Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this discussion on the report of the Dáil reform sub-committee, of which I was happy to be a member. It worked hard for many weeks after its establishment and examined all aspects of the reform proposals made to determine which would be workable and could be put in place. The report is comprehensive and significantly positive, although there is a great deal that is negative.

On its positive aspects, the establishment of a business committee is a welcome development. Most Deputies will see that it will provide for useful engagement and a different way of ordering the business of the House. I hope it will wind down some of the control exercised by Government parties.

The parliamentary budgetary office and the budgetary committee will also prove to be a useful change, but that aspect will depend on how Members and the permanent government, as people like to term it, engage with them. They might have to be dragged kicking and screaming if they are to work. I was a member of the agriculture committee in the previous Dáil when a process was introduced, supposedly as part of the Dáil reform process, whereby Departments would engage with committees on the Estimates process. Unfortunately, they only provided documents one hour before a meeting, which did not allow for proper engagement or scrutiny. It is important that the Civil Service and Departments engage with this process and are committed to it, as they have the potential to stymie some of the progressive work that could be done via committees.

Let us consider the change that will allow individual Members to submit amendments to legislation in their own name. In the past, all amendments in the name of a Member, particularly an Independent, had to be submitted in the name of the member of the relevant committee. Even if committee members did not agree with the amendments, they facilitated their submission so other Members would have them heard on Committee Stage. Some of us took a hit in doing so. Some amendments tabled in my name but of which I was certainly not in favour did not go down well for me in my constituency. However, that was part of the arrangement of the Technical Group and part of working within it. The new development addressing this is, therefore, welcome. It entitles Members to engage in the committee process or legislative process as a whole, which is important.

There is a serious flaw in this report that is very worrying given the context of the reform and the talk of a new politics and a new way of working in the House. It concerns the proposals on Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. In very many ways, as will be seen over time, these questions reflect the public face of the Dáil reform process. Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions are set-piece events in the House.

I was disappointed by how the mood changed throughout the proceedings of the sub-committee. As it got closer to concluding its work and producing a draft report, much of the positive sentiment expressed about groups and new politics seemed to wane quite a bit. With regard to how groupings, Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions would work, we were provided with a document early in the process implying there could be six groups in opposition. Groups with more than 20 Members were regarded as large, groups with between ten and 20 were regarded as medium and groups with under ten were regarded as small. Based on the proposal, the groups of between ten and 20 were to be entitled to two questions on Leaders' Questions per week and five Priority Questions every two weeks. In a two-week cycle, there would be three in the first week and two in the second. This was slightly fewer than what the Technical Group had in the last Dáil but everybody would have been quite happy to regard it as a workable arrangement. Lo and behold, in the past week, an arrangement was submitted and the sub-committee agreed on a change to allow for four questions on Leaders' Questions per day, amounting to 12 per week. However, we see it is now proposed that Fianna Fáil would have six of those and a technical group with ten Members would have one question per week, representing a reduction of 50% over what was discussed previously. This has gone a long way towards undermining belief in the process and how it is evolving.

With regard to Priority Questions, previously a technical group could have five questions every two weeks. Under the current proposal, it would have two questions every two weeks. This shows that very little will change in terms of the public face of the Dáil. It is interesting that Fianna Fáil will now have two questions on Leaders' Questions every day. This shows that party is quite happy to use its numbers to demand the lion's share of Opposition time and yet it would not use its numbers to form or participate in a government. We must, therefore, question how this new politics will develop if this system is allowed to operate.

In fairness to the officials in the office of the Clerk of the Dáil, the difficulty involved not knowing how the groups would be constituted. We will not know until the Standing Orders have been amended, at which point the groups will gel together. Those concerned are operating in a different system and trying to figure out what the scenarios will be. There will have been a very definite and serious rowing back from the work of this sub-committee over the period in which it has been sitting if these proposals are implemented. That does not augur well for the so-called new politics and the change that is supposed to be made to how the House does its business.

We were talking about new politics. It is more than likely that we will end up with six groups in opposition. We should have six questions on Leaders' Questions every day, namely, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That would really be new politics, drive change and show the complexion of the House is changing. We would accommodate this in Priority Questions also such that each of the groups would be reflected according to the very public face of the House. However, I am too much of a realist to believe that would be allowed to happen. What happens in politics, and the natural tendency of parties, is to protect parties. That is ultimately what is at stake in the changes that have been proposed by the sub-committee in the past couple of weeks.

As a member of the sub-committee, I do not actually recall its having decided that party groups would always have precedence over technical groups. As I understood the workings of the sub-committee, I understood arrangements were to be made on a pro ratabasis. We will now see that the Labour Party, which has seven Members, will still maintain its dominance, as in the previous Dáil. When technical groups were first established, Standing Orders were amended to facilitate the Labour Party to ensure it would always be called before a technical group.

The proposed changes to the rotas, if implemented on the basis of what we were provided with in the past week, will actually represent a regression. This would call into question my support for the final document that comes forward.

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