Madam, - Pat Rabbitte's frustrations are understandable given the scant opportunities available for parliamentary oversight of the executive in the standing orders relative to public business in Dáil Éireann. Indeed, the "rules of the game" in the Irish lower house leave the executive in a position unrivalled among other European legislatures, including Westminster, where opposition rights are well developed and respected.
The adversarial nature of our parliamentary system is such that no incumbent government wishes to expose itself to increased opposition oversight, and the history of the development of standing orders since Independence has by and large witnessed a strengthening of that logic.
The irony here is that the Labour Party was itself responsible for the most recent step in that process when, after the 2002 election, it allowed the Taoiseach to exempt himself from parliament on a Thursday. This was in return for the maintenance of the Labour Party's already meagre allocation of speaking and questioning time, which was under threat from a numerically superior "technical group" of smaller parties and independent deputies.
Furthermore, while I do not wish to imply that the current chairman is by any means politically biased, the Office of Ceann Comhairle is inherently a partisan one, given that the parliamentary parties compete to win control of it. The holder of the office has little room for manoeuvre under current procedures and his interpretation of the existing rules, which are heavily weighted in favour of the executive, will inevitably cause frustration on the opposition benches. - Yours, etc.,
Dr MUIRIS MAC CÁRTHAIGH, Mourne Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12.