INSIDE POLITICS:IT IS widely acknowledged one of the underlying causes of the crisis that brought the country to the brink of ruin was a dysfunctional political system that lost touch with economic reality.
What is so striking about the Celtic Tiger years was not simply the incompetence of the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats government that blindly stoked an unsustainable boom, but the fact the opposition parties railed against it for spending too little rather than too much.
Most TDs were preoccupied with their representational role as “messengers to the Dáil” on behalf of individual constituents or favoured interest groups, and in the process almost all of them lost sight of the wider national interest.
One of the pledges made by Fine Gael and the Labour Party during the general election campaign, and again on taking office, was to introduce fundamental reform in the way politics works as a way of helping to ensure the same mistakes could be avoided in future.
So far this has not happened, and all the indications are that it is not going to. While the Government has honoured its commitment to shorter Dáil summer holidays, reduced the number of committees and tinkered with the way business is conducted, genuine reform that would give TDs a role in shaping policy and influencing legislation in a meaningful way appears as far away as ever.
It still remains the case that not only the Opposition but the bulk of Government TDs are excluded from making a serious contribution to the way the country is run. This encourages Opposition parties to indulge in fantasy politics, pandering to voters who want to avoid facing reality while trapping Government backbenchers into supporting policies over which they have no control and no sense of ownership.
In time this will inevitably lead to dissent on the Government backbenches but, more importantly, will hamper the prospect of creating the sense of national purpose needed to get the country back to full recovery.
The current system imposes strong pressure on Opposition TDs and Government backbenchers to agree with lobby groups of all kinds who want more State spending in their areas of special interest. There is no incentive for TDs to stand out against this pressure and try to look at issues from the wider perspective of the common good.
The result is that many issues are never properly debated at all. It is far easier for TDs to rely on populist slogans that will keep lobby groups happy than conduct a detailed analysis of the options facing the State in any given situation.
Debate over the vital and long overdue reform of the social welfare system has already degenerated into a simplistic effort by the Opposition parties to characterise Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton as a new Margaret Thatcher. While there is little doubt Burton and Labour would be doing the same thing if they were in Opposition, that just serves to highlight the problem.
The same is true of the attempt by Minister for Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte to explain the facts of life about the taxation regime for Ireland’s offshore oil and gas resources, or to be more accurate, the current lack of them. The whole debate about public sector pay and pensions is another area where the facts are blindingly obvious but are widely ignored in a debate dominated by emotion and vested interest.
The only way TDs on all sides will be forced to engage with the real issues is if they are given some responsibility for decision-making. That requires a committee system engaged in fact-finding exercises and decision-making, rather than posturing and playing to the gallery.
The detailed facts about our social welfare system and our offshore exploration and taxation regime are available but they are not widely known. The recent National Economic and Social Council report on Supports and Services for Unemployed Jobseekers contains a wealth of information about how the system is designed to keep people trapped in unemployment rather than find their way back into the workforce. Many of the facts outlined in that report fly in the face of political cliches about welfare, so they are ignored.
Just as the welfare system entices people to remain in its tentacles rather than rewarding them for leaving it, the political system traps TDs in a comfortable but ultimately pointless regime. While the Coalition has honoured its pledge to reduce the number of committees, they still remain in the control of the executive, which has no short-term interest in ceding power to backbenchers.
The problem is that until backbenchers do acquire real power, the Government will struggle to get a proper debate on its policies, never mind win wide acceptance for them. The temptation for backbenchers is to remain stuck in the clientelist way of doing business, because that is the way things have always been done and it is the only role they have.
However, the sheer number of Government backbenchers in the current Dáil could force change if enough of them threaten to kick over the traces. Real reform will have to come from the bottom up. Ministers are too overwhelmed with the scale of the task facing them to pay more than lip service to political reform.
The irony is that reform would, in the long run, make it easier for the executive to do its job properly. Involving all TDs in decision-making would give most of them the incentive to take their jobs as legislators seriously and reduce the temptation to take populist soft options.