Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Jan 1983

Vol. 339 No. 5

Dáil Reform: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann resolves that its procedures should be reformed to improve efficiency and its control over the public finances.

—(Minister for Industry and Energy.)

Mrs. Owen

Before Question Time I was talking about image-building and the improvement of the image of this Parliament with regard to the perception that the public have of us here. Even this debate, which is perhaps a public wearing of sackcloth and ashes, the showing up of where we as politicians have fallen down on the job and where the structures have fallen down, in itself is part of an improvement in giving a better perception of what we are doing here. We have just gone through an hour of Question Time. For most Deputies, certainly for new Deputies who have come in here in the past 18 months or two years, Question Time was about the only time they saw any relevance to what was going on outside and to what they hoped they might be able to achieve in here. I am a member of a local authority who have standing orders under which we may table a limited number of questions for our county council meetings. Generally speaking those questions relate to telephone boxes, footpaths and issues very local in our constituencies. I was under the impression that perhaps Question Time in the Dáil would relate to trying to elicit information from Ministers as to what policies they hoped to pursue in Government, what policies they said they would pursue and were not pursuing, and generally matters dealing with the Legislature. Question Time deals almost exclusively, certainly 75 per cent of the time, with matters which are grist to the mill of our journalists and of satirical and Mike Murphy type programmes which feature plenty of discussion about telephone boxes on the furthest peninsulas of the island, drainage schemes etc. and the answers produce certain merriment. Question Time could be used much more productively in following the progress of government and bringing about changes in legislation. However, it would be naive of me to say that we should forbid questions of the nature that we are getting now as long as the system exists in which Deputies find it so difficult to get that information from the various public service Departments.

In seeking Dáil reform we must also look at reform further back along the line at the grassroots level of political parties so that people coming into politics are better trained and equipped for the job. Equally when talking about Dáil reform we must talk about reform of the public service and the mechanisms whereby those people elected to represent constituencies can get the information they need, and so that the public themselves can get the information they need, thus ensuring that Deputies do not spend their whole political careers sitting at clinics listening to problems which the people themselves should be able to tackle and solve. Unfortunately, almost 80 per cent of the time of most Dáil representatives here is spent in dealing with constituency work. That is a sad reflection on our whole parliamentary system. Once elected to the national Parliament one should be able to address oneself to the changing, amending and preparation of policy and legislation. That is what the national Parliament should be about. Most of us spend a great deal of our time dealing with problems for our constituents because they themselves cannot do it. It is not because they do not want to but because after making 20 phone calls they become so frustrated that they go to their public representative in the hope that the use of his name might get them the information they seek. Therefore, we must build into Dáil reform, reform of the public service and the structures whereby information can be got by the general public and by Dáil Deputies. If my North County colleague, the Minister for the Public Service, gets an opportunity to contribute on this debate he might address himself to areas of reform in the public service which would make the jobs of Dáil Deputies easier so that they can have more time to deal with the job they came here to do.

More use could be made of written answers to Dáil questions. In that way we could get through more questions. Sometimes the answer in written form is just as satisfactory as being given in public and the media will utilise written answers to questions as they will use the oral answers. There is no point in raising the level — I use the word advisedly — of the questions put down for answer here unless we raise equally the availability of the information we seek here at the public service level.

Politicians themselves must take a share of the blame for many of the problems we have about the lack of image of this Parliament. I came in here in June 1981 and a budget was put through in July. Then we spent weeks and weeks of debate discussing that budget that was long since gone. All the necessary mechanisms had been put through to implement the various duties, raises in prices and changes in social welfare payments, yet we went on for weeks debating that budget. I put my name down to contribute to it and I asked what one should talk about. An old hand here in the House told me to use it as a forum to say anything that I wanted to say, to start at A and work through to Z and speak about anything. That may have certain merit in allowing new Deputies to give an airing to some things that they would like to air, but in the order of things it is not a very constructive way to run our country, to spend weeks after a budget and Finance Bill have been gone through debating something that none of us can change. That change put forward by Minister Bruton should be brought about as quickly as possible whereby the Estimates and the financial situation are discussed before the final decisions are taken so that at least the backbenchers feel that somebody down there or up there is listening to what they have to say and that some of their ideas and thoughts can be put into the final frame of the budget and the Estimates. I hope that that area of change will come about very quickly.

I have referred to the Dáil committee system and the fact that standing committees on various topics that were to come up have not got off the ground in the 18 months that I was here. I managed to serve only on the Committee on Procedure and Privileges and except for two meetings I did not manage to serve on any committee that got down to talking about policy. That was a pity. I hope that these committees can be set up very quickly.

A number of Deputies have raised the question of radio and television coverage of debates here. I think that that is long overdue. It may be in one way a surprise to the public to hear what goes on in here. This coverage must have a good effect on the standard of our debating. We must all be conscious of what we are saying, more so when it is to be broadcast on radio. I am not saying that radio coverage of what goes on here will comprise fantastic listening and that people will be sitting with their ears glued to their radios to hear every golden syllable that drops out of our mouths, but it would serve the purpose of allowing the public to know what is going on here and would heighten their awareness that matters being discussed here effect them, contrary to our image at the moment of doing nothing in here except talking about telephone boxes, drainage schemes and so on. The radio coverage of committees should also be considered because of the good non-party type of work that they do. The general public are becoming tired of the image that everything we do is based on one party or another and that never the twain shall meet.

There are many areas, particularly in relation to social reform and social policy, where there is no disagreement in the House. It is important that the public realise that there are areas where there is a lot of agreement on improvements and reform. I believe if the committee system was carried by radio that it would help people to realise that we were not all at each other's throats and are not bringing about changes principally because I am Fine Gael and somebody else is Fianna Fáil, that I do not want to see an improvement coming in because it was put forward by a Fianna Fáil Member or vice versa. It is important that we are seen to have areas of consensus, that those areas of consensus can be brought forward to those committees and put into our Legislature for the betterment of the country. I join with the other Deputies who have called for radio coverage of what goes on here.

