I would like to express my appreciation to the very large number of Deputies who spoke on this debate on the reform of the Dáil, particularly to draw attention to the fact that a number of newly-elected Deputies spoke in this debate for their first time in the House. That indicates, particularly in the case of new Deputies, the extent of public interest outside the House in the need to reform the way in which this House works.
The central objective of the reform of the Dáil is to enable this House to take the leadership in public affairs and to set the direction in public affairs that it should be capable of doing as the elected assembly of the people. Unfortunately our procedures are not as relevant to modern day issues as they should be. The Dáil is in many cases unable to take the lead that it should be taking in public affairs and that role has passed instead to interest groups outside the House who bypass this House and exert pressure on Government directly to get whatever they want done. The result of that is the situation wherein the Government come back to the House after they have made a decision, after they have either succumbed to or resisted the pressures of interest groups, and announce to the House what they have decided or what they are going to do. As a result of that the House has not the positive input that it should have, consisting as it does of the people elected by the entire electorate into Government and national decision-making.
In the concern expressed on all sides of this House in seeking to reform it we are all trying to create a situation wherein the Dáil will be sufficiently efficient, expeditious and timely in its debates so that it will be able to have the input in time into the Government decision-making process and will have at least an equal — it is to be hoped greater — role as an elected assembly in the decisions that up to now it has tended in many cases only to rubber-stamp in the form of debates taking place after the decision has been made already. We can enhance the status of the House in this regard in two major ways. Firstly we can have better access by the public to the House so that they will see it as being more relevant to their concerns. Secondly, we can make the Dáil more businesslike in the way in which it does its business and hence in the example it sets to people outside the House. We can have better access by the public to the House in two ways, firstly and most obviously, but not necessarily most importantly, by broadcasting either by radio or television the proceedings of the House; and secondly, and more important, by providing through a committee system the taking of evidence from the public on both legislation and matters of public concern which are not at the time the subject of legislation. In this way the public who are concerned about a problem will have a means of ensuring that their concerns are expressed to a representative group of Deputies through an evidence-taking committee system. That will mean that a person who has something with which he is concerned will have an alternative which he has not got at the moment simply to go in to the Minister or the civil service to talk about the problem. People will be able to go to representatives of the House to talk about their problems. Therefore, there will be an alternative focus for public concern here in the House, broadly speaking working in public, in addition to the existing focus of governmental discussion through the civil service which in most cases takes place in a private arena. Those are the two ways in which we can improve access to the House and to democracy by the electorate and thereby strengthen the role of this House in national policy-making.
We can and must also — indeed it would be wrong to proceed with greater access unless we did the second part as well because it would be counter-productive — make the House more businesslike in the way that it itself proceeds. As many Deputies have said for the first time in this debate, we must try to reduce the tendency, which we all have become accustomed to, of making rather lengthy speeches because we know that if we do not make a long speech now we will never get a second chance to speak on the subject. That needs to be dealt with, by changing the method of looking at the issues in regard to parliamentary questions, how they work, how that system can be improved, by improving research facilities and by increasing the information available to Deputies about the way in which the public services operate.
I would now like to go down in some greater detail through points made in the debate and respond to them. A number of Deputies were interested — the Leader of the Opposition was today — in having Bills discussed in committee rather than having the Committee Stage in the full Chamber of the House. I would like to express a personal view about that. I am not sure that that is a brilliant idea although I believe there are many people on both sides of the House who would disagree with me. I believe there are even greater opportunities for delay, inattention and boring debates if the debate in committee is taking place away from the centre of attention in the House where the press are looking on. At least here there is some brake put on the extent of obstructive tactics, if we are doing it under the watchful eye of the Chair, the Press Gallery and the people in the Public Gallery. If the Bill-making process were passed into a committee room there is a danger that there would be even greater opportunities for repetitive and obstructive discussion. You could have a situation where Bills were delayed even longer than they would otherwise be delayed through unnecessary and repetitive argument.
That has got to be borne in mind in referring Bills to committees. If one referred contentious Bills to committees the possibilities for delaying the legislative process would perhaps be even greatly enhanced. That is not an overriding objection, it is just a caution I would enter in this regard, that one could find a situation that the Government simply could not get their legislation through because so much stuff could be bottled up in committee. We know in the Congress in the United States that there are stories of committee chairmen being able to prevent legislation ever getting out of the committee simply by not putting it on the agenda for the committee's next meeting. That sort of elaborate delaying tactics could be used. Obviously that would not suit the Government. It might at the time suit the Opposition but all Oppositions hope some time to be in Government. Therefore, a procedure which we might adopt in this regard has to be so carefully thought through that it does not simply result in negative obstruction becoming the guiding feature of the legislative process.
A number of Deputies made a suggestion that there should be a system of pairs for Deputies who are involved in committee work during normal Dáil sessions so that the committee meetings will not simply break up whenever a division bell goes. That is an eminently sensible suggestion and it is something I intend to discuss with the Whips. This is something which could be done without any change in Standing Orders because it is simply a matter of informal agreement between the parties.
Deputies referred to the lack of research back-up in the House. There are three research assistants in the Library. To the best of my knowledge, in the past at least, perhaps because of three elections in 18 months when there was not much time for research, the services of the existing research services have not been over-utilised. In fact, it is argued that they are under-utilised. Before we simply start spending more money on hiring additional research assistants we need to find out if the type of research assistance we have is what Deputies really want and if not, how it can be restructured to ensure that it is. I believe that when the Joint Library Committee are appointed they should give their attention to this matter. They should advert to the fact that in this debate there was a widely expressed concern across the House that research services should be improved. It may be that many of the Deputies who expressed that concern did not attempt to use even the services we have. It might be well if those who have expressed that concern would try to use that service to the full over the next few months and in doing so we will find out what its limitations are. Let us not decide we will add to it without finding out what is needed.
