Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

While I welcome the debate, I question its timing. The Constitutional Convention gave the issue two weekends; we are giving it 90 minutes at the very end of the term and as a result, nobody is here. This treats the convention's work unfairly because it put so much time into it and it is a serious issue. If we are serious about changing our political structures and systems and reforming the culture of politics, electoral reform is at the heart of it. To spend 90 minutes at the end of the term debating the convention's work is insufficient. However, as it is an opportunity to speak, we should do so.

I do not know if we have decided how we will treat the recommendations. From the Minister's statement, it seems a particular way is on offer. Do we accept all of them or do we cherry-pick and, if so, who decides? Given that the convention's work cannot be binding, does it become an academic exercise, albeit a worthwhile one?

On the issue of the smallest constituencies having five seats, in one of his speeches the Minister stated, "The Government is of the view that the three, four or five seat Dáil constituency arrangement has served the State well since 1948." Therefore, the recommendation was not accepted. Unfortunately, this shows a complete lack of imagination on the part of the Government and what does it say for the convention's work?

The recommendations that have been accepted such as the establishment of an electoral commission were to be implemented anyway. The establishment of an electoral commission was included in the programme for Government. Other recommendations such as postal voting or extending voting to weekends will be given to the electoral commission to consider. What, therefore, was the purpose of the work? Although the reports are very interesting and a lot of time has been put into them, if we are accepting only the recommendations that we were going to implement anyway and not thinking about the more imaginative ones because that is not how the State works, I am not sure what the purpose was. While I do not mean to talk down or undermine the work of the convention, I wonder about the thought process before we established the convention and put the work in motion.

Other ideas recommended in this and other reports are included in legislation proposed by colleagues and are not necessarily new. We may not have had to do all of this work to reach a point we were already at.

In responding to the convention's recommendations we cannot become paralysed by analysis. If we think through the different iterations of reform and what might be the consequences, we will find flaws. However, we will find flaws everywhere and cannot let it keep us from making changes that need to be made because something is not working and we know it. If we were led by fear all the time, nothing would change and the status quowould be maintained. The logic that three, four and five seat constituencies have served us well since 1948 is given as a reason not to change things. Reasons will be given to explain why having a five seat constituency is not in the interests of the State. If the current system is not working well, we should not be afraid to try something else, even if there is not a perfect system with which to replace it.

I was very disappointed that the convention did not recommend changing the electoral system in terms of multi-seat constituencies. Deputy Brendan Griffin gave an excellent explanation as to why the model was not serving any of us well. He referred to the multiplication of work. In a four seat constituency such as mine a person may contact every Deputy in the constituency, each of whom may contact the relevant person in a Department, which is unnecessary. It also drives the hyper-localism of Irish politics. Changing the electoral system in this way would be a great way of moving away from it. Unfortunately, the convention did not recommend it; however, it does not matter, given that the Government is making the decision.

I agree with the recommendation that the smallest constituency should be a five seater. In European elections the system works well. People vote based on a person's ideas and principles, not because they had met him or her or because her or she had come to the door. To vote for somebody on that basis is not necessarily bad and accessibility is one of the benefits of the political system. However, if we want to move to a position where people will vote for a politician based on his or her convictions and positions on issues such as marriage equality or abortion, we must remove the hyper-localism. If we are not going to do it through having multi-seat constituencies, we could do it by enlarging constituencies.

The recommendation on changing the number of Deputies in the Dáil to reflect the number of voters was interesting. However, I could agree with it only if we were to make voting mandatory, as in Australia.

While I agree with the point on the establishment of an electoral commission, we should have done it in the first six months. Had we established an electoral commission, we could have let it conduct all of the referendums over the course of our five years in government.

The extension of polling hours and days is a no-brainer. It happens elsewhere in Europe and should happen here. I agree with providing greater access to postal voting which also happens elsewhere in Europe and many other countries.

We should allow people living overseas to vote through the embassies. During a recent election in Romania there were huge queues to vote at the embassy in my constituency. It is very simple and should be done. It bothers people if they are away during an election. It bothered people particularly during the 2011 general election because they very much wanted to vote but could not do so. Our decision is to allow the electoral commission to examine the issue. Again, we are unnecessarily kicking it down the road and delaying it. However, I agree with the idea.

Improving the accuracy of the electoral register is very important because we all know it is incredibly inaccurate. People are on a number of registers around the country as they move about. This needs to change, not least because it does not give us an accurate reflection of the turnout, which is important because we need to know the level of participation in society and how many are coming out to vote.

We had a very good education programme in schools, whereby Deputies and staff from the Oireachtas visited them. The Acting Chairman, Deputy Catherine Byrne, and I visited a school in Terenure together where we engaged with the students and told them what we did. Unfortunately, funding restrictions meant we had to cut back the programme. Education in schools is very important. When school groups visit Leinster House, they get a huge amount out of it and it is really brilliant. Recently, like many of my colleagues, I have started to have a question and answer session for students in the AV room, which gives them even more information. That is the best way to do it.

Because the facilities and the people to do it already are available here, the first step to take is to bring every school in here and to make sure every school has been.

The next point was not about electoral reform but about the composition of the Cabinet or ministerial positions and is to permit the appointment of non-Oireachtas Members as Ministers and then to require Members of the Dáil to resign their seats on appointment to ministerial office. I do not agree with that. If one desires the American system and the executive government style, that is a complete change from parliamentary democracy. What we have is quite good, because the person elected to the Dáil and who then is elected by the Dáil into the Cabinet is politically and electorally responsible. One then matches that person with an expert by making sure the Secretary General of that Minister's Department is the expert one would take from industry or wherever. One then puts the two people together, that is, the person who has the expertise and the experience and the person who has the political accountability and understanding. That is a great force and a good example of how this has worked was the pairing of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and John Moran, who formed a very good partnership at the head of the Department of Finance. This is what we should be working towards and what that would mean is not a change to how people are appointed to the Cabinet but changes within the Civil Service in order that people from outside can move more easily into the senior positions. People should be able to move in and out of the Civil Service to secure the best possible person in each Department at the very top. It should be open to a Minister, as he or she walks into a new Department, to say the best guy to run this Department is someone who used to run an airline and who would be perfect and then to bring in and work with that person. While the Minister would be politically responsible, that person would have the management and field expertise. I believe this is what people were trying to get at when they made such recommendations because they are of the opinion that something is not working. However, from my perspective, the fault lies in what can be done in respect of flexibility at the top of the Civil Service.

These were the recommendations on which I wished to speak. When Members speak on the next report of the Constitutional Convention, hopefully it will be the report on reform of the Dáil itself and hopefully much more time will be allocated to it. Moreover, I hope the Government does not prejudge the recommendations and tell Members which ones they must accept because were that the case, what would be the point of this entire exercise?

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