Fine Gael’s political reform proposals are the best of the five main political parties’ manifestos according to an assessment of eight political scientists on the political website reformcard.com.
The largest opposition party scored 73, compared to 68 for Labour in second place, 58 for Fianna Fáil, 53 for the Green party and just 26 per cent for Sinn Féin.
But the group did not score the parties for changes in the electoral system, because “changing the electoral system is not fixing the system” said Prof David Farrell of UCD.
The committee also rejected as “red herrings”, reducing the presidential term of office from seven to five years and reducing the number of TDs in the Dáil. They were “nice ideas, interesting ideas but not necessarily going to change an awful lot about how politics is relevant in this country” he said.
“There is good political science that shows that Ireland is exactly right in terms of the number of Dáil deputies we’ve got internationally as it stands.”
“You can’t have a smaller Dáil, abolish the Seanad, populate a Government and expect to have talented Cabinet Ministers and have a committee system that works,” added Dr Eoin O’Malley of DCU.
Prof Farrell said that Fine Gael were weakest on local government reform. “While they came out tops today if there are new policy documents coming out we will rate them” and the rankings may change. “There is every opportunity for the other parties to do better before the election.”
At the launch in Dublin of their assessment of the manifestos, the academic panel said that Fine Gael scored highest in open government reform and joint highest on Oireachtas reform with Labour.
Fianna Fáil were strongest on Oireachtas reform, including the proposal for a secret ballot on the election of Ceann Comhairle.
Sinn Féin scored highest on electoral reform while the Green party scored the most marks for local government reform.
The Green party had credible reforms on political funding but all were weak on opening up Government data.
All the parties scored poorly on local government reform.
The manifestos were assessed by the political scientists in five categories of political reform, Oireachtas reform, electoral reform, open government reform, public sector reform and local government reform.
None of the academics knew how the others scored each party and the scores were totted after being inputted electronically.
Researcher and co-founder of the website project Joe Curtin said they were “trying to bring clarity to the debate on political reform. A lot of what we have is “bluff and bluster rather than fact and cold analysis”.
Dr Jane Suiter of UCC said “no party has failed to address the vital issue of reform, but some have gone further than others”. She added that “it is also noteworthy that neither Labour nor Fine Gael proposed serious measures to tackle Cabinet dominance in Ireland”.
Johnny Ryan, co-founder of Reformcard.com said that after the election the website would score the programme for government and issue quarterly reports on its implementation.
The academic panel members are: Prof David Farrell, UCD; Dr Eoin O’Malley and Prof Gary Murphy, DCU; Dr Jane Suiter, Dr Theresa Reidy and Dr Clodagh Harris, UCC; Dr Elaine Byrne, TCD; Dr Matt Wall, Vrije University Amsterdam.
