Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

I welcome the Bill and, in particular, the important measures it contains on gender quotas and funding. These measures go some way towards addressing this House's failure to meet the needs of the Irish people. We are operating well below our capabilities.

Late one night during the general election campaign I had a conversation with an American friend. We were trying to decide, in the unlikely event of my being elected, what impact I could make as an Independent Deputy. I kept returning to my jaundiced view of politicians because I found it deeply uncomfortable to refer to myself as a potential politician. My friend told me I had to change my opinion because politics is an honourable profession. It is the greatest of honours to serve one's country. She was reflecting a view which I observed in the Kennedy School in Boston and when I worked in Washington DC.

I have no doubt that every Member regards it as an honour to serve in this House. Deputies are patriotic, hardworking and smart people. That is not the view of the Irish public, however. I was shocked by the results of this year's Edelman trust barometer, which indicated that 70% of Irish people do not trust their government leaders to tell the truth. We are ranked 24 out of the 25 countries surveyed, with only Italy inspiring less trust. All of us have seen surveys that routinely rank politicians as the least trusted profession in this country.

That attitude is not inevitable, however. I have lived in countries where it was absolutely not the case that the public mistrusted politicians. It is not a structural problem. I put it to the House that the total breakdown of trust in politicians is the result of the rules that we apply to ourselves, which this Bill helps to address, and the culture which governs how we behave.

Political scientists may hold a particular view but I wish to approach the problem from a slightly different perspective. I spent several years in the private sector working with large and complex public sector organisations. My role was to help senior management teams figure out how to improve their organisations' performance and do more for the public, usually with less money. I focused in particular on the culture of the organisation and whether employees understood what it was trying to do. The questions I asked included whether employees agreed with it, whether they were consulted on its priorities, did they know what was expected of them and did they have the capabilities and opportunities to develop. The empirical evidence is compelling in regard to persuading complex organisations to improve their performance. In order for an organisation to perform highly, it must operate according to the right systems or, in our case, the right rules and it must have a healthy culture. I put it to my fellow Deputies that Dáil Éireann has neither the right rules nor the right culture. If we can get the rules right and change our culture we will be able to serve the people of this country in a new and better way.

The Dáil and the Seanad should be the beating heart of Irish politics. These Houses should be full of rigorous debate but they often feel like a sham or illusion of democracy.

Ministers come in during Question Time or the Topical Issue Debate and read the start of their statement. An Opposition Member will challenge that and make a few points following which the Minister will simply read the second part of the statement regardless of what has been said. I am sure that many of the Government Deputies experienced the same frustrations when they were in opposition.

Ireland is recognised has having the most centralised Executive power of any Western democracy. In other words we, the Members of the Oireachtas, do not hold our Cabinet to account in the same way as other parliaments do. The extent of the centralised control can be shocking. Recently, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform discussed issuing an invitation to the Governor of the Central Bank to appear before the committee. One of the Government Deputies wanted to frame the invitation in a particular way, which was no big deal as it was an internal committee issue. However, the Whip was applied. Word came from the Executive that the invitation needed to be written in a certain way. As it happens the Government Deputies did not get into the committee room in time and I had the pleasure - possibly the one time it will ever happen during this Dáil - of defeating the Government in a vote. It was symbolic of real control-freakery. The committees are meant to be at least quasi-independent where Opposition and Government Members really can go beyond party lines and bring everything they have to bear in scrutinising legislation. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, a very important committee particularly at the moment, is not even allowed to write the wording of its own invitations, which makes a mockery of any independence that the committee could have.

Deputies are given almost no notice of legislation - we find out on Thursday what is coming up the following week. Most of us are in our constituencies on Friday. The Oireachtas Library and Research Service does not get any additional notice either making it very difficult to put serious time and energy into scrutiny of upcoming legislation. The research professionals who are there to help us do not have the time either. Much of the time we do not get debate packs.

