It is 70 years old. It affects every citizen in the State. In all its 70 years, it has never been changed or developed.

Our electoral system is still functional, still has a lot going for it. Among its positive aspects are proportionality and the close relationship between citizens and TDs.

Partly because of those positives, partly because the system still functions, and largely because we are so used to it that it gets taken for granted, there is a curious unwillingness to consider the possibility of re-examining it in a rigorous way. In the days since I first floated some notions of radical change to the Irish electoral system, I have been struck by the level of reflex protectiveness it evokes - and by how often that protectiveness is based on misunderstandings.

One misunderstanding is that we share a very good system with loads of other countries, so there is an international consensus around how we operate.

Not so. We share a very good system with Malta. Full stop.

The protectiveness tends to stunt an open debate almost before it starts. If you want the present system re-examined, it is assumed that (a) you have a completely articulated alternative, and (b) that that alternative is a covert Cunning Plan to do favours for your political party. Which is why I have been reluctant to posit a shopping list of alternative methodologies.

Because, for starters, I see this as not a party political issue at all. My interest in it stems from my absolute belief and commitment to improving the political system to ensure it remains relevant and responsive to the changes in society, which have been momentous in the last 20 years and are likely to be no less momentous in the coming 20.

The first task is to examine what we have at the moment, to put aside the easy axiom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The indications are that, even if our electoral system is not, in the overall, "broke", it certainly, as demonstrated by its end results, has a number of demonstrable deficits. We constantly decry that Ireland elects people to legislate, to provide rigorous opposition to the legislators of the time, yet shrug off that the overwhelming majority of those elected spend vast amounts of time as inefficient constituency messenger boys.

What is truly dispiriting about what, if we were to think in public relations terms about it, we might call the Local Ombudsman Service, by which TDs write letters to State bodies, Government Departments and local authorities on behalf of constituents and undertake all the necessary follow-up, is that it is undertaken with commitment, energy and - frequently - in a way which demonstrates administrative excellence and superb customer care. The inefficiency is built into the system, not into the individuals.

The inefficiency starts from the reality: this is not what these people were elected to do. Then it snowballs. A chronic source of dismay to visitors to Leinster House is to see a speaker in full voice, dealing with an important issue, witnessed by no more than a handful of TDs.

The visitors imagine that the absent TDs are at home ploughing their fields or off on the tear. The visitor does not know that the TDs are in their offices with a pile of letters in front of them, doing follow-up phone calls.

The visitor has no insight into the national waste of time and money represented by the fact that, in any constituency, the letter-writing exercise may be duplicated or triplicated because every public representative has been activated, and every public servant must respond.

JUST as it is a myth to believe that this repetitious and largely pointless weekly time-absorber keeps TDs in touch with what might be called the "human realities" of their constituency, it is a myth to believe that the problem can be solved by providing more staff to each TD. More staff would compound the problem by making it easier for TDs to do expeditiously what they should not be doing at all.

If local councillors took on the local ombudsman role, with TDs mandated - as, theoretically, they are mandated - to legislate, then it would rapidly become apparent that we have, quite simply, too many TDs. It is difficult to find another State with anything like our ratio of voters to TDs.

It must, of course, be acknowledged that, the moment this is stated, a chill of personal fear ("Am I going to be among the ones who get scrapped?") runs up every parliamentarian's spine. That fear tends to inhibit the kind of debate this issue needs, right now.

That debate needs to look first at the system we have, and register its deficits, note the points at which it is out of kilter with 21st-century Ireland. Too often, self-evident political ills are blamed on individual politicians or on an almost racist assumption that "they're all the same."

Too often, also, politicians have half-acquiesced in that level of diagnosis, believing that better public relations will in some way reactivate public belief in the system.

The most high-powered public relations "spin" in the world could not persuade the public to approve of the amount of time currently spent by TDs on tasks they are afraid not to do, as opposed to the tasks they should be doing. Nor could it convince the public that it is appropriate for TDs who belong to the same party and who should, accordingly, be mutually supportive colleagues, to be constantly looking over their shoulders at each other, lest one get more credit than another.

Instead of papering over the cracks in the present system, maybe it is time to examine how deep those cracks go. And then - before we get to any specific solutions - to identify what a better system could be expected to deliver.

Any new system we consider should deliver:

Absolute proportionality

A more representative Dail

Better scrutiny of Government actions

More productive use of D ail and legislators' time

Continued non-clientilist strength in the links between TDs and their constituents.