Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Not only is political and institutional reform needed, it is expected by the citizens of the State. We need to ask ourselves what kind of institutions a modern state requires and what checks and balances are needed to ensure these institutions act in the interests of the citizens of a democratic republic. What is it about our political institutions that is broken and how we can redesign them in a way that captures what is best about us as a people? How is it that we have great local and national movements in practically every walk of life, yet our political institutions can at best be described as mediocre? One explanation could be that we have no real cultural memory of institution building. We can point, however, to pre-Norman times and a set of laws designed by our ancestors that were highly regarded because they were of the culture rather than inherited which dictate the kind of institutions we have.

We know the State is highly centralised, but we can fix this by decentralising power to a radically reformed local government system and by separating the Executive from the Legislature, as is the case in countries such as Norway and France. Clientelism flourishes because citizens cannot easily navigate the various State institutions to access their entitlements. This fosters a type of middleman or woman political system in which the focus is all about fixing the individual citizen's problem, not about fixing the system. A political culture in which the focus is all about fixing the system would lead to a clash of ideas where real choices would emerge and politics would become more policy rather than personality driven.

What we have seen to date in political and institutional reform has been either superficial or primarily a cost-cutting exercise. While I have long held the view that a country of this size should have a unicameral system, if this debate is just about saving or not saving the Seanad or what it costs to run it, we will have missed a unique opportunity not just to debate reform but also to secure guarantees of reform and see them happen quickly.

If we analyse the Seanad, 43 of the 60 Senators are elected by public representatives at local and national level. It is a process wholly owned and controlled by the larger political parties. Independents and others were elected to 16% of the county and city council seats in 2009, while securing 17% of the first preference votes in the 2011 general election. However, not one Independent Senator emerged. Seanad elections are all about horse trading behind the scenes by the political parties.

I acknowledge that many of the Taoiseach's nominees on this occasion were imaginative and certainly added some diversity which was part of the original idea behind the second Chamber, but that has not always been the case. The six university Senators are elected by a limited number of institutions. This could have been expanded in the past couple of decades. However, the panels are still elected by a sizeable electorate and have been the panels most often referred to in terms of the Senators who have made a significant impact.

It would be wrong to say the Seanad is meaningless or that it could not be reformed. In the overall scheme of institutional reform, the reform should occur elsewhere. We need a functioning Dáil, with a functioning committee system. We need to decentralise power and trust our communities to make decisions for themselves. As public representatives, we all have unique insights into how our communities function, with impressive stories about the get up and go attitude that is visible in organisations such as the Tidy Towns, sports organisations, caring organisations and associations, all usually run on a shoestring, with a significant voluntary input. The community-led, as opposed to market-led, model in which place shaping is the primary purpose of local government should be the foundation of our political institutions. I favour this being delivered through a district council model, with the phasing out of county councils. Counties, as we know, are not uniquely Irish. They were formed between the 12th and 17th centuries and designed as a system of control by the Crown. If anything, that control was further tightened by the new State and is the origin of Ireland being the most centralised state in Europe.

Imagine what would happen if we freed our communities to run themselves. We would unleash a unique genius that we all know is there. In addition to district councils with a place shaping role, we need small regional councils, I would say three at the most, acting as a service delivery tier. The value of both would deliver a functioning local government system and would take the excessive localism out of our national Parliament.

If I am certain about one thing it is that we cannot have meaningful Dáil reform without local government reform. Democracy should not merely be about control and retention of power. Article 40 sets out the rights citizens may enjoy in our republic, including the right to form associations and unions. There is no specific reference to political parties. That right to form associations has been limited to one model, the party political model, in our system, and it is unfortunately designed to protect that system. There is excessive control by political parties and some of that is a misuse of power.

Reference was made to the dire consequences of losing the Whip. The person who is elected ceases to be independent because of the Whip system. Reference was also made to the fact that we are losing vital contributions from both sides of the Houses as a consequence of that.

There is control of the timetable by the Executive with excessive use of the guillotine. I checked all the legislation introduced during the term of the previous Government and 74% of it was scheduled for guillotine. Some 64% of the legislation introduced by this Government to date, right up to this week, was scheduled for guillotine. Ironically, this item of legislation that is supposed to reform our institutions is scheduled for guillotine.

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