ACCOUNTANTS, doctors, solicitors, barristers, architects, engineers and their ilk are collectively known as "higher professionals". There are not as many of them around as you might think - they comprise only 4 per cent of the Irish population.
But the reason you might think there are so many of them is because they hold nearly a quarter of the seats in Dail Eireann (24 per cent), a total of 40 seats.
"Lower professionals" include journalists and other middle-class riff-raff. There are slightly more of them (us) around as we comprise 6 per cent of the population. We do quite well, with 46 seats in the Dail, 28 per cent of the total.
Then there are employers/managers, who comprise just 7 per cent of the population, but they hold 28 Dail seats, 17 per cent of the total.
This means that a mere 17 per cent of the population is represented in the Dail by 116 seats out of the total of 166 - 17 per cent of the population holding 69 per cent of the seats. Some trick.
Now this is not any old aberrant statistical conjunction, with no significant relationship between them; as there might be, for instance, between the number of people who hate Manchester United and the incidence of meningitis (I can't offhand think that there could be a significant correlation between the two, but perhaps there is).
Those elected to the Dail have the power to affect crucially the interests of their own and other social groups. Thus, the 116 TDs for the higher professionals, lower professionals and employers/managers classes have enormous power to influence legislation and policy very much in their own interests.
By contrast, agricultural workers, who comprise almost the same proportion of the population as higher professionals (3 per cent and 4 per cent respectively) contribute not a single representative to the Dail (remember, the higher professionals have 40 TDs).
The semi-skilled and non-skilled manual workers comprise 13 per cent of the population - over one-third more than do the higher professionals and lower professionals combined. And unlike the latter two groups, who together have 86 TDs (a clear majority), they haven't got a single one.
Yes, of course, being born with a silver spoon in your mouth does not prevent you from speaking up in favour of those with no spoon even in their hands; but in general this tends not to happen. The silver spoon brigade tend to see life very much from their own perspective, much as everyone else does. What seems good for them will seem to them good for society as a whole.
This wouldn't matter that much if democracy worked and everyone had an equal say in how the system was governed; but it is not like that, as the figures clearly show. The silver spoon brigade command a clear majority of seats in our legislature, although they form a small minority of society.
These figures come from the Provisional Reports of the Constitution Review Group and, clearly, the group was somewhat troubled by the reality they portray. But no apparently, troubled enough to suggest that anything be done about this by way of constitutional reform. They appear to believe that this is the way of the world and nothing can be done about it, rather like the weather or the Irish rugby team.
And this is a pity, for there is a way whereby constitutional reform could help alleviate this hugely significant structural anomaly in our political system. This has to do with the financing of that system, and I regret if this theme appears repetitive in this column.
THERE are many factors which govern who stands for election and who gets elected. Clearly, being male is a major determinant - there are 146 males in the present Dail and only 20 females. Being a relative of a former TD is also a factor - 41 current TDs had a relative previously in the Dail.
Age also matters quite a bit - 87 TDs are in the 41-55 age group, again a clear majority, although they represent only 14 per cent of the population (the 21-26 age group comprise 8 per cent of the population and they have no TD at all).
Education also has a bearing, believe it or not, with 98 TDs having third-level education and a further 22 having third-level postgraduate education (I recall Sean Lemass saying at a Law Society meeting in UCD in the middle 1960s: "A Dail full of graduates would be an appalling prospect, and it would be even more ineffective than the present one").
But the age issue does not represent systematic discrimination because those now young will inexorably get as a group into the older age categories. The gender issue is hugely important, but it is difficult to see how specifically this could be addressed by way of constitutional change. The educational issue is merely another dimension of the class or social group issue.
There are other factors as well, of course; for instance, that one doesn't openly repudiate the constitutional contention that Our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, "sustained our fathers through centuries of trial (and that we gratefully remember) their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of the Nation" and all that sort of stuff.
But on top of all that sort of stuff, there is the class factor: that one's chances of being elected to the Dail are damn all to zero if one does not happen to belong to one of the elite special groups, ideally the higher professionals.
And one of the reasons that these higher professionals have an excellent chance of getting into the Dail is that they tend to have lots of money, at least as compared with the rest of the population. And this is where constitutional reform could make a difference.
If all private finance were barred from the political arena and political parties, and election campaigns were financed exclusively from public monies on the basis of strict equality for all candidates and parties, then the disparity between the representational rates of different social groups could be greatly lessened.
Yes, educational advantage would probably remain a factor which, in itself, would bias the political system against the disadvantaged, but the abolition of private finance would be an important start.
Private finance does not corrupt the political system simply by buying favours for donors, although there is a lot of evidence accumulated over the last decade to show that this, too, is a significant problem. The major corruption comes from biasing the political system in favour of those with money, and this has been vividly illustrated by the statistics produced by the Constitutional Review Group.
A further illustration of how the political system is biased against the poorer sections will be provided by Ruairi Quinn in the Budget speech to be delivered shortly after this column has been written. There will be lots of huff and puff about how the left-wing parties have biased the Government against the interests of the rich. But just reflect on how comprehensively, if at all, the powerful have been even slightly discommoded.