With regard to the setting up of a committee system to deal with legislation we will have to be realistic about this. I have heard a number of people, in the House and outside it, informally saying that we should extend the sitting time to an extra day in the week and perhaps that extra day, Friday, could be used to have meetings of committees to process legislation. Let us be realistic. A very high percentage of Deputies travel many miles up here for three days of the week and their constituency work necessitates that they be in their constituencies for at least two or three days a week. They and their families must insist on having some time together.

My worry about bringing in committees that would meet primarily on Fridays is that rural Deputies eventually could play no part in those committees because they would find themselves leaving here on Thursday evenings to attend their clinics and to attend all their meetings, that are held on Fridays and Saturdays, and those committees would be composed of Dublin city and Dublin county based Deputies or the counties just surrounding Dublin. That would be a very one-sided type of committee to deal with legislation and would not be good.

Anybody looking at setting up committees must realise that just setting up committees to sit on Fridays would not meet the purpose behind setting up those committees. I urge that we look at this very carefully before we decide to set another day aside for parliamentary business: that there would not be any divisions on that day, there would be no whip on Deputies to be here and the committees would fall down. I gather in 1974 and 1975, when committees were set up to deal with various legislation, that the attendance was not always very good. It is difficult, until we change some of the other structures, for Deputies to put the kind of time they would like into those committees.

We are talking about Dáil reform but those of us who are preaching about it must also accept that it is in our hands to bring about that Dáil reform. We are all crying that we do not get enough time to talk about nitty-gritty things of policy formation but it is in our hands to give ourselves the time to do that, to give ourselves the power to do that and to set up structures to allow us to do that. We must not leave ourselves open to the criticisms involved in the old phrase: "Me think you doth protest too much". We can protest and protest. I hope when we set up some new structures in the House that we will take on the responsibility that those new structures will put on us and take part in all these new committees, try to change our role so that we will be able to utilise research facilities, which are not very adequate at the moment. A number of us — I am sure many of those on the other side of the House were also asked — were asked if we would like to take a research assistant, some person coming from America. When I was asked about it I said I was not really organised enough to know enough about what what going on here to make much use of a research assistant. That was an indictment of myself but I believe it was also an indictment of the 18 months I have been in here that I have not managed to take part in the preparation of any legislation. I am not learned enough to know about the whole system to be able to utilise the services of a research assistant, to be able to give that person work and tell that person to go off and research this or that for me. I had to say that I needed to do the research myself so I could learn what I am about in here.

We are now having this open debate. I hope the Minister for Industry and Energy will gather all the suggestions and the complaints that have been made across the House by the various Deputies, some with far more experience than I have. Perhaps the newer Deputies can look at the matter with a fresh mind and see perhaps some of the mistakes that are there easier than some people who have been here for many years. I hope all those will be compiled so that we can see the immediate effects of this debate, that it will not be just another talking shop, something prepared and put into a report which is lodged in the Library to gather dust there until the next session when somebody else will come in and say that we should have a debate on Dáil reform. I hope we will be able to follow the momentum created by the wisdom of having this debate, bring about really legitimate changes that will see a change in our system, to make our role more meaningful here to ourselves and the general public.

Mr. O'Malley

Several speakers in the debate, including Deputy Owen, have drawn attention to the undeniable fact that a large proportion of the time of nearly all Members of the House is devoted to what is broadly called constituency work and Members have found themselves unable to give the time or attention that is required to the legislative or committee work that Deputy Owen and others have described. That is a perfectly accurate statement but we have to face the fact that in the circumstances in which the Members of the House are elected we will never get away from that problem if we do not make some radical changes.

One of the major problems of this Parliament is that its members are elected in multi-seat constituencies by single transferable vote. One is always under considerable pressure or potential pressure in one constituency. In electoral terms one responds to that by meeting non-legislative needs, to put it at its highest. The phrase I use covers a multitude. It is tiresome, repetitive and not very stimulating but still it is taken for granted. I often think that it is a wonder that at times any legislative work can be carried on here because of those kinds of pressures. It is very few people who can ignore them. Some good men who sought to ignore them in the House are no longer in the House as a result of the exercise by them of that choice. This is a very great pity. What can we do about that? I do not believe there is a lot we can do about it.

The only two unsuccessful referenda held in this country were to get rid of proportional representation. That failed and I doubt if any Government will be sufficiently foolhardy at any time in the future to try it again. Of course we could retain proportional representation with single-seat constituencies. In 1968 the then Deputy Norton proposed that system as an amendment to what was the second of the referenda being promoted at that time but the Government of the day and the House rejected the proposal. However, that sort of proposal could be brought forward again. There are arguments for it and possibly some against it also. There is a third alternative that has never been considered seriously, that is, some form of list system whereby PR could be retained but because the condidates would be on a list they would not be under the same pressure in a constituency and could devote a very much higher proportion of their time to parliamentary work as opposed to the provision of social services and advice bureaux. In that way perhaps we could bring the situation of Members of this Parliament more on to a level that is akin to that enjoyed by members of many other parliaments where their primary function as legislators is recognised and is accepted in practice.

The Constitution makes it clear that the sole power of making what are referred to as laws for the State is vested in the Oireachtas. In practice that means primarily in this House but law also has a particular meaning in that article of the Constitution. In effect it means only laws that are enacted because they are Acts of the Oireachtas. It does not mean anything else because the power to make all the other laws, many of which are enormously important, has been delegated long since by the Oireachtas. If this had not been the case the congestion in this House would be even greater than it is but on the other hand the degree of delegation has perhaps gone far beyond anything that could have been contemplated when that system was first put into practice. It is possible, for example, under the European Communities Act of 1972 to make an enormous number of statutory instruments and regulations which would have the power of amending law in this country or of making new law involving a huge range of topics that are in any way connected with our membership of the EEC. Under many other individual Acts there are considerable powers of legislation other than by the passage of Bills through both Houses here.

