INTERVIEW:FIRST ELECTED as a TD in 1981, Seán Barrett has served as minister for defence and the marine, government whip and now Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil.
In the short gap between the resignation at midnight of president Mary McAleese and the official installation of her successor Michael D Higgins later in the day, Barrett and the other two members of the Presidential Commission – the Chief Justice, and Cathaoirleach of the Seanad – acted as joint heads of State.
Then it was back to his principal role as chairman and regulator of proceedings in the Dáil.
It is a job that would try the patience of a saint at times, but he insists he is enjoying himself.
“Oh, I am. Like everything else, there are parts of it that are difficult enough. The only thing I miss is the cut and thrust of the chamber where I would be debating myself.
“There are times when you are sitting there and you have to bite your lip.”
One of his key targets as Ceann Comhairle is to secure the broadcasting of Dáil proceedings to the entire population on television.
“That’s one of my pet projects. When I took over this job, it was one thing I said to the Taoiseach, that I was very anxious to see being in place as quickly as possible.
“We have live coverage to approximately 25 per cent of the population through UPC, the cable system. What we’re able to do is relay what you see and hear in Leinster House live, and we’re now working towards trying to have Sky take it on board: if that happens I think we’ll be well up to over 90 per cent of the population.” He hopes that, “towards the end” of this year, there will be an Oireachtas channel broadcasting throughout the State that will “advertise on a daily basis, the same as other stations do, what’s on in the Dáil and what’s on in the committees, so people can select”.
Dáil deputies are unlikely to have much difficulty over a Leinster House TV channel, but the dress code issue is a thorny one and Barrett has strong feelings about this too.
“The standing orders say that ‘dress should reflect the integrity of the House’. Now, when I saw this, I said, ‘What does that mean’?” Finally he came to the conclusion that this formulation is “a waste of space. I mean, it doesn’t say anything.”
He needed something more specific: “We put a proposal to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges (CPP), which has been accepted, whereby the male members would wear a shirt with a collar and a jacket and that no denim would be worn by either male or female.
“So CPP approved that, so I’m waiting to see if a motion comes before this parliament.”
His proposals were made just before the summer recess but have not been implemented so far. He doesn’t comment on the reasons but it is understood from other sources that Government parties were concerned certain dedicated casual dressers in the Technical Group would generate a publicity blitz out of refusing to conform.
But Barrett isn’t letting the issue go by default: “In most parliaments there is a certain dress code and it is accepted. I mean, if you look at the Assembly in Northern Ireland, they have the dress code – everybody abides by it.”
He’s not insisting that male deputies wear ties: “We didn’t specify a tie because I think in some parliaments it is the practice that people don’t wear ties, and since the late Tony Gregory, God rest him, that has been established, that you don’t have to wear a tie.”
And the jacket, does it have to be tailored? He smiles: “Yeah – you don’t have to go down to Louis Copeland to get it, you can go anywhere.”
There is also an issue concerning bad language. In the previous Dáil, before Barrett took the chair, Green TD Paul Gogarty caused a storm when he used a four-letter word in addressing Labour’s Emmet Stagg.
More recently, Independent Mattie McGrath used the word “s***e”. Barrett is decidedly unhappy with this development: “The use of that sort of language demeans the House.”
He points out that he was temporarily absent from the chair for the McGrath incident but, if he’d been there, he would have asked the deputy to withdraw the word and refrain from using it in future.
And if he didn’t withdraw it? “Ultimately I have powers to refer the matter to the CPP.” As it happens the two words in question are not among those which have been ruled out of order by successive chairmen over the years.
Apart from unparliamentary language there are a lot of interruptions and a great deal of heckling in the chamber and Barrett is determined to bring the “shouting and roaring”, as he calls it, under control.
“I fully accept in any assembly that there is going to be a bit of banter from time to time – you don’t want to be too pernickety – but preventing somebody from making their point is just unacceptable.”
Everybody knew there was “a certain limit” where it should stop: “You can’t put it down actually on a piece of paper, you can’t say, ‘You’re allowed four shouts or two roars’, but everybody knows what’s acceptable.”
He would like to see a change in the order of business, whereby members could make brief comments of no more than 30 seconds on “a matter of concern” instead of the current situation “where people are hopping up and down and I have to rule them out [because it’s not] relating to promised legislation”.
He has put this proposal to the CPP: “The minister involved could reply the same day by letter or could seek to come in the next day and reply verbally.” A total of three minutes could be allowed for this and a further three minutes if the ministers in question wished to make a brief response.
“There’s an awful lot of things that could cut out disorder if you just gave an opportunity to somebody to hop up and say something,” the Ceann Comhairle says.
Another change he is promoting would, he says, “liven up question time and bring more people into the chamber”. At present, the order in which parliamentary questions are to be taken is decided by lottery a few days beforehand and, as Barrett puts it, “If you’re No 24 you know it won’t be reached.”
He proposes a change whereby he would draw the questions before going down to the chamber. “Nobody would know the draw, so all the deputies who have put down their questions for oral reply will come in because they’ll wait and see are they going to be called. If they’re not there, their reply will go as a written reply but they won’t get in the supplementary. And I think that would liven up question time and bring more people into the chamber.”
Asked how his time in the chair has affected his blood pressure, he replies: “Well, thank God I don’t suffer from blood pressure.” But he has to be stern sometimes? “Sometimes, yeah, I’m human.”
