Campaign Diary Day 12 - Constitution Day

As regular readers will know I am all in favour of changing our current political structures. They have been shown to be not fit for purpose. However, you will also know that I'm not a fan of tinkering around the edges of the constitution. The primary document of the state is forever, not just for Christmas, and so modifications should be well thought out before being put to the people.

So Fine Gael's plan to put a series of amendments to the people within a year of taking power (possibly on the same day as the Presidential election in November) has set off some alarm bells. I'm going to look at each of the proposals in turn.

Cutting the number of politicians by 35%. This includes abolishing the Seanad and reducing the number of TDs by 20

I have already outlined my objections to getting rid of the Seanad. Similarly I don't think getting rid of 20 TDs is really going to solve any of the problems in the Oireachtas. There needs to be a major overhaul of the operation of the houses of the Oireachtas but cutting the numbers is just a stunt that has to be followed through on, following Enda Kenny's solo run about 18 months ago.

Giving Dáil Committees full powers of investigation

Where does the line between the judiciary and the legislature lie? What sort of investigations will the committees undertake? Would need to see a lot of detail on this before being happy. However, there have been times when compelling witnesses to attend committee meetings would be helpful and enabling this would be a good move.

Reducing the President’s term from seven to five years

The only reason I can think of this is to run the Presidential election at the same time as the local and European elections. No reason to do this at all except to allow more people have a go at being President.

Providing the Oireachtas with the power to cut judges’ pay

Like item two this is a very slippery slope. The entire point of this provision in the Constitution is to stop the Dáil from threatening Judges with pay cuts in order to keep their decisions in line with the Dáil's point of view. Again it impinges strongly on the separation of powers. With the legislature already completely dominated by the executive removing the current provision would just strengthen further the government's powers. Even if the power was never exercised it would always be left hanging over the judiciary. Not good.

Putting the Ombudsman on a constitutional footing

This is the most sensible of the suggestions. The Ombudsman's Office is a key part of open and accountable democracy and so I have no problem in formalizing its existence in the constitution.

Of course the proposals don't address any of the fundamental problems in our state. Nothing on equality, nothing on separation of church and state, nothing on freedom of information, nothing on term limits for politicians, nothing on making the executive more accountable to the legislature. This is pretty much a pointless exercise with one exception. I certainly know which way I'll be voting on these proposals if they are put before the people.

Large Constituencies

The Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution recently published the findings of its review of the electoral system. Running to 220 pages, it is quite the in-depth review and analysis of electoral systems in general, PR-STV in particular and various other matters relating to how we run elections in this country. Of particular interest to me were two sections towards the end - 5.62 about the boundaries of constituencies and 5.67 recommending at least 4 TDs per constituency.

Currently the constitution only puts a lower bound on the number of TDs per constituency at 3. Therefore all that is needed to have nice large, proportional constituencies is some legislation amending the schedule that describes the various Dáil constituencies. The report suggests that boundaries should respect natural and county boundaries as much as possible and also not artificially divide towns, like has happened to Swords in the last review. Putting these two rules together and you can come up with some entertaining constituencies.

Firstly I have based these divisions on the results of the 2006 census and keeping the number of TDs at 166. Secondly I have kept counties intact as opposed to the current method of moving odd electoral districts across county boundaries so the ratios are not as consistent as they should be.

County	Population	Seats	Notes
Dublin	1,187,176	47	Split into 6 constituencies
Cork	481,2925	19	Split into 3 constituencies
Galway	231,670	9	Largest single county constituency
Kildare	186,335	7
Limerick	184,055	7
Meath	162,831	6
Tipperary	149,244	6
Donegal	147,264	6
Kerry	139,835	6
Wexford	131,749	5	Largest current existing constituency
Wicklow	126,194	5
Mayo	123,893	5
Louth	111,267	4	Merge with Monaghan
Clare	110,950	4
Waterford	107,961	4	Smallest single county constituency
Kilkenny	87,558	4	Merge with Carlow
Westmeath	79,346	3	Merge with Laois and Offaly
Offaly	70,868	3	Merge with Westmeath and Laois
Laois	67,059	3	Merge with Westmeath and Offaly
Cavan	64,003	3	Merge with Longford and Leitrim
Sligo	60,894	2	Merge with Roscommon
Roscommon	58,768	2	Merge with Sligo
Monaghan	55,816	2	Merge with Louth
Carlow	50,349	2	Merge with Kilkenny
Longford	34,391	1	Merge with Cavan and Leitrim
Leitrim	28,950	1	Merge with Cavan and Longford

The Dublin split would need some re-jigging of existing constituencies but basically you could pair up North and West(8), North East and North Central(6), Central and North West(7), South East and South Central(9), Mid West and South West(8), South and Dún Laoghaire(9).

Cork is a bit more problematic - you would want a City constituency with 7 seats and then two county constituencies East and West each with 6. The current layout is not particularly amenable to this arrangement and so substantial changes would be required.

In this scheme all constituencies return at least 4 members (Clare and Waterford both having this size along with the new Sligo/Roscommon) and range up to 9 in Galway and the Midlands (Westmeath, Offaly and Laois). Kerry turns out to be the biggest winner by being over-represented by just over 0.5 of a TD with Sligo/Roscommon loosing out on 0.68 of a TD. I can already hear the "No taxation for under-representation" chants beginning.

A woman's place

I swear this will be the last post to come from last week's Leviathan. Towards the end of the evening, Article 41 came in for a bit of flak. This is the infamous bit that talks about the woman's place in the home.

41.2.1 In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
41.2.2 The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home

Unfortunately, the position from the panel was to make this clause gender neutral rather than dispense with it entirely. Were we to do so, we would be constitutionally protecting the right to rely on social welfare and never leave the house for all citizens. The system would last about one week in those circumstances.

