functions. Separate from that, a Deputy has a role as representative vis-À-vis his or her constituents, a role insisted on by constituents and neglected at the Deputy's peril. We cannot carry out all these roles to the best of our ability when operating within antiquated rules designed to protect old-fashioned notions of decorum. Neither can we carry them out by a simple updating of the rules, necessary though that is. We must go much further.

The Labour Party position is, that if the Dáil is to be a powerhouse of accountability, a true representative of the interests of the people, a place where maladministration leading to injustice can be investigated and rooted out, it must be modern, efficient, dynamic and powerful. It must be adversarial, tough, fair and thorough.

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