Sir, – Derek McDowell (Opinion, May 2nd) was right to point out that the Dáil doesn’t work very effectively, but he identifies the wrong culprit in the whip system. He’s hardly alone; many commentators in these pages have done so. They seem to think the whip system enslaves TDs into voting in certain ways against their conscience. Of course if this were the case the whip system would be undemocratic and rightly the target of all this opprobrium.
In fact the whip system is a voluntary arrangement between TDs and their parties. And on most issues TDs are happy to follow the party whip and would have voted that way even had no whip been imposed. The arrangement is a result of a rational decision made by TDs as to what will get them re-elected, climbing the party and satisfy their own conscience. Different TDs need to judge the importance of each of these two goals when they come into conflict.
We can see that TDs often defy the whip when they calculate their interests are better served sticking up for their local areas. In this Government some have also done it on national issues or “matters of conscience”.
So if TDs want to vote with their “conscience” they can and do. Perhaps the problem is that they know that voters don’t always reward them for it.
There are ways political science could suggest would reduce the power of the party leadership to increase the “cost” of defying the whip. But we should be aware that these might have other negative consequences. And we should also note that the Irish electoral system seems perfectly designed to be whip-unfriendly, yet the whip is still widely adhered to. There are other problems with the way the Dáil works that can be solved without addressing this red herring. – Yours, etc,
Dr EOIN O’MALLEY,
School of Law and
Government,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.