I believe one area where the research services could be improved is by strengthening their expertise in the economic area. I am speaking of my experience in Opposition now when I say that many of the questions which Deputies tend to ask are related to economic matters. It is important that there should be up to three qualified economists on the staff of the research services. That would be immediately beneficial to Deputies. There is the issue of whether you provide your research services through the political parties or in the House. If you decide you will have a parallel research service in each of the political parties alongside the research services in the House there is a danger that you could have quite an amount of duplication. The same sort of data would be prepared by different people for the same purpose without getting the best value from it. There is a need to rationalise our provisions in this regard. We must remember that the political parties receive quite substantial grants from the Exchequer for research work and they have tended to use it to a very great extent for election-related activities. It can be represented as being public information but in fact a lot of the money goes alongside normal subscriptions and tends to become absorbed in the overall party activity which is not really oriented towards parliament or examination of public issues.
Perhaps it might be appropriate in respect of the allocation made to political parties if a specific amount were set aside for research and they were required to spend a proportion of the money they receive from the Exchequer — some might argue that the amount received is not very generous — on Dáil-related research rather than simply on their general activities. I believe we have reached a point in our parliamentary democracy where the parties are competing with one another to an excessive extent in the expenditure of money raised from voluntary contributors on electioneering. I find, from my limited experience, that the amount spent on elections, particularly by-elections here, far exceeds the comparable expenditure in much richer countries. In Britain, for instance, the amount spent in a general election campaign or a by-election campaign is about one-fifth of that spent in an equivalent constituency here. That is also the case in France and other continental countries. We tend to spend vast sums on the matter. I know as long as one party spend this sort of money the other parties feel they have to do it also. That results in the parties spending much more of their money than they should on competitive electoral activities when they could usefully in the interests of the House and of democracy spend such money on research, helping Deputies to prepare for debates and ensuring that we are better informed in entering into debates than we have been in the past.
That is something that is directly outside the activities of this House but it is something the parties should look at. Perhaps we could consider in the very long term—I am speaking from a personal point of view here—looking at the present situation in Germany where after the last war they were very concerned to ensure that their parties were democratic and that their parties acted as agents for the preservation of democracy. They made certain legislative provisions in this regard to ensure that parties allocated their money for purposes that were genuinely concerned with public affairs rather than having what is effectively negative competition with one another in postering campaigns. That is a view I have expressed publicly in the past and although it is not strictly relevant to this debate, I am taking the opportunity of expressing it in the presence of representatives of most of the parties in the hope that some Deputies may think about it and respond later.
A number of Deputies made what I consider to be a valid point, that is, that there is not much to be gained from having a lot of committees producing very learned reports if there is not an opportunity for Deputies to discuss those reports in the House. We all know from the post we receive each morning that there are committees of this House who are producing extremely valuable reports. We are now receiving reports of committees of the third last Dáil which have been printed only recently. Anyone who has the time to read those reports will realise the outstanding work that has been done by the various committees. I refer in particular to the committee on State-sponsored bodies but the tragedy, as some Deputies have pointed out, is that these reports are never debated. They simply arrive through our post and are used by academics who are studying the subject in question. It is in this House that these Dáil committee reports should be discussed. We should have a limited time with each speaker limited to, say, five minutes, so that the reports will be given at least an hour or even half an hour's time here. After taking perhaps 30 or 40 hours to produce the least we might do for the Deputies who spend their time on the exercise is to give some time in the House for debating the reports. That must be a priority in terms of Dáil reform. We must ensure that all the valuable work done by these committees is followed through and that the Deputies concerned are given some credit for the work involved. If we fail in this regard the committee system will be self-defeating.
Deputy O'Malley and a number of others who have relatively long experience here were somewhat sceptical about our succeeding in encouraging enough Deputies to service these committees and posed the question as to whether, having regard to the pressures we are under because of the electoral situation, we would be prepared to give our time to committees. As I said in my opening remarks, one way of solving that problem would be by having smaller committees, committees of five or six rather than of 12 or 14. This would result in our being able to have twice as many committees sitting at the one time. It would be likely to ensure also that individual members of the committees would be well known to be involved in such work and to get more credit in respect of the subject with which they were dealing. Another possible answer to this problem is the giving of special priority to committee work. I am glad that there has been a good deal of positive response during the debate to that suggestion. It would be helpful if we asked the broadcasting people, by way of the conditions laid down for them, to give special allocations of time to committee work. I am glad also that there is a consensus in the House in regard to broadcasting but we should avail of the opportunity of broadcasting to upgrade the very important work of committees.
Perhaps the most heartening of all aspects of the debate is the consensus that there should be broadcasting of our proceedings. We have not had such a consensus in the past. Up to now one major political party were somewhat hesitant in that matter.
It is interesting to note that we are one of the very few countries which do not have broadcasting of our Parliaments. In 1976 there were only four countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union who did not have sound broadcasting of any part of parliamentary proceedings. We were one of those though we now allow live broadcasting of the budget. Also in the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1976 there were only seven countries who did not have television broadcasting of some part of the proceedings of the Houses of Parliament. For our part this is a reflection of something referred to by Deputy Kelly — because the British were slow in this regard, we are even slower. We have a tendency always to follow whatever is introduced across the water but we do not usually act for five or six years afterwards. The point I am making is that in approaching the matter of the broadcasting of the proceedings of Parliament, we seek to do it our way rather than to follow someone else.
