Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Even in the trenches during the world wars, peace broke out over Christmas and, therefore, I will attempt to leave my colleague's comments to one side. I would like to comment on political reform and while the Bill is focused on the cost of running a Parliament, there is a cost associated with democracy and with having democratic institutions. My constituents, and I presume those of other Member, want to know how effective we are and what they are getting in return. I am pleased the Government Chief Whip is present and I hope he will take note of a number of my suggestions about the running of the Oireachtas.

Both Houses are sitting more frequently, which is welcome. An additional sitting is a metric of the work, debate and legislation being dealt with. The Friday sittings, which provide backbench Government Members who never previously had a mechanism to table legislation, put it up to us to be legislators. During the next election campaign, which I hope is far away, we can knock on the doors of constituents and be measured on what we did in bringing forward legislative proposals. We have an opportunity to draft a Bill to, for example, change a law and we can answer the question about what we did. That is an important change. We also have an opportunity to preview legislation with the heads of Bills sent to committee before the legislation is fleshed out, which is positive. However, I am a member of both the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Committee of Public Accounts, as is Deputy McDonald. Earlier both committees, which were dealing with important topics, were sitting at the same time. We can learn from other parliaments where a period of time, be it days or weeks, is assigned to committee business. In my brief time in the House, I have learned that most of the effective work is done by committees, where there is less partisanship and greater scrutiny of proposals. We must examine how committees are timetabled.

Another issue that needs to be considered is the empowerment of committees in the context of their work programmes. I am not a great believer in the ideology of everybody having a free vote on every issue but when committees are not dealing with legislative proposals, members should not have to divide along party lines and it has been disappointing when that has happened on a number of occasions in this Dáil.

Deputy Dooley referred to topical debates and Topical Issue Matters has been a great addition to the House. They have helped Members but the House is still a little too rehearsed and staid at times. We need to look at the House of Commons, if Members do not mind me referring to it following the previous contribution, where every MP has the opportunity to raise issues with the Prime Minister of the day on a regular basis. That needs to be considered as well. We do not just need Punch and Judy politics, which some Members criticise but then engage in themselves. where our constituents when they look at their television screens wonder whether this is what goes on in the Dáil.

As we approach another recess, we need to examine how we timetable recesses. The European Parliament provides for a constituency weeks. One of the great challenges I face is finding the thinking and reading time needed to do my job effectively, particularly in the context of committee work. We can run around Leinster House being busy and go from morning to night but the opportunity to have time and space to plan and to, for example, work on parliamentary questions and be good legislators and contribute well is limited. The European Parliament model, albeit it is in place for a slightly different reason, of having designated time to scrutinise and think where members are not holidays needs to be considered. The parliament's procedure whereby votes are held at a certain time of the day or week is also good. Sometimes members have to get up in the middle of a committee meeting and witnesses are left sitting in the room waiting for ages and this is an ineffective use of time. We need to have votes and it is the right of members to call them. It is an important part of our work but we should examine grouping them if we are honest about spending our time effectively in the House. Deputy Dooley also referred to the cost overruns when votes run late into the night and so on.

Great work has been done by the House of the Oireachtas Commission led by the Ceann Comhairle on the broadcasting of proceedings. The House is becoming much more accessible through the new television channel and the Internet and even through the displaying of Members' expenses on a monthly basis on the website. It is unfortunate thatwww.kildarestreet.com , a website that has done great work on transparency and tracking the performance of Members, including the number of parliamentary questions constituency rival, for example,they have tabled, is having difficulty due to changes in how the Oireachtas processes its information. Will the Chief Whip and the commission examined how we can facilitate that website to continue its work?

I am a member, along with Deputy O'Sullivan, of a cross-party group concerned with mental health. This group has representatives of every political grouping in the House and it does solid work. While we know we are coming at the issue from different perspectives and there will be debates in which we will take different sides as political needs must, we have come together to park the party politics and move the issue forward in a broad sense. Other parliaments have a great tradition of cross-party groups. Outside the formal Oireachtas structures, we are not great in this regard but it should be considered. I do not know whether Members need to get on and do this ourselves or whether we need to examine this through formal Oireachtas processes but it would be useful to have cross-party groups to examine different sectoral or societal interests. They do not need to be formal legislative committees.

The final issue I would like to raise, on which I have corresponded with the Ceann Comhairle previously, relates to the opening up of Parliament.

Members of the public can queue outside the Westminster Parliament and gain access to the building. It is regrettable that if my constituents want to access this building at short notice, they need me or another Member to sign them in, or to go through a booking process. I have corresponded with the Ceann Comhairle and with officials of the House on this matter and I got a comprehensive answer. I understand about staffing, security and all that sort of stuff. This is something that needs to be looked at. I have often seen people come up to the reception area in Kildare Street and ask how they can come in. That is a bad physical barrier to have but it is not something we will rectify today or tomorrow.

The tours of the House are superb. Any group I have brought in have gone away massively impressed with the depth of knowledge of the staff of the House and the courtesy they extend to visitors. That is something I value, as a Member of the House. It is, however, regrettable that, because of the economic situation, there is no longer the possibility of evening tours. A significant catchment of our constituents would like to see the House and watch it in action but cannot do so during the day.

I place these as my general thoughts on the issue. We are discussing issues of cost. We all need to be cost conscious and make savings in the cost of our institutions. We do that in the Bill and we did so in the budget. We also need to ask what we are getting for the money. We must not simply debate the number of euro spent but also whether we are getting value for money and a "bang for our buck". These are my suggestions, for what they are worth.

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