As a new Deputy coming from a highly quantitative world where things are usually backed up with empirical evidence, theory and so forth, I have noticed a real absence of that here. While it may go on at Cabinet and in the Departments, as a Dáil Deputy I do not see it. Regulatory impact analysis is supposed to happen for all major legislation, but it does not. It did not happen for the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill - there was no poverty impact analysis, regulatory impact analysis or gender impact analysis. Nobody had worked out how many people the various measures would put into poverty or at risk of poverty. Slightly tongue-in-cheek I described it as "what does this button do" policy making, but it has a very serious implication.

The OSCE ranks Ireland as second worst in its budgetary process - we came 35th of 36 countries surveyed. On a scoring of the level of data given to Parliament to interrogate a budget, we scored zero out of ten, which is extraordinary. In the time given to Parliament to scrutinise the legislation, use the data and come back into the Chamber and try to hold the Government to account, we scored zero out of ten. It is basically impossible to meaningfully hold the Ministers for Finance, and Public Expenditure and Reform to account on two of the most important pieces of legislation that come before the House every year.

Worse than that, when the capital expenditure programme was announced, we were given a list of stuff. It did not indicate how it was arrived at and had no technical appendices or decision criteria. It simply outlined how we would spend more than €30 billion of borrowed money. In the Chamber I asked the Minister for the technical appendix. I told him that I could not indicate whether I agreed with, for example, the school building versus the road building without the technical appendix, the decision criteria and the cost-benefit analysis. He said I could not have it. He told me that I could try to get it from the Departments if I liked and the phrase he used was "we were elected to govern", which is unhelpful.

The Government has used the guillotine on 68% of its own legislation. In spite of commitments in the programme for Government not to use statutory instruments and the guillotine, on nearly seven out of ten Bills the Government has introduced, it has used the guillotine. Two weeks ago the guillotine was used on every section of the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill, which is not good. The intent in the programme for Government was to stop using statutory instruments.

The Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, debated a statutory instrument on an Internet copyright issue for more than an hour with Deputy Catherine Murphy, me and others - we had submitted a counter-proposal. At the end of the debate I asked the Minister of State if he would take on board a single proposal, a single word or a single letter of what was covered during the debate. He said that he was not changing anything and that he had told us before the debate that he would not change anything. For me that really symbolised a particular culture whereby people who had been on this side of the House for years and were passionate about getting into government and doing the right thing, within a year were saying things like that. It is an extraordinary symbol of a culture that accepts this House is not really here to influence the legislation, although obviously there are notable exceptions. It is a very serious issue.

One of the other problems comes down to culture as opposed to rules. Even if Deputies were given the data we needed and the time to use them, the problem for Opposition and Government Deputies alike is that they pretty much have to say what they are told within reason. They have to toe the line and vote the line as well, which is really dangerous. For example, during the referendum campaign on Oireachtas inquiries, all the parties canvassed for a "Yes" vote, but it was defeated. Many of the Deputies I spoke to privately said they were voting against it and told everyone they knew to vote against it because they had serious concerns about it. I do not mean to bring up whether a "Yes" or "No" vote was correct, but it signifies an extraordinary failure by us, as the people's representatives, to give a balanced view to the people. It is a very dangerous manifestation of the strict adherence to the party Whip.

We have a ludicrous situation now with Deputy Ó Cuív and the referendum. He has said that he has agreed not to say publicly what he believes to be true - that people should vote "No". When that is the case, is it any wonder that nobody trusts us? When a politician says what he believes, he is obliged and told to stay quiet. How dangerous could it be to Fianna Fáil to have one of its prominent members say: "You know what, I respect the party line, but I do not agree with it. Here is my opinion. I have been in here a long time and have a lot of experience and here is what I believe"? I do not know when it became the consensus that parties and the political system as a whole were so allergic to dissent. I have never attended a parliamentary party meeting. While I am sure there is plenty of good rigorous debate in them, it is not reflected publicly.

See this speech in context