The most startling development perhaps that has come about in recent years and of which we had a very good example earlier this month is the imposition of huge taxes by way other than by the passing of law in both Houses. It could hardly have been envisaged in 1956 when that relatively innocent Act was passed that entire budgets involving enormous tax increases would be introduced while the House was in recess and by virtue of an Act which was meant to enable us to exercise some control on imports at a time when protectionism was the current economic policy here and before we had moved into the era of free trade which we now enjoy. For philosophical and trade policy reasons that 1956 Act should be repealed. It should not be used budgetarily as an instrument for surreptitious vacation which is what has been happening.

I was chairman of a committee which sat in 1971 and reported in 1972 on reform of procedure in the Oireachtas. We were not very adventurous. We seemed to have a fairly limited remit, a remit not really to look fundamentally at the procedures of the Oireachtas but to look at the existing ones and see how they could be updated. We made 40 to 50 recommendations which I think were put into practice and were of some help. As paragraph 5 of that report indicates, we believed that a wide-ranging examination might profitably be undertaken to establish how effectively the Houses of the Oireachtas were discharging their functions in the circumstances of the time. That was more than ten years ago and this debate is probably the first serious effort since then to come to grips with some of the problems. Many of the speeches are somewhat like that report in that they contain suggestions as to how procedure could be improved within the present framework and there has not been a serious attempt on the part of many Deputies to go back to fundamentals and ask whether the general procedures that are enshrined in Standing Orders and in precedent are even remotely relevant to our present circumstances.

By and large these tend to emanate from what was appropriate parliamentary procedure in Victorian England. Victorian England is a long way away in terms of social, political and economic terms from the Ireland of the eighties and its problems. It amazes me that we should consider it good enough for our Standing Orders simply to fiddle around with the details of an essentially Victorian and British institution. We must go much further and consider repealing the entire Standing Orders and think out a whole new approach that is relevant to today. One of the most compelling differences between the overall social, economic and political system that existed in Victorian England and that which exists in Ireland today is the fact that the State sector as we would now call it in its broadest sense played very little part in the affairs of Victorian England and did not have to be reflected to any great extent in the parliamentary procedures which they drew up at that time as being appropriate to their then circumstances.

Let us consider the difference in Ireland today. The State dominates, indeed domineers, everything. In areas in which the State does not play a major part we hear calls frequently for it to play a major part. People no longer consider that they can operate on their own with the result that the State has its clammy hand on virtually every form of human activity in the State. But our parliamentary procedures do not reflect that situation. We have been reminded during this debate, for instance, that the Public Capital Programme which is of enormous importance in our economic life is never debated here except incidentally perhaps in the course of some other debate. It never has to be passed despite its having the most fundamental and far-reaching consequences for economic planning and development.

There is a presumption running through our Constitution, and indeed through our Parliamentary procedure, that taxes may not be imposed on the people unless this House so agrees and unless the proposal to impose taxation is moved by a member of the Government. Still we had the budget of 8 January when the House was in recess and it has to be retrospectively validated, I think, by legislation before 31 December of next year, almost 24 months after it was imposed — not here but in Merrion Street. That runs entirely counter to the spirit of our Constitution and the spirit of what is meant to be our parliamentary procedure and which is quite unable to deal with it. Should our parliamentary procedure therefore not be radically changed to take account of this?

We have at present nearly 100 semi-State bodies engaged in commercial activity or economic promotional activity of one kind or another. When our Standing Orders were drawn up in 1923 we had no semi-State bodies and we have taken no account of them since. In so far as they are discussed here it is almost by accident. Some of them need occasional legislation to increase their borrowing or capital limits and it may be that there is a debate every five or ten years as a result. More of them do not need that kind of legislation and as a result there is never a debate. Ministers are not answerable to this House for the activities of those bodies because they are seen as autonomous but they have an enormous effect on the economic and social life of the country and they are a major part of the already too-big State sector. Are our procedures, therefore, not very unreal when we take no account of that?

The first account that was taken, I think, was when a committee was set up two or three years ago to look at them one after the other. It was very much a once-off procedure and it is likely that many of those bodies will not be looked at again for several more years. Would it not be better, if we are going to continue our attitude of the dominance of the State sector and the encouragement of further incursions by the State, to get our procedure clear in this House to reflect that back? If we do not get our procedures to reflect that back, is there any hope or point in asking that we might have a change of heart and move away from this excessive obsession with the necessity for the State to involve itself in so much of what is happening in this and other countries?

The Minister in his speech and in some of the documents he published before it, laid much emphasis on all the work committees could and should do here. We did, I recall, consider that in 1972. There was a definite problem that had better be recognised; this House is simply too small to have taken that kind of committee system envisaged and it will not be able to work because everybody who is in Government or is a Minister of State is more or less excluded. The Ceann Comhairle and Leas-Cheann Comhairle are excluded and quite a number of Deputies for one reason or another are not in a position to make a contribution over a period to committees which are involved perhaps often with technical and difficult subjects. The result is that there is a relatively small pool of people available for that kind of work and they will not be able to do it.

It is not enough to make facile comparisons with the US where the House of Representatives has about 450 members and the Senate 100 and where they have to deal only with federal matters. They do not have to deal with State matters. We have to deal with both. We have nothing like the facilities they have and our system is fundamentally different because no members of the Government of the US are members of either House and cannot be. The British system is also quite different with 635 members in the House of Commons. Their possibilities for the use of committees are far greater than ours. Nonetheless, within certain limitations greater use should be sought to be made of them and I look forward with interest to see how that develops.

A number of Deputies, particularly Deputy Frank Fahey, yesterday drew attention to the fact that often the debates here seem unreal and far removed from the actual problems existing. We often have very prolonged debates which become repetitive fairly quickly. He listed many things that are rarely if ever discussed here or have not been discussed for quite a number of years and which are of great importance. He omitted one significant area that has not been debated here with any sort of regularity but which is of crucial importance. That is the situation in Northern Ireland which is so rarely touched on. It is hard to believe that only 60 miles from this House there is this awful situation where on average several people every week die violent deaths and where our names are often invoked and our State in aid of some of the appalling deeds perpetrated there. Why does it seem so remote from us? Why does it seem so remote from this House, from the business, deals and discussions here? I often think those of us in this Chamber must in some way be like the players on the Abbey stage at the first production of Synge's "Playboy" because we are vainly trying to carry on the play while all around there are riots in the auditorium and we pay little attention to them.

