Not every day, no. On the Adjournment debate, it was proposed that we should have a commencement debate in the morning before business begins at, for example, 9.30 a.m., and have a facility for taking supplementary questions. Why not? It would also ensure that the Minister with responsibility for an issue would have to appear. We would get a proper debate. It is a simple matter. I understand it happens in the Seanad but not in the Dáil. We might as well not go into the Dáil at all and just send e-mails to each other because it is the same thing. It would cut down on costs. I could e-mail my presentation to a Minister and he or she could e-mail back his or her pre-prepared response, and we could shut the place an hour earlier in order to save money. This area needs to be examined.
I have been pushing the issue of Dáil reform in the Chamber for a long time. Last week the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, in response to a point I made said he wants a big package of reform. We have been looking at that for 25 or 30 years but it has not happened. I put forward the idea that we do it incrementally. Let us take small steps and do one thing at a time, such as bedding down the proposal for a commencement debate, and move on from there. I understand the European Parliament has the 30-second question procedure. MEPs arrive in the morning and can ask anything for 30 seconds. The Minister of the day then responds to the questions for 30 seconds. It is a quick-fire debate, back and forth.
Deputies arrive in Dáil Éireann every day with topical issues they want to raise, but they cannot do so because only the Leaders can ask questions on Leaders' Questions. An ordinary backbencher cannot. What does one do if something has happened in one's area or the country about which one feels passionate and wants to raise immediately? One cannot ask questions. In other Parliaments one can attend and make a point.
Standing Order 32 is to be used for national emergencies. In my 13 years here it has only been agreed to twice. Members say they want to raise a matter of urgent national importance under Standing Order 32, such as there was a mouse in the house last night or whatever. I do not want to be flippant, but they are trying to raise issues about which they are passionate because there is no other way to do so. I suggest we change the system and allow Members to raise issues in the morning. Why not? If the Taoiseach does not have the answer there and then he can tell the Member he will get back to him or her later in the day. That is all people want, namely, that an acknowledgement that there is an issue and it will be examined. Surely that is what people are sending us here for. It is something which could be done easily and quickly. We could change Standing Order 32 in order to provide a written response with five signatures and only use it for emergencies.
The subject of the legislative programme and promised legislation could be addressed once a week by the Chief Whip or the Taoiseach. The system has to be changed. People are trying to weave constituency matters into it illegally and it is leading to procedural rows in the Chamber, which are demeaning and do not do us justice. People want to raise issues, but it lowers the tone and wastes a lot of valuable time.
Question Time needs to be changed. Oral questions are tabled every day, but in practice only four or five are answered in the House. We could do a lot of work in that area. We could speed it up, reduce the number of priorities or insist that the question will only be answered if the Member who tabled it is in the Chamber.
We could get things moving very quickly. The Chairman referred to the role of backbench Members. In other Parliaments it is possible for backbenchers to introduce legislation or an idea for legislation. In Britain there is the ten-minute Bill, whereby one can make a speech proposing a change in the law. One cannot do so here.
There are many things we could do immediately. One major issue is that we have set up many bodies for which Ministers are not responsible to the Dáil, such as the HSE, the NRA, the Railway Procurement Agency, the Road Safety Authority and so on. There are hundreds of them. We find more and more power has been devolved from the Dáil. It is very frustrating when one tables a question and it does not reach the Minister, rather, one gets a response which states the Minister is not responsible for the matter. The citizens elect us to hold Ministers and agencies to account but we cannot do so because of the way things have evolved. I suggest all the quangos should be under the remit of parliamentary questions. A Minister should say a Member asked a question about an agency for which he or she is not responsible for the day-to-day operation but he or she asked for the information and will provide it to the Member. That should be the case.
These agencies are all getting Government money. More and more, issues are occurring in FÁS, the HSE and so on. All kinds of things are going on but we cannot get a handle on them, hold them to account or question them through the parliamentary question system, which should be the most effective system. We should change the system immediately.
During recesses, a limited number of parliamentary questions should be allowed because when constituents visit Deputies during a recess the Deputies tell constituents they are powerless until the Dáil resumes and so cannot help them. Each Deputy should be allowed to ask a small number of written parliamentary questions per week. Questions to the Taoiseach needs to be changed. Today he dealt with the Copenhagen summit, which took place a number of months ago. It is out of date.
We have made a number of proposals to the committee on Dáil reform. There are many more, such as the election of the Chair and the power of the Ceann Comhairle. When a Deputy tables a parliamentary question and sometimes the question is not even addressed in the reply, one has no right of appeal. There should be a right of appeal whereby if one is not happy with the response, somebody adjudicates and the Minister must come into the House that evening and give a proper response. That should happen as well.
I commenced my presentation by saying that yesterday the Ombudsman put forward a very serious critique of the way this House operates and the balance between the Legislature and the Executive. Under the Constitution the Government is answerable to the Dáil, it does not control the Dáil but is responsible to Dáil Éireann.
Article 27, which I understand has never been invoked, provides for the referral of Bills to the people. Article 27.1 states:
A majority of the members of Seanad Éireann and not less than one-third of the members of Dáil Éireann may by a joint petition addressed to the President by them under this Article request the President to decline to sign and promulgate as a law any Bill to which this article applies on the ground that the Bill contains a proposal of such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained.
It would be impossible to make that happen under the present system because the Executive controls the Dáil and Seanad. Therefore, if the Executive did not want this to happen it would not happen. The NAMA legislation which was enacted recently is of huge national importance. Perhaps those who compiled the Constitution had something like that in mind when they said if it was "of such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained". That could not happen under our present Constitution. I contend, Chairman, that before you start looking at the way you send Deputies in here, we should change the way we do our business in the House. This was done in Canada.
In 2003 the Canadian Parliament had a report prepared under its Library of Parliament. It deliberations did not continue indefinitely. In a number of months it had a report and it started to implement the changes straightaway. We could do the same. If those changes were implemented and bedded down we could then see how the electoral system impacts and whether something should be done to make a change. Many of us spend time in committee. I spoke to a former senior Member, a national figure, not so long ago who lost his seat in an election. I asked what happened to him. He said he did not cut the briars and he did not fill the potholes but concentrated on national and international legislation issues. If we concentrate on legislation, as we should, and neglect the briars and the potholes we will not be re-elected.
A delegation from RTE appeared before the Members' interests committee recently when we put these points. They said that script reading in the Chamber and the way we go about our business is a turn off and that they were not interested in putting it on air because people would not look at it. There is no interaction and no real debate. As the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, said, there is no discussion of ideas in the Chamber. This is an extremely serious issue and we could do much with the goodwill of all sides.
The Government established a working group on Dáil reform. On 23 February I asked how many times it met and was informed it had met five times, the last being on 1 July 2009. We are still awaiting proposals from the Government side on Dáil reform. It would be great if we did have such proposals because we could then interact and engage and, perhaps, agree certain issues. My contention is to forget about the big package as I do not think it will work; let us do it incrementally, one step at a time.