'Going About Persecuting Civil Servants" is the title of the seminal academic work on clientelism, the practice whereby politicians who are supposed to act as national legislators are turned into glorified messenger boys and girls by the political system.
Written by the late Prof Basil Chubb almost 40 years ago, his thesis was that Irish popular political culture contained a deeply ingrained belief that it was necessary to have a "man in the know" on your side in order to obtain State services. That man was the local TD who spent most of his time interceding with national or local bureaucracies to get grants, medical cards, housing or other benefits for the voters back home in the constituency.
In the intervening four decades, much should have changed. Computerisation in the public service means it is easier to track your application for a grant, or a driving licence, or whatever.
The need for a politician to write letters to Ministers and ask Dáil questions about how your application is getting on should have lessened. There are Citizens' Information Bureaux, an Ombudsman, and public information offices in every government department. Rules concerning entitlements to grants and services are clearer.
But the clientelist activity continues apace. This newspaper revealed last month that over half the TDs in the Dáil had made representations to the Department of Justice since January last year largely seeking favours for constituents or their relatives who were charged with or convicted of crimes.
These representations at an average rate of four per week were almost all fruitless. A handful of politicians, including former Fine Gael deputy leader Mr Jim Mitchell, made representations on matters of policy rather than on individual cases. But most were making inquiries that they knew were pointless, in an effort to impress constituents.
Collectively, Oireachtas members send avalanches of queries to a variety of Government departments and public bodies on behalf of constituents. In some cases these representations help people who are genuinely in need. For example, chief executives of health boards have some discretion to breach the income guidelines for medical cards in cases of medical need.
Deputies routinely make representations seeking medical cards for people they know are not entitled to them, and will not get them.
So what is happening now is less the clientelism of Basil Chubb's time, but a parody of it. Back then, the representations generally achieved results from a slow and sometimes incomprehensible State bureaucracy. Today they are often pointless. Many are designed to give voters the false impression that their TD is doing something useful on their behalf.
This may be an appalling diversion of legislators from their job - that of enacting legislation. But it was, and still is, essential if you want to be re-elected. It is not enough just to persecute civil servants: for most national politicians it is necessary to persecute local authority and local health board staff as well.
A national politician who works tirelessly on for example the Oireachtas Finance and Public Service Committee bringing forward intelligent amendments to legislation will fight a losing general election battle against a local councillor who can point to various traffic lights and filled potholes they have brought about through constituency work.
So most Oireachtas members operate a dual mandate, in that they sit on their local authority to tend to the needs of constituents in order to bolster their electoral position.
Now, sources in the Government have again floated the idea of abandoning the dual mandate and forcing national politicians to behave as national politicians. The suggestion is that TDs and Senators will not be allowed to run for local authorities from 2004 on. There has been an outcry from the Fianna Fáil backbenches, and within Fine Gael and Labour, there is much discontent and anxiety as well.
The proposal bears all the signs of putting the cart before the horse. Before you insist that politicians act as legislators, you must give them a real legislative role that will be recognised and respected by voters at election time.
Right now, they don't have one. Lobbyists representing outside interests can often get legislation amended more easily that any backbench TD or Senator through making professional representations. Parliamentarians rarely shape legislation. Some Ministers are genuinely open to taking amendments to legislation at committees; most are not.
If the current social partnership talks reach a deal it will contain most important provisions on future taxation policy and public services. The deal will be struck behind closed doors between the Government and interests not directly accountable to the electorate. Only then will the elected representatives of the people have a chance to discuss one of the most important political developments in this Government's lifetime. They will have no input, and no power to change it.
Many other institutions and interests wield more political power than the Oireachtas.
Transnational corporations, international institutions, the courts, the tribunals and the social partners make decisions of enormous political impact all the time that put the Oireachtas in the position of being a sideshow.
So if you are an ambitious and interested national politician, the route to relevance is to keep persecuting those officials and telling your constituents about it. If you keep at it you may protect your seat from local rivals, come to the attention of your party leader and finally get promoted to ministerial office and have the opportunity to wield political power.
Without a fundamental rebalancing of real political power towards the public's elected representatives, the abolition of the dual mandate will do nothing for national politics, but will make national politicians' lives even more insecure and miserable.