Alteration of schedule offers major scope for deputies interested in policy issues. Can reform of the Dáil make politics more interesting? Yes, writes Mark Hennessy.
The Dáil is the last place TDs should choose if they want people to pay attention to their opinions, former Taoiseach John Bruton complained with some justification recently.
However, a package of reform measures, which is now practically agreed among the party whips, could help to return some vibrancy and pace to the Dáil chamber, and with it more public interest.
The most public change will be the introduction of electronic voting, which will cut the amount of time needed for lobby divisions from 22 minutes to 11 minutes - with the hope of more savings to come.
However, the other plans are more important. Currently, the Dáil can often seem remote from day-to-day life when TDs are prevented by arcane rules and the Ceann Comhairle from raising issues of the moment.
Changes introduced 10 months ago helped, when a block of time was set aside to allow Opposition party leaders to question the Taoiseach on running topics during most of the Dáil's sitting days.
However, the change did nothing to help rank-and-file deputies, because they are still forced to tie a question with "a promised piece of legislation", often only tenuously.
Under the plan, deputies will be allowed to "raise issues of current national importance without notice and answered by the Minister responsible, and not just the Taoiseach, as at present".
Once the proposed rules are in place, new procedures will offer the Dáil a greater role in monitoring the increasingly complex, and often little-noticed business of the European Union.
Within four weeks of a proposal, Government departments will be required to send a paper outlining the main points to the relevant Dáil committee, which will then be able to hold hearings, if necessary.
The Government would then be required "to take serious account" of the committee's views when formulating its final stand at meetings of the European Union's Council of Ministers.
The alteration of the Dáil's schedule offers major scope for TDs interested in policy, and not just tending to the needs of constituents. One week in every four would be set aside purely for committee work.
The Government Chief Whip, Seamus Brennan, yesterday said the size of committees would be cut from 14 to 10 which would ensure that nobody sits on more than two.
Furthermore, the committees would have greater powers to demand documents and information and they would be reorganised so that they "shadow" Government departments more accurately.
Convinced that the future of the Dáil lies here, former Progressive Democrats leader Desmond O'Malley pointed to the experience enjoyed by the US Congress.
The Senate and House of Representatives get 95 per cent of their media coverage from their committee work.
"Just look at the Enron affair, all of that is coming from committee meetings," said Mr O'Malley at the launch of the reform package yesterday.
Currently, the few dozen TDs interested in committee work struggle to cope with the load. Frequently, they are forced to adjourn to rush back to the Dáil chamber for votes.
For many other TDs, the committees are simply a chore which will do little to improve their vote at the time of the next general election. Some are attracted only by the stipend paid to chairs and committee whips.
Too often, politicians of this kind turn up ill briefed and either stay silent or ask poorly informed questions. Faced with RTÉ's senior management, one of them, for example, could only manage to complain about the bias of a GAA pundit.
"Those who make no contribution whatever to parliament are often the most successful," said the acerbic Mr O'Malley, who will retire from political life when the Dáil dissolves.
Always critical of politicians, the media must also take their share of the blame.
The majority of the committees - with the exception of the Public Accounts Committee - are ignored by the vast majority of the journalists.
The concept of Dáil reform, driven by Mr Brennan, is welcome. However, the agreement among the party whips is but part of the story. Now, it has to get past the notoriously conservative parliamentary parties.
Success will depend not just on politicians' willingness to change their working week, but, more importantly, the way in which they do their business as public representatives.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, tried to restructure the Dáil when he was Government Chief Whip in the early 1990s, but his changes did not last beyond his time in the job.
"We had the devil of a time trying to get people here for meetings on a Friday. Most TDs felt that they should be back down in their constituencies," the Minister told the Association of European Journalists last week.
TDs must increasingly see themselves, and be seen by their voters, as national legislators and not just as the first port of call to sort out medical cards, social welfare problems and planning applications.
For that to happen, Mr Dempsey believes that TDs must stop sitting on local authorities, endlessly looking over their shoulders.
Regardless of the views of Jackie Healy-Rae and other Independent TDs, Mr Dempsey is right.
Mark Hennessy is a Political Reporter with The Irish Times