Yes: John O'Donoghuesays while Dáil procedures could be reformed, much of its good work goes unreported by a media interested only in confrontation. No: Fintan O'Toolesays the Dáil does not sit often enough, fails to hold Government to account and has allowed its own powers to be whittled away
YES: John O'Donoghue
The art of representation - for that is what it is, an art - is best practised within a parliamentary party because democracy respects numerical strength. The proposition that a TD must defy the party whip to establish his/her independence ignores the role TDs play within their parties, and the role those parties play in the decision making process.
A maverick stand, alone in the voting lobbies, preceded by an intellectual or theatrical exhibition, may feed the printing presses but in the words of the English economist and essayist Walter Bagehot, "If the country should ever look on the proceedings of Parliament as an intellectual and theatrical exhibition, no merit in our laws, no excellence in our national character, could save our institutions from very serious danger". So, yes, one way or another vox populi is heard in Ireland and Dáil Éireann does a good job for the Irish people. Nonetheless politics and the parliamentary process should evolve. Accordingly the next question is unavoidable in any honest analysis: Could Dáil Éireann do a better job for the Irish people? The answer is also in the affirmative.
First, consider the basic structure of our parliament. The notion that there should be one large chamber containing 166 representatives of the people, debating and making decisions about the big issues of the day, was a good idea over 200 years ago. The question is whether it is a good idea today.
Do we really need so many 30 and 40 minute speeches to be delivered on the general principles of a Bill? Or would politicians' time be better spent on studying the details of legislation, listening to the views of those outside the House and having an input when legislation is being considered line by line at Committee Stage? Is it fair to complain that when these speeches are being made, many TDs are outside the chamber?
The press and commentators regularly make a point of noting that, like themselves, most TDs are not in the Dáil chamber when these speeches are being delivered. But should they really sit there listening to these speeches? Or should they read the ones they see as relevant at a later stage and use their time for some other purpose? In summary, are there changes we could make to our procedures that would make the work of the Oireachtas more understandable and more open to media coverage, without compromising its seriousness? Every political party makes the right noises about Dáil and Oireachtas reform from time to time, saying that they are, of course, in favour of it. As Ceann Comhairle I am of course interested in these issues. From the Ceann Comhairle's chair, I see aspects of Dáil procedure which could be improved or changed. I am not the only one. In recent months the whips from the main parties have had a number of meetings to examine whether there are changes to procedure that should be considered. I am very pleased to have been able to use the Office of Ceann Comhairle to encourage these discussions on Dáil reform, although it is up to the parties to announce any agreement they reach on change.
If politicians complain that their work is not being taken seriously, or that they are not being given enough credit for what they do, they need to examine their own procedures and I am glad to see they are doing that. Parliamentary politics is a long process. Legislation is changed slowly and through complex parliamentary procedures that do not easily provide the stories required by daily journalists. A news story tends to be attractive to a news editor if it says: "something changed yesterday". The reality of legislation and political progress is that one can rarely say "something changed yesterday" - the parliamentary process does not often fit the daily news cycle. A classic example is the annual consideration of the Finance Bill, debated, discussed and amended at extraordinary length at the Finance Committee in what is one of the most important pieces of parliamentary business of the year. This Committee Stage debate receives scant press coverage because its content, while very important, is not easily packaged into simple news stories.
And in the absence of such stories about parliamentary business, political coverage in some newspapers can concentrate on the trivial, whether it is a political soundbite that sounds clever but may not mean much, to whether Enda landed a verbal punch on Bertie or whether Bertie landed one on Enda, or even whether the Ceann Comhairle raised his voice.
The challenge for politicians is to find ways to present what we do in a way that the media will find easy to report, without compromising its seriousness. And we should always remember that whilst what is said in Parliament and even how it is said can at times be important, the right to say it is always important.
• John O'Donoghue TD is Ceann Comhairle of Dail Eireann and is also a Fianna Fail TD for Kerry South
NO: Fintan O'Toole
During and after a recent Dáil debate on a Fine Gael motion on education for children with autism, it became clear that perhaps a dozen TDs from the Government parties agreed with its broad thrust. There was therefore a majority among the elected representatives of the people for a policy that would respond to the needs of a particularly vulnerable group in Irish society. So what happened?
Nothing. No one defied the party whip. All the dissidents swallowed their personal opinions, and trooped into the Government lobby to vote for a policy they do not in fact support.
And, what is worse, no one expected anything to happen.
We have grown used to a Dáil that simply does not see itself as an independent force in Irish governance.
It would be naive, of course, to expect individual TDs to take a personal stance on all issues all the time. Parliamentary democracies need a strong sense of party cohesion if they are to function effectively. But that loyalty should not be taken for granted. If parliaments are to do their primary job of keeping governments honest, governments need to know that if they go too far on some issue, or fail too badly in some area, they will face a real revolt. In the UK, government backbenchers rebel from time to time, and policy changes. In the US, members of Congress often oppose legislation proposed by a president of their own party. In Ireland, the Dáil does what the Government wants it to do, even when most of its members think otherwise.
This points to a deeper malaise. Politicians often complain, with some justification, that the media and the public don't respect them. But the real problem is that they don't sufficiently respect themselves. A survey commissioned by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission in 2006 found that 60 per cent of respondents did not regard the work of the parliament as important. Asked to rank its importance between one and five, where five meant extremely important and one meant not important at all, just 5 per cent chose the former option and a shocking 35 per cent chose the latter.
But if TDs don't think they're important enough to occasionally express an independent judgment, is it really surprising that the public agrees with them?
If TDs thought they mattered, they'd surely want to be sitting in full session more than three days a week and to take fewer than five months off every year. The Dáil sat for just 797 hours in 2006, down from 841 in 2004. It passed just 42 acts, down from 44. The published Dáil schedule shows that from September 26th last, when the current Dáil reassembled, to July 3rd next, when the House is due to rise for the summer, it will have sat for 93 days, 20 fewer than the average in the 1980s.
It is not as if there is no work to be done. Much important legislation, especially provisions of the annual Finance Bills, goes largely unscrutinised and is passed with little time for detailed debate.
An increasing amount of law is passed as "delegated legislation", allowing Ministers to make statutory orders, which then need only be passively laid before the House, with no provision for further debate or scrutiny. The Dáil has, moreover, allowed more and more power to be passed to essentially unaccountable government-appointed bodies.
A large proportion of public expenditure is now controlled by one or other of the 500-plus quangos over which the Dáil has virtually no control.
Most spectacularly, the HSE has taken over health spending, leaving TDs with no effective means of enforcing accountability for the single largest tranche of public spending. And when TDs try to raise issues that are theoretically within their remit, they are more often than not unable to do so. When deputies ask "private motion questions" on issues of urgent importance, they are usually ruled out of order - just a quarter of the private notice questions raised in 2006 were actually answered.
The starkest expression of the self-contempt of the Dáil is the way it has allowed even its own successes to be utterly dissipated. In 1999, when the Public Accounts Committee conducted its hearings into the Dirt scandal, citizens saw TDs from all the main parties working together in the public interest, showing real skill and intelligence and getting to the bottom of an issue more cheaply and efficiently than the tribunals. They managed to give politics a good name. Then the courts took away the powers of Dáil committees to conduct such inquiries effectively. The response of the Dáil? None whatsoever. It has done nothing by way of legislation or constitutional amendment to restore its ability to function in this way. Why should citizens believe that a parliament that so meekly allows itself to be neutered really matters to their lives?
• Fintan O'Toole is an assistant editor of The Irish Times