The country risks losing many talented politicians if the plan to bar TDs from holding local council seats is implemented, writes Jim Duffy
In the 2002 general election Jim Mitchell lost his seat in Dublin Central at a time when his reputation and profile had never been higher - deputy leader of his party and acclaimed for his work as chair on the Public Accounts Committee. Mitchell had been hit hard by what proved to be a fatal illness, by constituency boundary changes, by Fine Gael's perceived irrelevance. But canvassers reported another reason too. That very work on the Public Accounts Committee.
For working those long hours in Leinster House in the PAC meant that he had no time to "be" in the constituency, at least as much as he previously would have been. In effect, the electorate said "great job on the PAC, but we want a TD on the ground. Your work is stopping you doing that. So thank you but goodbye".
He was not alone. Some of the most talented Irish political leaders, the sort of people we need in the Dáil, people like Dick Spring, an exceptionally experienced ex-minister; Jim Higgins, rated one of the best TDs in the country; Alan Shatter, who produced more private members bills than anyone since 1922 put together; Mary O'Rourke, an exceptionally talented minister. All lost their seats.
Some sank because of the Fine Gael meltdown, the poor Labour performance, the growth of Sinn Féin. But it was more than that. The message was simple - being a good national legislator is no guarantee of electability. In fact, it can be a liability. All that has to be borne in mind in the debate over the planned banning of TDs from holding local council seats. Thinking that having TDs on local councils is "the" problem is easy. But are we looking at the wrong problem? The reason TDs spent 90 per cent of their time doing local constituency work, rather than be involved in national policies, is because they have to.
If they don't, they risk losing their jobs. And there are two reasons for that. The voters and our electoral system. Tip O'Neill once said that "all politics is local". That is particularly so in Ireland, with our clientalist system in which we, the voters, demand that our TDs represent us. But not at national policy, however much we may like to claim so. We want them to be our "fixers", the person we go to over planning permissions, medical cards, local authority houses, grants, help with a range of things.
And thanks to PR-STV, but particularly our multi-member constituencies, we can play off three, four or five TDs and a couple of councillors against each other to see who can "deliver". If he or she delivers, they may get that vital vote to enable them to keep their job. If they don't, no matter how good they are at national policy, as Mitchell, Spring, Higgins found out, they get the sack.
Our hyper-competitive electoral system produces the worst of all worlds. You see that in the number of clinics TDs have to hold. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher's Education Secretary, Sir Keith Joseph, one of Britain's hardest working constituency MPs, bragged about spending one weekend a month doing "surgeries" in the constituency. He was flabbergasted to find his Irish opposite number, Gemma Hussey, had to spend two or three days a week doing clinics, just to keep her job.
In theory, banning TDs from local councils may seem a good thing. But under our multi-seat constituencies system, TDs who do focus exclusively on the national scene are committing political suicide. They confine themselves to legislation, making speeches that few in the media (and this paper is an honourable exception) cover. Attending committee meetings that no-one outside Leinster House knows anything about, unless they are a political junkie or an insomniac watching Oireachtas Report.
All, while their potential running mate in the next general election, usually a councillor, is doing the things that matter to large segments of the electorate and the electoral system; constituency work, sitting in councils, being in the Nenagh Guardian or the Donegal Democrat week in week out.
The nightmare scenario the proposed ban could produce is that it makes many good national TDs unelectable. Without that council seat, they may be fighting an uneven battle against a high-profile local councillor from their own party whose local council involvement makes him or her seem more in touch with the ordinary needs of people, than a TD sitting in Leinster House three, four or five days a week, invisible to ordinary voters.
The old adage about a TD "talking themselves out of a job" by taking part in Dáil debates rather than being "on the ground" has never been more true. It is no accident that Sinn Féin, the Greens and the independents made the breakthrough they did. Their candidates were local activists; councillors like independent Finian McGrath, Sinn Féin's Martin Ferris and Seán Crowe, the Greens' Ciarán Cuffe and Eamon Ryan. They built their name and their votes from the ground up, thanks to council seats.
Basil Chubb summarised the role of a TD as "going around persecuting civil servants". Our hyperactive electoral system leaves them with little choice. Simply removing TDs from councils won't change the system, it will simply make TDs easier to "take out" by council-based running mates, leading to rocketing degrees of seat turnover. That might seem attractive, but any parliament needs to be able to hold on to people of experience and proven ability, people like Mitchell, Spring, Higgins, Shatter.
The worst nightmare for any parliament is to see a constant changeover of members, with those with the required experience losing to inexperienced newcomers, who, once barred from local government themselves, lose out at the next general election to another batch of one- term councillor TDs.
The real danger is that simply banning TDs from local government, without changing our multi-seat constituencies, will make Dáil Éireann a worse, not a better parliament, full of inexperienced ex-councillors who had taken out the sort of national politicians we need to be able to hold on to, and are waiting to be taken out themselves come the following election.
Jim Duffy is a political commentator