Mr. Kelly

The riots were caused by the play.

Mr. O'Malley

This is possibly one of the more interesting days on which one could make this comparison but it has often been a feature of this House that the interest is so infrequently on what is done or said in this Chamber and so much on what goes on elsewhere. That reflects itself in our willingness to debate at considerable length at times things that have lost their relevance. These extraordinarily prolonged economic debates which go on for weeks on end are an absolute waste of time and money. I hope the Government and parties generally through their Whips will agree to bring an end to that system and begin to look for the first time at a fundamental reappraisal of what should be important in a national parliament rather than accept that because certain methods were appropriate to the England of the 1880s they are appropriate to Ireland of the 1980s.

I have been a frequent complainer about our inability to bring our legal system up to date and put greater reality into it. It is difficult to criticise them, slow as they are, when our parliamentary system is at least as archaic as our legal system.

In conclusion, I can see absolutely no reason why debates in this House are not broadcast at least on radio. I see no valid objection to broadcasting them now and it might do much to raise the standard of debate. The television question is rather more difficult and, frankly, it might be a facility provided on more limited occasions but I do not see why radio broadcasting should not be a permanent feature. We have no reason to believe that it is likely to be abused or that quotations will be taken out of context. Reporting of this House by RTE over the years has been, by and large, pretty accurate and fair. It would do a great deal to raise the standard of the House and make it a more relevant place if selected parts were available on radio to citizens who might never have the opportunity of coming here. My mind boggles a little at the thought as I am about to sit down and Deputy John Kelly is about to stand up that RTE might want to broadcast a commercial for cornflakes between the two of us.

Mr. Kelly

I should like to begin by taking up three points made very well by Deputy O'Malley during the past few minutes. He castigated this House for long, rambling, irrelevant debate on financial and economic matters, largely absorbed in mutual castigation as predictable as a ritual oriental battle dance where the audience, rather like children who have become accustomed to the words of a fairytale and will not tolerate any deviation from the canonical wording, have grown accustomed to a certain pattern of events and have an almost superstitious dread of departing from it. I agree unreservedly with Deputy O'Malley that such debates are irrelevant and the reason is that there is no point of principle between us, so far as the biggest element on either side of the House is concerned. Although I have differed bitterly from Deputy O'Malley on many matters in the past, provoked no doubt by partisan feelings of my own and provoked beyond any and all endurance by his partisan feelings, I heartily endorse every word he spoke on the subject of the changed nature of the State compared with Victorian England, about the apparently unstoppable encroachment of the State into our affairs and the necessity for any kind of a free parliamentary system to exercise control on the enormous sums of money dispensed in its name by the very body for which Ministers here are not answerable. There is no issue between us on this and many other matters of this kind would come into the same category.

The reason this House has often spent weary weeks in economic debate is that there is nothing to discuss, except to emphasise how much money we handed out and how mean the other side are or were, to boast about one's own achievements, modest though they may be and however great the extent to which they are attributable to the initiative of some nameless public servant, and to belittle the achievements of others. That is the reason these debates are irrelevant.

It is Deputy O'Malley's stock-in-trade and that of Deputy Woods, Deputy Bruton and myself to take up the point of view that one's party is historically right and cannot ever be otherwise and that the other party is historically wrong. If we could get away from that conception even one day a year or once every four years, perhaps on 29 February, and look at what we are up to from the perspective I have been trying to outline during past months, perhaps matters would look a little different and the truth of what I am saying — if it is true — would become evident. If debate here is dull, boring, predictable ritual, it is because there is no serious ideological issue between us.

I was on the other side of the House following our defeat in the first election of 1982 and I remember a curious novel sensation when I heard for the first time Deputies Sherlock, De Rossa and Gallagher, particularly Deputy Gallagher who seemed to have an absolutely sincere, venomous detestation of much of what the rest of us stood for. I felt a kind of thrill, a quite unknown sensation as I listened to Deputy Gallagher and, to a lesser extent, his two colleagues. I could feel for the first time since I entered this building in 1969 the thrill of real political debate. Deputy Gallagher had a conception of Ireland which I do not share but I hope I have enough humility to suppose that perhaps he may be right. Perhaps we will both live long enough for him to convince me. He has a conception of Ireland which is radically different from the one my party stand for and the one I belive Fianna Fáil stand for. We do not get enough of that kind of debate here. I am by no means pleading for venom or, with due respect to the former Deputy, the sour mode of address which was habitual with him, but he and his colleagues made this House relevant in a small way. They represented a point of view and they did so very well considering their numbers were so small. I do not share that point of view and were it to reach the ascendant I believe it would lead us all if not to a state of political destitution and tyranny then certainly to economic ruin.

That is my conception and I may be wrong, but whether I am right or wrong that is what politics ought to be about. It ought to be about the kind of thing we saw here only in short but illuminating flashes during the months when these three Deputies gave hell to those around them. No doubt they had their own reason for doing so. I do not think they are any more sincere, saint-like or disingenuous than anybody else. It may be as many suspect that some people in that party take their orders from elsewhere, from quarters that are never seen or mentioned in this House. It may be so. I am voicing a suspicion I do not harbour persistently but others may do so. Those three Deputies provided the only serious political debate I have heard in this House. Occasional gusts of rhetoric from Deputy Michael D. Higgins, Deputy Taylor or Deputy Quinn might have given the impression that we were listening to real issues being thrashed out by people who felt really strongly about them but by and large that does not happen, for the reasons I have tried to explain.

