The crisis of confidence in Irish politics may provide an opportunity to conduct a genuine democratic audit, writes ELAINE BYRNE.
DOES HISTORY repeat itself? The ninetieth anniversary of the first Dáil last week reminded us about the consequences of political failure.
A Wicklow man held the seat of the British Empire to political ransom following the seminal 1885 election. The 86 seats of Charles Stewart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party determined the balance of power between the Liberals and the Tories. This was the first and only time that an Irish political party would affect the outcome of a British election. Joseph Chamberlain’s biographer would later write of Parnell: “the uncrowned king of Ireland had been a dictator in British politics”.
Within 30 years, the Irish Party was dead. The unprecedented 1918 election left them with just six seats and the great party of Parnell, Redmond and Dillon, obsolete.
John Redmond’s support for the Irish Volunteers in the first World War and his party’s failure fully to appreciate the significance of the Easter Rising, are two reasons often cited why. There is another.
A sustained Sinn Féin propaganda campaign successfully depicted their political opponents as corrupt. Dublin Castle, the seat of British government of Ireland, appointed those close to the Irish Party to the Civil Service, the county court system and local government. Redmond’s son-in-law was controversially assigned to the prestigious position of private secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, for example.
Although members of the Irish Party signed a pledge that promised “not to champion the cause of any one individual or become involved in any appointment process”, they became identified, in the public mind, as a party of political appointments and patronage. The Irish Party was accused of treachery, accepting “the Saxon shilling”.
Sinn Féin's electoral breakthrough came with Eamon de Valera's 1917 east Clare byelection win. De Valera's election literature included The Shan Van Vochtpoem, which described the Irish Party:
And their god is Saxon pay,
for four hundred pounds a year,
(And deny it over here),
Lies must choke their traitor breath . . .
Won the course of Judas gain.
The electorate lost trust in the establishment party. The Irish Party did not deserve this reputation of impropriety.
Sinn Féin undermined their legitimacy by exaggerating claims of patronage. The Irish Party, the dominant political force in Ireland for almost 40 years, was guilty of inherent compliancy and the assumption of the right to hold political office. The perception of patronage stuck and had a profound effect on the Free State government’s policy choices.
Hugh Kennedy, legal adviser to the Free State, wrote to his mother in February, 1923: “One of the outstanding principles of the Sinn Féin movement was the eradication of the horrible system of jobbery, which was corrupting public life and public administration in this country. It had become one of the worst features of the late Irish Parliamentary Party . . . I am determined, for my part, not to permit it in connection with any office with which I have any say”.
The young ministers of the Free State government established the Civil Service Commission in 1923 and the Local Appointments Commission in 1926. An independent appointment system based on the principle of meritocracy through competitive examination was introduced.
The long-term implications of this meritocracy policy led to a professionalised and competent Civil Service, defined by rule-based behaviour and detached from local and national political considerations.
The assumption of impartial recruitment, rather than patronage, into Ireland’s bureaucracy was a concept before its time for much of Europe. We have taken this for granted and forgotten the underlying motives why it was initiated.
The context was extraordinary. Despite newly-won independence, a divisive civil war and political inexperience, fundamental standards of political propriety were established and remain with us today.
The Department of Foreign Affairs argues that the Lisbon Reform Treaty will “make the European Union function more effectively and democratically so that it can better serve the interests of the people of Europe. It aims to respond to the needs of today’s European Union”. Should the same principle then also apply to Irish democracy? Does the current crisis of confidence in politics present an opportunity for Ireland, one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world, to conduct a genuine democratic audit?
Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue has acknowledged as much. Citing declining voting levels, he told RTÉ’s Week in Politics TV programme that more and more people were “divorced from democracy”.
Reassessment of our political institutions and practices will warrant fundamental reform of Dáil procedures, the elimination of unvouched political expenses, full disclosure of political parties’ financial accounts, an end to political appointments and a reduction of Ministers of State and TDs. The Dáil, rather than the social partnership process, will reassert its relevance as the centre of power .
The re-organisation of the Seanad appointment process will restore the power and prestige enjoyed by the Senate before 1936. Courageous reform will abolish the multi-seat, single transferable vote proportional representation system that produces a politics preoccupied with local electoral survival and not national policy.
With the benefit of hindsight, maybe John Redmond would have initiated change rather than waited for it. Does history repeat itself?