Madam, – The proposals of John Rogers, the former attorney general, on how to reform the way the Dáil is elected are ingenious and worth taking seriously (Opinion, January 10th). They have the merit of combining the traditional method of electing 100 TDs from the local population, with a panel mechanism which will allow another 50 TDs with a variety of badly-needed skills to be elected to the Dáil by the whole electorate. This brings into the Dáil the vocational advantages originally envisaged for the Senate (but, alas, never realised), and therefore more than makes up for the proposed abolition of the Senate.
More importantly, his suggestion that the taoiseach, the minister for finance, and three cabinet ministers must be chosen from the panel group of 50 means that not alone are people with important skills now available for cabinet positions, but the voters of the whole country will be the people who elected them, so we will have a real possibility of choosing our taoiseach, and some of his important ministers. That is a very real transfer of power from the political parties to the people, and is the most attractive aspect of Mr Rogers’s proposals.
Of course, the political parties will seek to colonise with their own members the panels from which the electors choose, so it is very important that anyone with the appropriate skills can be nominated to these panels by a reasonable number of electors.
With this proviso, I think Mr Rogers’s proposals deserve our support, and the politicians of all parties should be challenged to debate them. – Yours, etc,