Another point made by Deputy O'Malley related to the committee system. With respect to the Minister in front of me, perhaps too much is claimed for the committee system. I have very bitter recollections of my sweating efforts to make something of the committee system when I was Government Whip between 1973 and 1977. In those years I succeeded in getting on their feet more committees than in all other Dálaí put together. We had six or seven special committees on Bills such as the Wildlife Bill and the Bill setting up the National Board for Science and Technology. This represented more committees than all other Dálaí had been able to set up since the State was founded. My recollection of those committees is that they did their work efficiently but it was a bit of a problem to get Deputies to attend because the proceedings were not as well covered by the press as if they were taking place on the floor of the House to the exclusion of other business. That is a valid enough reason for reluctance to be a member of such a committee or to attend it and I will deal in the course of my speech with the role of the press in the life of this House and of any kind of parliamentary democracy in this age.

We made an effort with those committees to take material from the floor of the House because the agenda and the work of the House in those years was desperately clogged, partly because of the policy the Fianna Fáil Party adopted in 1973 which was to break our necks by exhausting us physically. We started off with a very small majority and by gradual inches and persistence on our part but they were the people who were worn down.

In my time as Whip I had to organise 400 divisions in those four-and-a-half years. That was beyond all reason. A very large proportion of these divisions took place on the Committee Stage of two Bills, which I freely concede were highly contentious and controversial — the Wealth Tax Bill and the Capital Gains Tax Bill, I forget if the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill came into the same category. I suggested to the Opposition, through my friend Deputy Lawlor who used to take advice on such matters from Deputy Colley who was Finance spokesman, that the Wealth Tax Bill and the other financial legislation, controversial though it was, should be removed from the floor of the House and sent to a special committee which could have dealt with it efficiently and expeditiously. That request was refused because if they had done that, they would have been depriving themselves of a good opportunity for breaking our necks by sheer dint of physical exhaustion. We spent hour after hour, week after week, four days a week debating these Bills. In 1975 we sat into the first week of August. For a number of weeks before that date we sat four days a week until 10.30 p.m. three days a week. That was a regular occurrence. Those were tough times.

When I hear people talk about the committee system I tell them the only real experience any Whip living and still a Member of this House ever had when the committee system worked like that. If a Bill was not contentious, and if there was no publicity mileage in it and one could persuade a few simple-minded Deputies to participate, that was fine. It would go into committee, be discussed in one of the back rooms, and would go through in jigging time. But with a serious Bill where there was mileage to be got out of it by way of attracting the interest of the press or breaking the necks of the Government front bench, there was no question of sending it to committee, and it did not matter what the consequences were for Dáil business.

I know the Minister for Industry and Energy, Deputy J. Bruton, is optimistic, and he knows I will heartly support anything he does to try to improve Dáil procedure, but there is a limit to what can be done with the committee system, a limit based on my own experience. I read Deputy Ahern's speech today and was very impressed and heartened by the open-minded and generous tone he used towards the Minister and the Minister of State. I could not detect any note of partisanship in anything he said. It may be that we are all growing up under the pressure of events, that we are all becoming more adult and that that will show in our public as well as our private lives. That is to be welcomed. It may be that Deputy Ahern is the first dove coming back to the ark with an olive stick in his beak, that the flood waters of unreason and obstruction are beginning to recede and that we will get a better way of doing business here and a better atmosphere.

During the last two or three Dála, short though they were, we did not have time to get into any kind of cantankerous stride or to build up resentment and insanity. There were fewer divisions and occasions when people took stands, held up the House and generally made themselves disagreeable purely for the sake of doing it.

The last of the matters Deputy O'Malley mentioned was the Dáil's role in financial matters. He mentioned the Imposition of Duties Act, 1956, by which the Government were given power, by order, to impose taxation and to raise very large sums of taxation by way of excise, stamp duty or customs duty, but not by means of income tax, VAT or anything of that sort. Under that Act it is possible for a Government, by order, to raise this taxation and the Dáil does not even have to be told about it, unless it be by the agreement of the Whips before the expiry of the year after the year in which that duty is imposed. He gave the instance of an order the Government made at the beginning of this month. He is quite right in saying that the law as it stands will be respected if the Dáil is not asked to confirm the imposition of that duty until as late a date as Christmas 1984. He said it was all very fine to have such an instrument for very occasional use, as was the purpose in 1956 when in protectionist days it was intended to use it as a device for slowing down the importation of goods which were inflating our adverse trade balance.

Deputy O'Malley might have gone further. The Constitution does not specifically give the Dáil an exclusive role in raising taxation but it does, by implication, accord the Dáil a primacy in financial matters. The Minister for Finance is the only Minister, apart from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, who by the Constitution must be a Member of this House rather than of the Seanad. It is in this House that the Financial Resolutions are passed on budget day, it is to this House that the budget is presented, and it is to this House that the Government are under constitutional duty under Article 17 to present Estimates. These things do not happen in the Seanad. The Constitution all but says that taxation is not to be raised except by consent of the Dáil. There are provisions in Articles 22 and 23 in regard to Money Bills which again underline the primacy of this House. Whatever about the letter of the Constitution, it seems to me that the spirit of it is being by-passed by the use of this Act. I am not making a partisan point one way or the other here because all Governments use this Act. In my view Deputy O'Malley is correct when he says that a question mark as to its constitutional propriety must hang over it.

Deputy O'Malley might then have referred to Article 17 of the Constitution.

Mr. J. Bruton

Might I ask the Deputy how he envisages a division being reformed?

Mr. Kelly

I shall be glad to submit to the Minister a written proposal on the matter as soon as I have had a chance of thinking about it. However, I had not intended speaking on that matter because it is not strictly relevant to Dáil reform. I would not have spoken on it had Deputy O'Malley not raised it and been allowed to do so by the Chair. If the Minister would like me to apply my mind to it, I should be glad to do so as soon as I catch up with my correspondence, which is slightly in arrear, I am sorry to say.

Mr. J. Bruton

I do not believe the Deputy.

