RETURNING A taoiseach automatically to the next Dáil without having to contest a general election so they could focus on running the country rather than on constituency matters should be considered, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said yesterday.
Stressing that he was outlining some preliminary thoughts on the matter, Mr Martin said he believed it would be beneficial if an outgoing Taoiseach could be returned automatically, like the ceann comhairle, without having to contest a general election.
The benefit would be that the taoiseach would be able to concentrate on important economic and international challenges facing the country without having to divert his or her focus to attend to constituency matters, said Mr Martin.
He said it was clear to him from working with the current Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, and his Fianna Fáil predecessors, Bertie Ahern and Albert Reynolds, that a huge amount of the workload attached to the office is now related to international matters.
“One can say a taoiseach will always get elected in a constituency but one could argue that there are some portfolios that are so critical to the international dimension in modern politics that one or two of them, like the ceann comhairle, should be returned automatically.
“It would, for want of a better word, be like freeing up the chief executive from constituency business,’’ said Mr Martin, adding that the individuals in question would have to go back to contesting future elections in their constituencies as soon as they ceased to be taoiseach.
Mr Martin was speaking at a conference on political reform at University College Cork where he launched the first edition of the online undergraduate journal in political science Government and Politics Review.
Speaking at the conference, Dr Eoin O’Malley of DCU argued that the introduction of Cabinet Ministers from outside electoral politics could lead to the plurality of views and expertise necessary to help make Cabinet much more effective and successful.