THE decision by Mary Robinson not to seek a second term of office has focused renewed attention on the Presidency. She has set a standard for performance in this office which will be almost impossible to match.
Where will a candidate be found who could either fill successfully the kind of presidential role she has created, or else establish an alternative but equally acceptable approach to the task of representing the State and the nation?
Moreover, apart from anything else, the unusual circumstances of her nomination - effectively as a non-party candidate emerging from the existing de-facto party nomination system - will not be easy to replicate. It is not surprising therefore that a change in the method of nominating candidates for presidential office has already been proposed.
Admittedly, one could question the disinterestedness of the source of this proposal - the Progressive Democrats, who happen to be the largest Dail party whose Oireachtas strength is below the minimum level for nomination purposes under the present system.
But, whether disinterested or not, the PD proposal to widen the nomination process is worthy of a serious consideration, and has already been the subject of consideration by the Review Group on the Constitution under Dr Whitaker's chairmanship, whose report was published last May.
The problem at present is that such a nomination can be made only by 20 members of the Oireachtas or by four county councils or county borough councils. In practice this confines nominations to the three major political parties, although in the Oireachtas as at present constituted it is theoretically possible (but on the face of it somewhat improbable) that a combination of the nine Progressive Democrat TDs and 11 of the 12 Independents in the two Houses could agree on a candidate. (The alternative of the PDs and Democratic Left plus five Independents seems even more unlikely.)
Presumably after reflection on this effective three-party monopoly of the presidential nomination system, the review group reached the unambiguous conclusion that "the constitutional requirements for nominating a presidential candidate are too restrictive and in need of democratisation". And it went on to point out that "in some countries a popular element is secured by providing that a certain number of registered voters may conjoin to nominate a candidate".
THE group stops short of proposing such a change, however, pointing out that the validation of the signatures of what would presumably have to be some tens of thousands of nominating citizens, would be difficult.
It might have added, but did not, that another problem could be that the introduction of such an alternative presidential nominating process would in practice be most likely to be availed of by one or other of the many single-interest groups which at any given time may have attracted local, or even in some cases national support.
But, despite its doubts about the validation of citizen nominators, the review group went on to, say that some alternative mechanism, based on a specified number of voters, ought to be explored. It added, however, that another approach might be to reduce the number of Oireachtas members required for a nomination.
If the change were to be confined to this latter proposal it would merely serve to intensify party political domination of the nominating process by adding to the number of parties in competition in this area.
Public, and eventually political party, attitudes to this proposal will, I believe, be influenced by the results of the nominating and election process that will take place later this year, and this will certainly be among the matters to be considered by the All-Party Committee on the Constitution when it is reconstituted by the next Oireachtas.
Other issues concerning the Presidency will also fall to be considered by that committee. But most of the proposals that have been made to extend the powers of the Presidency are unlikely to be pursued, partly because the review group recommends against such changes, as likely to embroil the president in party politics and to reduce accountability, for the president, unlike the government, is not answerable to the Oireachtas and the courts.
Nevertheless there is one area in which, as the review group adimits, the president's role might be considered deficient by the standards of most other parliamentary democracies, viz the absence of any role for the president in the appointment of the Taoiseach.
This is so unusual as almost to constitute an anomaly, and its origins go back to the foundation of the State. In the early part of 1922 the Provisional Government was concerned to produce a Constitution which, while keeping within the terms of the December 1921 Treaty, would minimise the role of the monarch in the domestic affairs of the new Irish State.
Somewhat surprisingly, they overcame strong British opposition to a declaration of the democratic rather than monarchical basis of the State, to the effect that "all powers of government and all authority legislative, executive and judicial in Ireland are derived from the people of Ireland".
And on this basis they claimed and secured the nomination by the Dail rather than monarch of the president of the executive council, as the head of government was then described. And he, in turn, nominated his ministers, subject to the assent of the Dail rather than of the monarch.
IN THE 1937 Constitution de Valera maintained this principle, leaving the president with only the formal role of presenting the incoming Taoiseach, and later his ministers, with their seals of office. It is not clear whether in taking this line he was merely following more or less automatically the precedent of the 1922 Constitution (as, indeed, he did with much of the rest of his Constitution).
Alternatively, in thus withholding any role in the formation of governments from the president, he could have been motivated by the consideration that the president had no international recognition as head of state, a role that, despite the New Constitution, continued during this period to be played, so far as the outside world was concerned, by the monarch.
Of course this consideration, ceased to have any relevance after the Declaration of the Republic in 1949. But this has not led the review group to reconsider the exclusion of the president from a role normally undertaken by, heads of state elsewhere.
I am not convinced by the group's arguments against giving this role to the president. My doubts on the matter derive from my own experience in 1987, when deadlock in the Dail was narrowly avoided by the vote of a single doubtful deputy, and also from observing at close quarters the prolonged deadlock of 1989, when the Dail had to meet repeatedly, and had to demand and insist upon the resignation of the outgoing Taoiseach, before it succeeded in forming a new government.
The review group is content to remark that "recent Irish experience suggests that the parties in such circumstances feel obliged by the electorate to construct a stable government based on an agreed programme. It is not clear that the intervention of the president in these circumstances would secure such a government more quickly."
This seems to me to be too complacent a view. The experiences of 1987 and 1989 indicate that our potential problems in relation to government formation after "hung" elections are not so different from those in other European states. It could thus be unwise for us to exclude the president indefinitely from a role in relation to this matter. We could ultimately injure ourselves by falling over backwards to keep the president, in the review group's words, "impeccably remote from party politics".