Mr. Kelly

Article 17 — which I know is a matter of concern to the Minister because in the excellent discussion document which he sponsored when Minister for Finance he specifically referred to it — requires the Government to present Estimates to the Dáil for departmental expenditure and Estimates of revenue and expenditure and requires the Dáil to consider these, as soon as possible. As the Minister pointed out with great vehemence and frequency, the Dáil observed that duty perfunctorily if at all in the case of a large number of Departments. "As soon as possible" was very often interpreted as being at the very last moment and the consideration which these Estimates got at the very last moment was very often a matter of a couple pro forma questions and answers addressed across the floor in the heat of a July afternoon, under the pressure of the House rising for the Summer Recess at 5 o'clock.

The problem that money, the elevation of which the Estimates envisaged might by then have been spent, was got over by another piece of legislation — the Central Fund (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1965 under which, in respect of any particular Department, the Minister is permitted to issue out of the Central Fund a sum up to 80 per cent of the money which in the previous year that particular Department absorbed. The disharmony of that Act with Article 17 and with the general spirit of the Constitution which gives this House a primacy in financial matters is absolutely fatal. I know that I am pushing an open door with the Minister, because I have heard him say so himself. To make the matter relevant to what we are talking about, what has been happening in these two Acts — one getting on for 30 years of age, the other nearly 20 — is that what is sometimes referred to respectfully as the permanent Government of the country, namely the civil service, having observed the inertia of the Dáil and its impotence when faced with any serious matter of getting any business done quickly and usefully, has made its own arrangements in regard to collecting revenue and spending it. I do not suppose they had to persuade, but they perhaps proposed to the late Deputy Gerard Sweetman when Minister for Finance in 1956 and to Deputy Haughey, or perhaps Deputy Colley, in 1965 that these measures would be expedient and they went through. That is a reflection on the way the House does its business. It is the passage of these measures, questionable though they are, which is the most eloquent of all reflections on the way this House does its business.

If I may go back to the sequence which I had originally intended in regard to my remarks, I would like to say something about the question of Dáil sitting hours. The public tend to have the idea that the Dáil consists of 166 rather overpaid, lazy people because we work only three days a week for roughly 30 weeks of the year, a little more perhaps. If the public could actually see that on that hypothesis only Deputies Woods, Bruton, Taylor, McCartin, myself and our Chairman are at this moment earning our money, they would be even more horrified. The truth is that what the public expect from Deputies is not participation in debates — it has been said that many a man talked himself out of this House — but a range of services of which neither the Constitution, nor any legislation, nor Standing Order takes note in any shape or form.

The sitting hours which the Standing Orders provide for are quite long enough if properly used — indeed, they may be even too long. I read Deputy Bertie Ahern's speech yesterday saying that there was no sense in keeping the Dáil uselessly spinning out a topic until 7, 8.30, 5 o'clock or whatever the closing time of the day happened to be, just because the time had to be filled up. If there was no more to say, why not sit down and let the debate finish? I completely agree with that. That is the point of view that I apply and the chairman also applies in our private and business lives. No one goes on needlessly talking to fill in time. However, we do that in here at the public expense in order to produce a quite false and deceptive impression. The hours are long enough if properly used and even, as Deputy Ahern said, too long. I do not see any point in sitting an extra day just to impress the public—and what public are being impressed? The public want results from the people they elect and pay for. The results they want they will see in terms of a reasonable education, a reasonable inflation rate, a reasonable unemployment rate, a reasonable balance of payments situation, reasonable value for their currency. These are the kind of results they want to see. They are not, apart from the occasional crank who takes an interest in such matters, going to be impressed by any show of laying on lengthy Dáil sittings, which in any case one cannot compel reluctant Deputies to attend.

The question of late sittings or excessive sittings is one in which I can claim — although I was deprecating both a while ago — as modestly as I can, personally to have contributed a major reform to this House during the time when I was Whip. With only the lukewarm assent of my own side and against bitter opposition on the other side, I succeeded in putting through a temporary amendment of Standing Orders in 1975 which has been repeated in every Dáil since then, whereby the 10.30 rising hour was changed to 8.30 and the missing hours were made up on Wednesday morning. Formerly the House did not sit on Wednesday until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, just as on Tuesday—again an idea left over from Victorian England. The change which that made in the atmosphere of debate here, in the standard — if I may put it this way — of the manner in which people dealt with one another, was dramatic. It would be seized on by a sensation-hungry press and people if I were to say too much about the changes of behaviour outside the Chamber of the House, but there were perceptible changes there, too—very much for the better.

The working hours of the Dáil week were no shorter. Exactly the same number of hours were worked. However, it was a very much easier working week, less taxing on physical endurance than the former arrangements had represented. It is not only the 166 Members who are at issue. The very large staff of the House is at issue and particularly those on whom the Dáil session falls with great severity and on which it makes great physical and mental demands—such as the reporting staff, the staff in charge of the Official Report and so on. That change was very beneficial and one of the reasons for that was that it relieved the strain during those bitter months and years of debate on Committee Stage over controversial financial legislation, on Ministers who were locked into this House as if into a submarine, day after day after day until 10.30 at night, or after 5, or 8.30 and could not get back to their Departments, or home, or do anything. They could neither work nor play, neither attend to their business nor relax. They were locked in here as though it were a submarine on the bed of the Atlantic. They were locked in here for only one purpose — so that when the division bell rang they would be there to register their votes.

That is no way to do business. Long sitting hours, anything in the nature of turning this House into a long endurance test for the sake of impressing a few cranks among the public who think it is proper that we should waffle, who think that is what we are there for, rather than to elect, to support and to advise a decent Government, should not be considered — we should not waste our time considering that sort of thing.

Perhaps what we might consider is the sort of system they have in Germany, and in other countries, in Government Ministries, both at federal and land levels: we might have what the Germans call the Tag der Offenen Tur, “the day of the open door”. Naturally, you cannot have all the public here, but there is a system there where the doors are thrown open for the public to come in, to inspect and to satisfy themselves that what is going on is what they are paying for. They can see what is going on and form a correct impression of what the Dáil and its Members represent, the work they do and what is expected of them.

