Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

It is something I have studied carefully. There are some analogies. In Malaysia, the same party has governed for almost 50 years. It has experienced the same pattern of events as this country. The same main party has been in power all the time. It has a presidential style of leadership, committees to defuse situations — to lance the boil, to remove concerns from within and from without. Committees constitute an area into which various groups can be drawn so that they no longer blame Ministers directly. Instead they come before a committee to express their grievances. Then they walk away and, as other speakers have said, nothing happens.

I have seen changes in this House. At one time this House was full of Deputies at Question Time. Everybody had the right to raise a question, to have that question put on the Order Paper and to get an answer. There was no lottery system. Every question had to be dealt with, from the moment it was tabled until it cleared the Order Paper. Ministers did not like that. They did not like to be kept in the House all day for a week or, in some cases, two weeks so ultimately the system was changed.

I have seen the change in the system whereby the importance of the committee has been expanded to the extent that it has undermined the importance and the privileges of the House so that the plenary session of the House is diminished and nobody comes into the House. The reason Members do not come into the House is because they have no business there. They cannot participate in a debate except in ordered slots of ten, five, or two and a half minutes. That is not democracy.

There has been a change in the system whereby public representatives are elected by the public to represent them in parliament. Here we have drawn much of our inspiration from the European Parliament. Members will remember the Committee on Petitions. It was a means of bringing democracy of a kind to the people in a situation where the elected Member does not have the power to get access to the authorities. A system was introduced under which it could be arranged for a delegation to go to Brussels to air grievances. If power were vested in the elected Member there would not be a problem. The elected Member, of all parties or none, should be able to deal with issues of that nature.

We arrange for various groups, such as North-South groups and east-west groups, to come before committees and air their grievances. It is tokenism. Nothing happens. I have been on virtually every committee in this House over the years. My experience is that one could be dead in a committee for a fortnight before anybody would discover it because nobody has any interest.

One could attend every meeting of a committee and anything that one would say or do at it would be of no consequence. It is a waste of time. It makes no difference that committee chairmen and convenors are paid. We need to recognise that the role of parliament has been undermined and diminished to a significant extent by the establishment of several quangos and committees and the way it has been ordered. This will suit whoever is in Government and will limit the degree to which government will change in the future. This is not a criticism but a comment.

Let me give an example, I remember having a role to play when the decision was made in this House to the effect that the Taoiseach would be out of House after Taoiseach's questions on a Wednesday. It was obvious that the objective was to adopt a different role. The Taoiseach in fairness made comparisons with his European colleagues and explained that they would not be in parliament. However, many of the so-called democracies in Europe are very new to democracy, so I would not take lessons from that quarter.

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