Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to share time with Deputy Pat Deering, although I will gladly take the five minutes allocated to him if he does not come to the House.

I support this Bill to abolish the Seanad. It is significant legislation which will be put to the people for their ultimate ratification in the form of a direct democratic choice. Abolition of the Seanad is a difficult but necessary step. Of the world's sovereign states, 50% operate under a single chamber legislature. The Seanad is largely unknown to the vast majority of the population and has had few remarkable achievements in its history. Its role and function in practice have been greatly exaggerated.

I question the motives of some of those who have been most vociferous in campaigning to retain the Seanad. Time will not allow me to quote extensively from a letter to The Irish Times of 6 March 1987 written by the then Deputy from the Progressive Democrats Party, Mr. Michael McDowell.

The Seanad has failed to fulfil its constitutional role and function because it has been strangled by the political parties. It has been a feeding ground for Dáil Deputies, a limbo between elections and a place of debate for persons who have retired from, or failed to be elected to, this House.

As Deputies have noted, various reports have been produced on Seanad reform. At this stage, however, the Seanad is incapable of reform. Even when one listens to the arguments of the advocates of reform one finds that they do not agree. Much of the reform promoted by those in favour of retaining the Upper House would result in either a mini-Dáil elected by universal suffrage or some form of parallel assembly which would compete and be in conflict with this House.

It is fundamental to the manner in which the House does its business that we consider a serious programme of Dáil reform before and in parallel with the referendum on the abolition of the Seanad. In this regard, we have a very poor record. The record of the current Government is exemplified by a statement made by the Government Chief Whip only last week in which he indicated he would be the first to admit that the record is deplorable in terms of reforming Ministers and Ministers being held responsible to the House. When I inquired about the current status of Dáil reform in recent weeks, I learned that there is no working group on the issue and no one is measuring the outcomes of our political deliberations. A meaningful programme of Dáil reform is akin to a snowstorm in the desert.

The adversarial system in place in the Oireachtas removes any Opposition input in decision-making. With respect to Deputy McDonald and her party, as well as Fianna Fáil and the Technical Group, the Opposition has no role in or influence on policy-making. The real Opposition in this Dáil consists of Government Deputies who do not hold office, of which I am one. With 51 members, this backbench group is the largest voting bloc in the House. In my experience, the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party exerts more influence on the Government than Deputies in the Chamber. This is neither appropriate nor adequate in terms of the working of the democratic process.

The Government controls the entire agenda of the House. Even in Private Members' time, it introduces an amendment to motions. In Westminster, from which we adopted our rules, regulations and Standing Orders, 20 full sitting days per annum are given over to the Opposition and free votes are common. The Dáil, on the other hand, is subject to a three-line whip every week. There is no two-line or one-line Whip, which means everything is under the heavy hand of a three-line whip and backbench Deputies must vote according to the bidding of their party Whip. I was disappointed recently to hear colleagues on both sides state the Whip is very convenient because they can hide behind it. This is a remarkable statement for any elected Member to make. The legislative programme is under the stranglehold of the Whip system.

Proposals on Dáil reform include a recommendation to elect committee chairs under the D'Hondt rules. The problem with committees is not their chairs but their composition. In many respects, committee chairmen are mere puppets of the Government Minister to whom their committee is aligned. The composition of the committees, in other words, the in-built Government majority not only in legislative committees but all committees, ensures they will continue to do the bidding of the Government of the day.

There is also a difficulty in respect of the resources available to the Parliamentary Counsel. To take the current legislative programme, only a handful of Bills is proceeding through the House simultaneously. As Government Whips will regular inform the House, we are waiting for legislation. Why do we not address the resourcing of the Parliamentary Counsel?

The programme of new politics, as flagged by my party, is not yet in evidence. We were told that guillotine motions would become a thing of the past. I recently undertook a survey of the number of guillotine motions put to the House since the change of Government. In 2011, the figure was 50. This had increased to 52 in 2012 and this year alone, 16 guillotine motions have been put to the House. Since the change of Government, we have had 118 guillotine motions, which is a poor record. As we head towards the end of this session, the rush to enact legislation under a guillotine motion will be all the more remarkable.

Ministers are not answering questions in a manner that reflects the requirement that they be held accountable to Parliament.

Major public policy announcements continue to be made by way of television set pieces outside the House and anybody will say Oireachtas television is boring because it is too stage-managed.

The introduction of the Topical Issue debate was a major plank of Dáil reform. However, Cabinet Ministers fail to appear for the Topical Issue debate - as we have just experienced. Since the change of Government, of 650 Topical Issue debate matters, 250 were answered by Cabinet Ministers and 400 by Ministers of State. I did not make reference to the number of days upon which one Minister of State is handed scripts to deal with the entire Topical Issue debate - and we wonder why people are not interested in the proceedings of the Parliament.

We need a radical programme of Dáil reform. When there are reports from a committee, the committee Chairman should be submitted to questions from other Members who may not be members of that committee. A committee week was suggested but has not happened. The set piece of the day should be Question Time where Deputies flock in to represent the views of their constituents and their work on committees. Question Time has become a bore and is a set-piece. People do not even bother attending. The lottery for questions should be undertaken by the Ceann Comhairle in this House every morning and let the 50 or 60 people who have tabled questions come in and be ready to have their questions answered. That would introduce an element of debate and less stage management.

What are the role and function of our committees? Are they legislative? Are they investigative? Are they evidence taking? We are severely constrained by the Abbeylara judgment, which must be revisited. We have been talking about a banking inquiry for more than a year and we are squabbling over what committee might do it. The Acting Chairman knows as well as I do that no committee has the capacity and no Deputy has the expertise or the back-up to engage in the type of investigation we would like to see happening here. So it will not happen.

The one committee that is an essential component of our Parliament having regard to the influence of Europe is the EU scrutiny committee, which was abolished and is now some sub-committee of another committee. Examination of statutory instruments by committees does not happen at all. Time spent on Bills here once the Minister and the Opposition spokespeople have completed their contributions is meaningless because it is controlled from start to finish by Government. Amendments are rarely accepted. There is no difference between Committee and Report Stages, and Fifth Stage has become a meaningless exercise. There was a commitment to pre-legislative debates on the heads of Bills to be circulated to the committee before drafting by the Parliamentary Counsel. However, that cannot have happened more than three or four times in the past ten years.

The Constitutional Convention, of which I am proud to be a member, is an innovative and exciting development but its scope and agenda are too narrow. However, it is a good start and I would like to see it made more permanent or at least given an extension of time.

Do we want to continue with the adversarial Punch and Judy Parliament which potentially shuts out up to 49% of the Members, or will we consider a more consensus-based committee model for how we do our business? The inquisitorial or investigative model was rejected by the people in a pretty shoddy and poor campaign. We need to decide if we want to revisit that and if so, let us prepare.

It is out of a certain frustration that I rise here this evening. It is proposed to abolish the Seanad and we are talking about Dáil reform, but unless we change how we do our business here, cynicism will continue to grow and we will become irrelevant. There is talk of Parliament sitting five days a week, which may well happen. However, Parliament sitting five days a week will ensure that very few people - particularly those from outside Dublin - will serve more than one term. Whom does it suit? It suits the permanent government, which is virtually in charge of the manner in which we run our affairs in any event.

I support the Bill because I believe the Seanad has outlived its usefulness. However, we have a great opportunity to introduce a programme of Dáil reform that gives a meaningful role and function to every Member of the House and not just the 14 or 15 Cabinet members who are chosen to serve at that level.

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