I make that suggestion only half seriously because we could not simply throw open our doors here, if only for security reasons, but it might be no harm if some kind of an informal association were formed such as one for airing such grievances as unreal telephone bills. If there could be an informal association on the outside which we might call "Friends of the Dáil and Seanad" or an "association for the Irish citizen" or something like that, they might be invited to come in on a day when the Dáil is under full steam, or the Seanad, to see for themselves what goes on here, so that they would understand that although the Dáil at this moment contains only half a dozen Deputies, there are dozens, possibly 100, in the building who are not idle, who are not in the bar — maybe there are three or four in the bar: I have often put my nose in there looking for someone, or to have a drink myself, and there might not be one Deputy in the bar. That is the kind of a vulgar impression easily seen by the public, and it does not take much for a journalist to convert it into an acceptable tailpiece or a little joke for a Saturday column or something of that kind.

Deputies sit here whom I can see whistling with exhaustion under the sheer burden of constituency work, much of it unrewarding, much of it possibly even useless — more than nine-tenths of it useless except they do not know which nine-tenths until the reply comes back. You, Sir, are not here as long as the rest of us, but you know already that you never can tell when a representation of some kind, or an inquiry, will produce an unexpectedly happy result for your constituent, and so you have to go through the motions with all of them even though much more than nine-tenths will not make any difference to what the administration might have done had you not interfered with it at all.

One of the problems about the way business is transacted in this House has to deal with relations with the press. There is the kind of convention here that you address your remarks to the Chair and not to the Press Gallery, that you do not even notice that there is such a thing as a Press Gallery: it is supposed to be more or less invisible. It is a convention as venerable and as cynical as the convention that you do not take note of the existence of the other House, that you are supposed to refer to it as some euphemism or paraphrase, that you are not allowed to quote a Senator's speech either from the Seanad or the newspapers. It is good enough for the English for some reason of their own: it is in the history of the seventeenth century and therefore it is good enough for the Irish of the twentieth. That is a pet theory that I have had difficulty in understanding ever since I came here.

That kind of theory applies also to the press. I have no respect for any kind of a theory which does not take note of reality. The reality is that what happens in this House is radiated to the people by the press, and the colour which they put on it — and by using the word "colour" I do not want to imply anything except total honesty and devotion to the high journalistic standards in their transmissions—the colour and shape they put on it is all important to somebody who is trying to speak to the people, whether it is his constituents or the people at large. Many a hard-working Deputy has been sold short because of not getting favourable treatment from the media.

I remember thinking in the 1973/77 period that a very conspicuous victim of that was Deputy Colley with whom, like Deputy O'Malley, I have had many a bitter disagreement — he is not in any sense my favourite politician, though I regard his qualities, and I would have thought his qualities are highly visible. But he simply did not succeed in putting himself across to the media. That is not the fault of the media, they are perfectly entitled to their own perceptions, and in those years he was persistently belittled, and although he carried on his back, personally, as far as I could see, three-quarters of the hard work then done by the Opposition, particularly in financial matters, he got nothing like the credit which was due to him.

I have always given Deputy Colley as an instance of someone who failed with the media at that rather crucial time of his politicial career, and therefore it is childish and unreal to pretend that the media do not count or that the way they transmit the Dáil has no influence on how the Dáil does its work. Of course it has an influence.

I remember in the years 1973/75, before I succeeded in getting the sitting hours changed to 8.30 p.m., I frequently was here in the evenings at 8.30 or 8.45 and saw an Opposition Deputy get to his feet—it could have been one of our own, but it was more usually an Opposition Deputy, for obvious reasons. He would get to his feet at 8.45 knowing that he would get low media coverage. I saw Deputies at the other side of the House in those years get up at 8.45 and womble through until 10.30 because they knew that if they did that and were able to report progress at 10.30 they would be first in at 10.30 in the morning, when, of course, the press would be in that gallery, brighteyed and bushytailed, ready for anything, and particularly for a bit of fun, and willing to take down whatever the Deputy who had bored the ears of everybody the previous night might have kept up his sleeve for the following morning.

That is no way to do business. That way of doing business is directly related to the exigencies not of this House, not of the Irish people, but the mechanics of newspaper production. It is unreal and pompous to pretend otherwise and that is the plain naked truth of the matter. When the sittings of the House went back to 8.30 I fondly imagined that everybody would get a fair show, but it seemed to make a difference to the working hours of the press as well: it seemed to shorten their day, too, because until about 8.00 in the evening there was a reasonable attendance in the press gallery up to 1975, when the Dáil sat until 10.30 but when the sittings went back to 8.30 the press gallery tended to empty at around 5 o'clock, and accordingly the time at which it was useful to make one's speech had to go back by a couple of hours. Now I take it for granted that anything said, unless it is something outrageous or unless there is a major row on and speakers being held, unless there is a special reason for hanging around a speaker around this time of the evening is not going to get much of a showing the following day. That is in no sense a criticism of the press: they do their business in the way that the nature of the business dictates, but it carries an implication of the way this House might organise itself. I hope that I will not be thought in breach of privilege or anything like that, that that old ash plant will not come out from behind your Chair to escort me to the dungeons if I say such a thing.

I do not mean to say that the House is being dictated to in this regard by the press. The reality of the thing is that, since we meditate our ideas to the people via the press, we should have some regard to the exigencies of newspaper production and perhaps even ask the Committee on Procedures and Privileges to consult the Press Gallery here as to whether they have any suggestions in regard to our sitting hours, in regard to how our business might be organised in such a way as to give everybody — I do not just mean the Government side—the same reasonable chance of notice and the same reasonable chance of having his words digested and possibly editorialised on or commented on in whatever way seems appropriate. That is not the case at present. It is not the case even now although I may have painted the situation in slightly too crude colours a moment ago. Even now, with the sitting hours back to 8.30 in the evening, the situation is still not ideal. Also the press are flesh and blood like everybody else. They have a low boredom threshold just as I and you have and they tend to discover perhaps that they have something better to do if there is something very boring going on. That is the reason, on the Order of Business, when they are all here — when there is traditionally a bit of cut and thrust — Deputies frequently, even in a disorderly manner, try to cut a profile which will attract attention when everybody's faculties are fresh and which would not be so easy for them at a more orderly time of the day.

