Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak in this debate. The issue of reform has been talked about since I was first elected to this House nearly 30 years ago. Like draining the River Shannon and restoring the Irish language, it is a permanent concept to which we all give allegiance and pay lip-service but seldom do we apply real action. In the previous Dáil, as the Government Whip indicated, we certainly had some improvements on the Dáil reform issue and a very remarkable suite of improvements on political reform. We had a deepening, extension and fixing of many of the problems with the Freedom of Information Act. We had the establishment of overarching whistleblowing legislation, the Protected Disclosures Act, which took much careful work to get right and to ensure it works in every area of not only the public service but private business. As we have seen in recent times, bringing about legislative change is often easier than bringing about cultural change whereby an awareness of a different way of working is required to be embedded and driven in every workplace. We had the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015, a measure we had talked about for a long time and probably the most difficult of the suite of political reform measures we did because we have to protect the right of every citizen to lobby. It is a fundamental part of the way we do our democracy. Every citizen has the right to talk to every Member of the Oireachtas but we have to ensure that it is done in a public and overt way so that there is not covert lobbying influencing policy-making at the behest of the few. We had the inquiries legislation, which strengthened, within the constitutional constraints, our capacity to hold public inquiries; the public appointments reform, where, for the first time, we have an independent system of appointment to State boards through the Public Appointments Service; and the strengthening of the role and functions of the Ombudsman, more than doubling the remit of the Ombudsman during the previous Dáil. Notwithstanding all of that, and I listened carefully to the Government Whip speak about some of the changes we made about the workings of this House, in truth, there has been little fundamental reform in the way that the Dáil works up to now.

For some commentators, Dáil reform amounts to sitting longer hours or counting the number of days. It is a "never mind the quality feel the width" approach to legislation, whereby the tick box for it is the more hours we clock up, as opposed to what we usefully do, where we do it or what the outcomes are. Reform must involve the rebalancing of power in a fundamental way between the Executive and Parliament. I used the word "rebalancing" deliberately because, first, we must know and accept the respective role of Government and Parliament. Government proposes expenditure and it is constitutionally responsible for ensuring that overall expenditure and State revenues match. It is in charge of the big picture. Put simply, the Government presents to this House its detailed requirements for the financing of the public services. It is for this House acting on the sole initiative of Ministers to authorise the relevant expenditure or supply and to provide, through taxes, the ways and means necessary to meet that supply voted or granted by the House.

The system, as the Government Whip, Deputy Regina Doherty, suggested, transposes from the British parliamentary tradition their workings and mechanisms. The parliamentary tradition has been transposed across the common law world. In our 1922 Free State Constitution, we set out the workings of Parliament but that was not the first to mirror the British system. Australia, Canada and other common law countries with written constitutions had already captured the Westminster model in their systems of government and continue to do that to this day. We began that process in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. I say that because it is important that Government and Parliament are allowed to function within their respective rights in the people's interest. The gridlock or stalemate often found in the United States, for example, between President and Congress would not serve us well. The report to the House signals significant and remarkable progress arrived at on a cross-party and cross-Member basis because everybody in the House, and people outside it, had inputs into our thought process in bringing about a thoughtful set of proposals which, if applied with care and reason, can bring about meaningful change in the public interest.

The set of proposals represents a challenge to each of us to take on these responsibilities and new opportunities and arrangements and to act responsibly with them. Given the timeline involved, it is a remarkably comprehensive package. Of course, many measures will be tested in practice and require revisiting and further amendment. The reform agenda is not complete. I pay tribute to all the colleagues I worked with on the committee. We all went into it not knowing how it would gel and work or whether people would come with dogmatic views. In fact, we all entered with an open agenda, a clean piece of paper and an open mind. Great credit is due to the Ceann Comhairle for the way in which he facilitated every idea and steered debate to decision-making.

What are the major changes we set out now in this first major suite of reforms? The first is that for the first time since I entered the House the business of the House will not be proposed by a member of the Government. It will not be the Government Whip, the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste standing up on a daily basis to say what the business of the House should be in the certainty that it would in fact be the business transacted due to the phalanx of Deputies behind him or her to ensure the proposal was carried. We will now have a business committee involving every section of the House, chaired by the Ceann Comhairle and involving Government and Opposition, with every side bringing forward legislative proposals. That will allow not only a real prioritisation of debate but also proper planning and preparation for debate. We will know within a medium horizon what the agenda here will be. We can take soundings, talk among our own parliamentary colleagues and bring a much more thoughtful process to the debate of legislation.

