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Why Electoral Reform?

"In Ireland, ALL politics is local politics." It's an adage as old as the hills and most of you will have heard it already. The problem with this is that, by reflection, in Ireland, no politics is national politics. Nobody in Ireland, or at least, very few people, get elected on the basis of their national agenda. No politician can spend his or her time focusing completely on economic management, or transport strategy, or anything else because if they did that, they wouldn't get elected. If they did that, and didn't get the planning permission for the shop on main street or fixed the pothole or walked up and down the local area, they wouldn't get re-elected. It's as simple as that. Result, we have a consistent deficiency in economic planning, transport planning, in all the national priorities.

Now, people will say, "But this way we have great access to locally elected politicians." And that's true, but what we don't have is any access at all to politicians with clear sets of national plans and clear national priorities, as these are all taking a back seat.

Another problem is the type of politician this electoral system returns. The reality is, the Dail is very largely an old boys club. Women? A token few that's it. And how many of them inherited their daddy's seat? Young men, say, under 40? Not many. Young women under 40? Fewer still. The electoral system we have promotes this. To get a name as being a man or woman that can get things done, you do a few years on the council. Maybe a couple as mayor. Then with the profile built locally, and known and liked by the grass roots, you go out and go for the Dail. Second try round you get in, ahh sure first time you were 2nd or 3rd on the ticket, and now your dail career begins.

To get this far, what have you had to do? Well, you have to have gained favour with the local cumman / party group to get nominated. And you have to have helped out a few business heads or someone to get the cash for a campaign. You have to have helped out the local businesses with planning applications, you have to have promised all the local moaners to fix the potholes / roundabouts / street lights. You have to have gotten enough favour with the local corporation that you can get them to fix that pothole / roundabout whatever it is.

Those that are good at this sort of thing get elected. Is it any wonder then that when they get to power, what do they do only what they have been doing for the last 10 years or more, and ... Hey presto. When you are in the Dail you need to do favours to get a government office de-centralised to your constituency, you need to make sure the bypass goes the right side of town to make sure the lads do well on the compulsory purchase orders and if you are good at all that you get to be a minister, your local authority gets a huge pile of money to make you look good while you are off at all those cabinet meetings and whoever did you the most favours back home goes around the constituency showing off all the bacon you brought home, so he can be 2nd on the ticket with you at the next election.

Is it any wonder they do a few favours for the lads when they are in?

How long does someone with very strong principals last in this game?

And there you have it. It really is as simple as that. Most of you know it already. And if they are still around, ask your parents.

The other problem with our current system, it's not quite as "Proportional" as you might think. At the last election, Fianna Fail won XX percent of the first preference votes of the total electorate in the country, and formed a government. In the 1997 they got XX percent, and formed a government.

The small constituency sizes, especially the 3 seaters found outside the big urban areas, mean any small party can get 10 or 15% of first preference votes, and all that it will matter is who they gave the transfers too. This is common. If you are a socialist by nature and live in Edenderry or Banagher or even Tullamore, and you'd like to vote Labour, well there's just no point. You are not going to get them anywhere.

Why Change it? How will this help?

Consider the list system of voting. Here's how it works in Sweden. There are 100 Seats in the main house. Every party puts in a list of 100 candidates, numbered one to one hundred.

On election day, you go into the polling booth and vote for a party. That's it. Then if party A get's 21 % of the vote, they get 21% of the seats, 21 seats. If party B gets 35% of the vote, they get 35% of the seats, or 35 seats. There are a few other simple rules, minimum amounts for representation etc but basically that's it. Simple isn't it? And a lot more "Proportional" than what we have now.

If we move to a system like the German or Swedish one, Countries handing out bailouts, not taking them, we will have better fairer electoral outcomes.

There are other benefits too. Who does well in that system? Back slapping 'look after the lads' guys, or intelligent fair minded people? What gets you elected? Jobs for the boys? Or economic plans that bring prosperity? In Swden, the Liberal's set a 40% female quota on their list in the 70's. The result? The move was hugely popular, they won a massive proportion of the vote, and in the next election the other parties had no option but to follow suit and do likewise. The result of that? In only the space of 2 or 3 elections, they had close to 50/50 split in their parliament.

It gives you a much clearer idea of who'll be running the country if your party wins, as most parties name people in the top 10-20 names on their list as "provisional health minister" or "proposed finance minister."

And this system means these people can spend their time talking to the nation about why their plan, considering the needs of all equally as they have to get everyone's vote, and not just looking after their own little patch.