I have already mentioned that the press do not cover committees, or cover them adequately. Again, that is not a criticism of the papers, all of which are in current financial straits of one sort or another; probably they simply have not got the resources. It would be expensive for them to provide the resources to cover Dáil committees. However, it is something it might be possible for the Committee on Procedure and Privileges to consult the Press Gallery about, to see if the goodwill which ought to exist between these two estates would lead to some useful suggestion.

The last thing I want to say about the press is that — perhaps it is not always like this — I have found in the past that if a Deputy here speaks in Irish, it does not all that often happen and this may be the reason, either his speech is left completely out of the record in the newspapers or, if it is very briefly mentioned, as often as not it is not recorded that Irish was the language in which he spoke. Again I recognise that it is not fair to ask a reporter to be perfectly bilingual, to be able to get the gist of a speech in Irish; very often the speech itself may not be in very good Irish, or very intelligible. Naturally many of us, if we learn it at all, learned it very much as a second language and do not command it as well as we do English. Therefore there are difficulties on both sides. It is a matter it might be possible for the Committee on Procedure and Privileges to raise with the Press Gallery. I seriously mean that, that some kind of formal contact between that committee and that gallery probably is overdue. As Macauley used to say, at the end of a withering review of somebody: let me take leave, with this part of my speech anyway, of the Press on good terms. They must realise that in this House to some extent we exist, so far as the public is concerned, only through them. Our mutual relationship reminds me a bit of Bishop Berkeley's—the Irish 18th century philosopher — theory that matter did not exist except to the extent that somebody was thinking about it, except to the extent that somebody mentally focussed on it. And Boswell has a story about how Doctor Johnson was sitting at dinner one evening with somebody who was very absurdly defending Bishop Berkeley's thesis. This man got up to leave the table and go home when Johnson said to him: Pray, do not leave, Sir for, if you go, we may forget to think about you and then you will cease to exist. To some extent the Dáil, Seanad and the courts, so far as the public are concerned, are dependent on the press thinking about them. And if the press do not think about them, or do not think about them in what seems to us an appropriate way, then we have effectively ceased to exist. Naturally we may be going through the motions of passing legislation but, so far as speaking back to the people is concerned, or giving them the lead we are always hearing about, explaining to them points of view and policies, so far as these things are concerned, we have ceased to exist. I do not want to labour this point any longer. But it might be no harm for some formal contact—it need not be stuffy or solemn, it could be for all I care a formal relationship relieved by some social dimension — between that committee, as such, and the Press Gallery ought to be considered.

In regard to Question Time it has often been said that it absorbs huge quantities of public money — I think the most recent average was somewhere around £70 or £80 — that enormous quantities of public money go on digging up and presenting replies to Deputies' questions and that huge quantities of the time of the House are spent answering them. But, more particularly, it has been said that the Order Paper gets so filled up with Deputies' questions that things which are topical now and about which a question has been put down this morning, if addressed to a Minister who only finished answering questions yesterday, will now go to the end of the list and not perhaps be answered in a heavily-filled Order Paper for two to three months by which time the thing may not even be topical. I think there were instances in the last two Dáileanna, which were so short, in which some Ministers were never on their feet at all. I have a kind of an idea that that was my own experience when I was Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism in the 1981-82 Government. I did answer questions as Minister for Foreign Affairs when I was acting in that capacity for four or five months but I do not think I ever was reached on the Trade, Commerce and Tourism side. In other words my entire career as Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism — although there were burning questions about motor insurance and things like that about which Opposition Deputies wanted to question me—was spent without ever coming under their fire. That is wrong. It is a stupid fate for the Question Time system and obviously a very expensive one if, as is said, it costs so much to process questions. All these questions have to be ready for answer literally four days after the question is put down. So even if a question is never reached or taken in here the expense by the State has still been incurred.

I have a suggestion I should like the Committee on Procedure and Privileges to examine and I put it to the Minister in front of me — it may indeed be the case that this suggestion would involve the State in even heavier expense but it might be something worth a minute or two's consideration in the committee, that is that we might have a parallel Question Time, along with the Question Time in the Dáil, in which Deputies would put questions, not to the Minister but to the Department, in which the very same sequence would be followed, if you like, Department after Department, in which things which were not primarily of political importance but rather of constituency importance, questions about land division, about provision of telephone facilities, about drainage schemes, about school buildings. Most Deputies are not megalomaniacs, they do not suppose that a local issue is going to become one of national importance and that it necessarily requires to be raised on the floor of the House.

At that point questions might be fed into a sort of parallel Question Time and answered, not by the Minister or Minister of State on the floor of the House but by an official or group of officials from the Department in another room of the building, open to the public, for anyone who came to listen and not under the control of the Chair. In other words, it could be a much more informal proceeding but one in which the Department official would have in front of him the entire relevant file and would submit good humouredly to being quizzed by a Deputy as to why, for instance, a school was taking so long to build, why plans had not been approved, why there was so much vandalism in a specific suburb, or why a squad car had been withdrawn from a certain road. Those things could be dealt with without pre-occupying the time and the money of the full House. They could be dealt with more informally and, perhaps, more fruitfully in a parallel Question Time without a chairman but serviced by officials alone. I have often felt that we are too reluctant to make experiments, perhaps because we are afraid of the moment when we might have to say they were a failure.

Mr. J. Bruton

Why would the Deputy suggest that there should not be a chairman?

Mr. Kelly

There would certainly be a chairman, but he would be a chairman with a rather loose rein.

Debate adjourned.