OPINION:Last week we saw a complete capitulation of the legislature to the executive, writes Vincent Browne
ON TUESDAY of last week the Dáil was presented with quite the most scarifying proposition it had received possibly in its history.
It was to authorise by way of legislation a guarantee to bank depositors and lenders that if anything happened to the financial institutions to which they had given money, they would be reimbursed fully by the State. What was being put at risk - however remote that risk may be - was the entire economic future of this society, for the amount of the guarantee was then believed to be in the region of €450 billion, more than three times the gross national income for any one year and nine times the total amount collected in taxes in any one year.
Wouldn't you think that the 166 TDs elected to look after the nation's interests would demand time to consider the proposition, all the more so since it was obvious that there was no rush once the Government had indicated its agreement in principle to guarantee depositors and lenders? Wouldn't you think they would have established a specialist committee of the Dáil, with powers to compel witnesses and documents, to tease through the enormity of what was being proposed, or maybe use the Committee of Public Accounts for that purpose? Wouldn't you think they would have called in people from here and elsewhere who were expert in bank bailouts and guarantees? After all what was at stake was the financial future of this country. Of the 4.2 million people who live here.
Not a bit of it.
The initial proposal was to have a one-hour debate on the Bill and then 15 minutes of questions to the Minister, before the whole thing was wrapped up. They were then pressurised into giving a bit more time.
The debate on the Bill began at about 10pm on Tuesday night and ended at 11.45pm. It was what is called the Second Reading stage, where the general principles of the Bill are debated. The following morning the Dáil went into what is known as the "committee stage" which is supposed to involve the careful, line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and the consideration of amendments.
There was no line-by-line scrutiny, aside from a period of about an hour and a half late on Wednesday night. Thirty-three TDs spoke in all. Almost none of them dealt with the detail of the Bill or the specific amendments (Joan Burton, Richard Bruton and Pat Rabbitte being obvious exceptions).
The Dáil was adjourned at 1.30pm on Wednesday after a little over two hours of committee stage debate. The debate resumed at about 3.30pm, but at about 5.45pm there was a debate on an entirely different matter for three hours. The Dáil was then adjourned and resumed at 9.20pm and went on until 2.10am. There were several votes on proposed amendments during this time - all the proposed amendments were defeated with almost no debate at all on the substance of the amendments, just generalised and very often long-winded observations on the nature of banking. Each of the votes - I think there were four of them - took about 15 minutes, an hour in all.
The Dáil adjourned until the following morning. Then there was about a one-hour debate on amendments submitted from the Seanad, and that was that.
So, all in all, there was a debate on perhaps the most important Bill to be brought before the Dáil in its history, lasting in all only nine or 10 hours, and the vast bulk of that time was taken up by the windbags. No teasing out of the implications of the sections of the Bill, no elaboration of what was involved in the bailout, no discussion on what the banks would pay for this extraordinary favour by the State, no evaluation of the consequences if the guarantee should be called upon.
What a contrast with what had happened in the US Congress, where the House of Representatives took weeks to explore the bailout arrangement proposed there, eventually passed hundreds of amendments to what had been proposed initially and, generally, had oversight of a package that, in proportional terms, represented a small fraction of what was involved here.
In its consideration of which quangos to extinguish in the coming budget, the Cabinet should think about getting rid of the Dáil and Seanad.
Well almost. The Dáil has relevance only in the election of a Taoiseach - after that it is a waste of time. No debates of any consequence, no decision of any consequence, no input of any consequence. No accountability of any consequence. No scrutiny of a Bill that could destroy the country.
For the reality is the legislative branch of government is a failure. It is entirely the creature of the executive branch. Far from there being a separation of powers, there is complete capitulation of the legislative branch to the executive. There, therefore, can be no meaningful accountability, no independent exercise of authority - no chance, for instance, that any of the amendments proposed in the Dáil by the Opposition parties would get support, irrespective of their merits, unless the Minister was of a mood to be expansive.
And we call it democracy.