The second major reform relates to budget oversight. In many ways, this is one of the most critical issues. In the previous Dáil, I certainly sought to bring about some changes in the way the budget was handled through the comprehensive review of expenditure whereby all expenditure options were analysed, published and forwarded to the sectoral committee responsible, whether on health, social protection or whatever. For the first time, we involved not only simply the accounting mechanism in regard to the expenditure of public moneys, but also an outcomes perspective so that one was evaluating not only whether the money was spent for the purpose for which it was voted, but also what outcome one got for that expenditure. I must admit that it did not really work in practice. An overarching and compelling reason for that was that we were in a time of economic retrenchment and real crisis. It would be a very tall order in the middle of that to ask the Opposition to put forward its cuts as opposed to cuts being suggested by Government. That did not happen.

However, there is an opportunity now when we are in a more normal budgetary cycle for Members to really engage with looking at the finite purse the State has. If a Member or a party wants to expand that purse and has a proposal for additional taxation, he or she can put that on the agenda to determine how that pool of money, whatever its size, should be deployed in the delivery of public services. To do that, we will have an independent parliamentary budget office, which will be an important new innovation. I looked at this myself last year. It is going to be a very difficult structure to put in place. It will have to link in many ways to Departments and mirror the work of evaluating costs there while remaining independent of Government so that it is the creature of the House subject to giving the best advice to Members who want to cost and evaluate their own proposals for Government expenditure.

The third major initiative relates to advanced legislation. Opposition and backbench Government Deputies will have the opportunity to put legislation before the House with, for the first time, a real prospect of seeing it enacted. We had the first taste of that last night. In order to do that, we need to begin to mirror the capacity of the Government which has the Office of the Attorney General and the legal draftspeople to help it. We need to resource ourselves here with proper parliamentary research in the first instance but also the techniques of draftsmanship to ensure that when we bring legislation to the House, it is as advanced or as polished as Government proposed legislation so that the old adage many people in Government, including me, have used the past that "the legislation is flawed" is no longer an argument that can be advanced and that we have real opportunity for Members to see legislative proposals put on the agenda. The area of groups has been touched upon and it is an important one to allow full participation of Members. The legislative proposals are not restricted to the Opposition, but also apply to backbench Government Deputies who often see themselves as the most disadvantaged Members in the House. In the past, they were seen as simply fodder to be expected to nod at the frontbench here to support its propositions. There will be a much enhanced role for Government backbenchers as well as for members of the Opposition.

Pre-legislative scrutiny was an enormously important innovation of the last Dáil, but I note a caveat because it will present a challenge for Members. Often, the people who present in terms of pre-legislative scrutiny have a strong vested interest in the outcome of the legislation. Our responsibility is always to have the common good in our perspective and to be able to discern what is a vested interest, lobby group or campaign for a political view. While they may feel passionately, they are not necessarily advocating their view in the general good. These new opportunities also provide us with new challenges. The committee system was always a critical if not the most important part of the functioning of the Oireachtas. The Acting Chairman, Deputy Bernard Durkan, has been a very active committee person. The committees will be improved as they will be better-resourced, more relevant and, I hope most of all, more visible in terms of the real work done. I remember several Dáileanna ago that I was on a very hard-working justice committee which brought through a number of really groundbreaking Bills and was involved in a number of inquiries. Several members of the committee, including frontbench spokespeople, lost their seats because they felt they were buried in the bowels of Leinster House 2000 for months on end without anybody noticing what they were doing. As such, we must front up the real work of the House so that it is visible.

I see my time is up. There is a real opportunity in this Dáil and a real test for each Member. We can measure up to these or utilise them to act in the old way. I am excited about these prospects and I think we can go further. I look forward to the real engagement and utilisation of the mandate that each of us has. Reform is not a transitory thing, it is permanent. We can really set the path of a functioning Parliament in the next months and weeks.

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