In a way it would be a shame to see 41.2 be dumped from the Constitution. For the time in which it was written it was a very progressive sub-clause. By recognizing that there was value, both socially and economically, to the work that women were doing in the home, the feminist movement in Ireland took a big step forward. However, now it is completely out of date and should be junked. After all, the individualisation of tax credits by McCreevy a few years back should have been challenged on the basis of this clause and yet wasn't. So if we're actually ignoring sections of the Constitution then why have them at all.

Kildare Street Confidential

Last night at Leviathan one of the contributors (Gerard Hogan I think) mentioned that cabinet confidentiality had a couple of exceptions written into the Constitution. 28.4.3 is the relevant article and reads as follows

The confidentiality of discussions at meetings of the Government shall be respected in all circumstances save only where the High Court determines that disclosure should be made in respect of a particular matter

• in the interests of the administration of justice by a Court, or
  
• by virtue of an overriding public interest, pursuant to an application in that behalf by a tribunal appointed by the Government or a Minister of the Government on the authority of the Houses of the Oireachtas to inquire into a matter stated by them to be of public importance.
  

This clause was introduced by the 17th amendment that was approved in November 1997 following a ruling by the Supreme Court that stated that the confidentiality of cabinet meetings was inviolate. The new clause allows a tribunal of enquiry to apply to the High Court for an order to breach the confidentiality in cases of overriding public interest.

It was thrown out last night that this might be a way to force the banking enquiry to be held in public. However, from my non legal reading of the above clause, this is not the case. An Oireachtas enquiry is not a tribunal, therefore the committee of enquiry cannot make such an application. This leaves it up to the Minister in charge of the enquiry who I assume will be Brian Lenihan in his role as Minister for Finance. But it seems highly unlikely that he will want the omerta broken since he and his colleagues are the ones who were making the decisions.

Even if such an application were granted by the High Court, I wonder what sort of record is kept of cabinet meetings. Are they recorded in audio or video? Is there a stenographer in the corner typing away furiously? Is it just notes that are scribbled by Ministers? Do assistants and heads of department attend cabinet to help their Minister, or are they just summoned when required? Would breaching the confidentiality require some form of mature recollection by the cabinet members?

Electoral Reform

A while back I posted some thoughts on our voting system and suggested a few changes that I would make to it. After last night's Oireachtas Committee meeting in TCD it seems like a good time to return to it. At the event, students gave a brief oral summary of a written submission they had made to the committee. Some of the presentations focused on the mechanics of elections such as using the Gregory method for transfer of surpluses or order of candidate names on ballot papers. Others focused on participation through extending voting to ex-pats, addressing the gender imbalance in politics and reducing the voting age to 16. Each of the presentations was the responded to by a member of the Oireachtas committee.

There followed a debate chaired by John Bowman with Noel Dempsey, Ivana Bacik, Justice Frank Clarke and Prof Ken Benoit joining Sean Ardagh and Jim O'Keefe on the panel. There were also contributions from the floor by Joanna Tuffy, Gemma Hussey, Prof David Farrell and many members of the public. A lot of the discussion centred around women's participation in politics and whether there should be gender quotas built into the system. Other topics covered included the method for reform and whether any modifications to the system by elected TDs and Senators could accepted by the public as honest efforts at improvements rather than a cynical exercise in protecting themselves.

Seeing as this was a meeting of the Committee on the Constitution focusing on the electoral system for members to Dáil Éireann, a lot of the issues raised were actually outside the scope. Most items such as gender quotas, ballot paper order and the franchise can all be changed using legislation without recourse to changing the constitution. So what items would I like to see modified in Article 16?

• 16.1.1 - Why do you need to be 21 to be a member of the Dáil?
• 16.1.2 - Reduce the voting age to 16. I have rolled back from my more extreme point of 15 (12 for locals)
  
• 16.1.5/6 - Introduce a list system to avoid elections being popularity contests. This system should retain multi-seat constituencies and PR-STV for about 100 members and then elect about 60 from the list.
  
• Add a subsection to 16.1.1 introducing time limits for membership of the Dáil, maybe 3 sessions or 12 years, which ever is longer
  
• 16.1.7 - Add a time limit for seats being kept vacant. 3 months should be sufficient.
  

Of course, these changes should only be part of a wider change in the system of politics in the country. We need a stronger separation of legislative and executive. We need more powers and responsibilities devolved to local government. We need to take a long, hard look at the role and composition of the Seanad. We need to have better engagement between politics and the public on matters of policy. We need the system to encourage participation from all walks of life. Will any of this be delivered in the near future? I doubt it but we can all keep chipping away.

Constitution Week?

This evening the Exam Hall in TCD hosts a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution followed by a Q&A session chaired by John Bowman. Seems like it is the place to be as almost all of the 330 available tickets have been snapped up. The official business will consist of formal submissions by various politics students to the Committee on the topic of electoral reform. It will be interesting to see if they start advocating assorted list systems or just tinkering with the existing multi-seat setup.

The Q&A session is where the real sparks will fly (hopefully!) as the general public will be allowed contribute to the debate. I'm expecting all sorts of weird and wacky proposals and comments from the usual lunatic fringe. The reform seminar that was held last June had an interesting set of contributors from academia, the media, politics and the hoi-poloi. If the quality of discussion is anywhere close to that, then we should be in for a treat.

Then on Thursday, Leviathan starts up again with a show on re-writing the Constituion. While this event may be slightly lower brow than tonight's, again it should be an entertaining and informative evening. I guess most of the attendees at this will also have been at the TCD event so hopefully the two events won't end up covering the same ground.