Minister wants new electoral system

IRELAND NEEDS a new electoral system that would allow TDs to serve their constituents better, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey has told an Oireachtas committee.

Mr Dempsey told the Committee on the Constitution that deputies spend time working on medical cards, social welfare and housing applications for their constituents.

“We do that because our electoral system, instead of making bureaucracy more responsive, we just do these tasks that are set to us by our constituents instead of trying to make the system more efficient,” Mr Dempsey said.

“There are better systems that will help our constituents an awful lot more.” He stressed that constituency work would continue to form part of any electoral system, and there was no question of trying to “get away from people”.

Mr Dempsey said none of the new democracies established since the fall of the Berlin Wall had adopted the system used here: proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote in multi-seat constituencies (PR-STV).

“There’s not a single one of them that have chosen the system that we have,” he said.

Meanwhile, Prof Michael Gallagher from the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin said PR-STV gave TDs an “electoral incentive” to do constituency work.

“Despite the widespread belief that the PR-STV electoral system generates constituency work for TDs, in reality constituency work emanates from other sources,” he said.

“The electoral system simply gives TDs and electoral incentive to respond to it.” Prof Gallagher said constituency work should not be identified as a problem to be solved.

Dr Liam Weeks from University College Cork’s department of government said no other electoral system gave Independents “as much of a fighting chance” as PR-STV.

“Certainly there are few systems that are as attractive to Independents or indeed any independent-minded mavericks within a party as PR-STV,” he said.