It's all well and good having "Local candidates that have to come to the people," but I live in a 5 seat constituency, and not one of those people represents me, or ANYONE I know. I'm a trained economist. I've been a computer programmer. I've lived 4 years of my life outside Ireland. I was a statistician, and believe in professional cold hearted analysis, not knee jerk sound bites.

The dail has no gay people, no-one from an ethnic minority, very very few working class people, few women, almost no-one my age and I'm 34, I'm not exactly a teenager, and no-one is looking after the things I want looked after as a priority.

Electoral reform has in Ireland one other serious benefit, it would force the two main parties to engage with sections of the population and of society outside of their own camps. It would make life very hard for both of them, and that's a good thing.

Other Measures

There's no point banning political donations unless the tax payer is going to fund the election. There's no point in limiting the donations to €200 either. Why not? Well because it's too easy to get around. Ok, I can’t give Fianna whoever €10,000, but I can give them €200 myself, my wife can give €200, my mate €200, my company can give €200, my mates company can give €200 and we can all do this once a month for 5 months with no more effort than a phone call to my telephone banking system, I won’t even have to go to the bank branch!

We propose clarity. Let anyone give any amount of money they like to a political party, but that money must come with a name attached, who's giving it, and how much, and the parties financial records have to be public. Let them give all they want, so long as we can all see it.

Expenses. A nice benefit of moving to the list system, there's no need for expense accounts any more. Let the politicians live wherever they like, any money spent going to and from the dail because you live further away will be saved in how much cheaper life is the further you get from Dublin.

The Oireachtas can hire the secretaries, no need to put your husband or wife on the payroll, and let local politicans handle local issues at the council offices the elected ones work in. Bang, no more Ivor Calley.

Dail procedures; A massive overhaul of Dail procedures is required. The list here is endless, but in particular, there has to be a procedure to demand that a minister answer a question related to the business of his or her department in a set amount of time, so that they have to know what their departments are doing.

A provision for far more sitting days is required, and a provision to increase or change the days as need arises is also necessary.

No serving Dail member can lift ANY state pension of any type.

Health Reform

Every party says they will fix the Dept. of Health, everyone who’s ever been sick or had a loved one be sick wants it sorted. I’m no different. So, without further delay, here are my intended Health reforms;

Break up the Department completely.

The Dept. of Health is just too big. It spends almost a third of government money, and has too many duties and areas of responsibility. It is too unwieldy to manage, and too unresponsive. It seems no matter what Minister is in place, he or she is simply punch drunk, constantly. It is referred to as “Angola” or “Drinking from the Poison Chalice,” and with good reason too. We increased spending by two thirds not long ago and didn’t see an end to trolleys and bed shortages. The problem seems intractable. This also has a knock on effect on the politics of the nation. The Health Minister is essentially someone who “Takes a hit for the team.” He or she is never going to be popular, so they do it to earn points inside their political parties. And why shouldn’t they, no one in their right mind would want the job.

I propose a Minister for acute care hospitals, a Minister for social provision, (or some such title), a junior minister for Mental health and a junior minister for child services.

The logic is simple.

• By breaking the ministry into smaller pieces, each should be easier to manage.
• By breaking the ministry into smaller pieces, there would be far more accountability to the people. No one can blame the current minister for the current state of affairs, but if they only had responsibility for hospitals, medical card schemes, which ever, there should be more accountability.
• Cost savings on huge numbers of management levels. No more HSE.
• Easier to implement reforms and changes.
• Easier to modernise. Remember the P-Pars scandal? 130 Million on payroll software, because there were sooo many jobs to be managed.
• And hopefully, more political will and ambition for the roles. A better chance to show someone they can make a difference will get you more of those people that want to make a difference. Politicians need motivation too, and pointing them at a nightmare scenario just won’t do it.

The minister for acute care hospitals would be responsible for, acute care hospitals. That’s it. Hopefully this would mean the activities of the likes of Michael Neary would get spotted quicker, or when the wrong test results go out to smear test patients, someone will be held accountable.

The minister for social provision or medical provision would look after medical cards, rent allowance, nursing homes, etc etc.

I also feel the junior ministries are necessary because we have a serious issue with suicide in this country and no-one seems to be doing anything about it, no one from the government anyway.

And a junior minister for child services simply because we cannot allow any more slip ups in that area.

Ultimately the logic is, if a problem seems intractable, break it down.