Many Irish TDs detest the Single Transferable Vote, which they blame for punishing constituency workloads they feel are relentlessly grinding them into the ground.
Their argument is that the multi-seat constituency, essential for STV to deliver proportional representation, creates a fear of losing to a party rival. This forces TDs to spend too much time in local constituencies attending to in-growing toenails and suchlike, leaving too little time in Dublin for dealing with important affairs of State.
The fear of losing to a party rival is well justified. Fianna Fail TDs are indeed more likely to be beaten by party running mates than by candidates from rival parties. This pattern can also be found in Fine Gael, but is of no relevance at all for TDs of smaller parties, typically fielding at most one candidate per constituency.
Internal party rivalry is inevitable whatever the electoral system. As long as ambitious people want to represent their chosen party in national politics, there will be stiff competition for scarce places on the party ticket. The big question is not whether STV fosters intra-party competition, but whether there is something especially pernicious about the particular type of intra-party competition it fosters.
The evidence on this matter is, to say the least, inconclusive. The firm belief among many politicians that their lives would be richer and more fulfilling under another electoral system has, however, kept electoral reform firmly on the agenda.
Two attempts to introduce the British first-past-the-post system failed at referendums. Two constitutional review committees considered the electoral system at some length. The current All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution will doubtless turn its mind to the matter shortly.
The options have at least been narrowed as a result of the debate to date. Nobody now seriously promotes the massively disproportional British system. The Australian "alternative vote", in effect STV in single-seat constituencies as in Irish by-elections, has been shown to be disproportional and perverse.
There is, of course, no such thing as a perfect electoral system, but electoral reformers see current best practice as being some variant of the German "additional member" (AMS) system, versions of which were recently introduced in both New Zealand and Japan. The former case has been particularly influential, since New Zealand is often seen as a role model for small democracies.
Under AMS about one-half of seats in the legislature are filled using first-past-the-post elections in single-seat constituencies. The remaining deputies are chosen in a PR election from party lists. In the Irish case this would mean 83 single-seat constituencies, each about half the size of the current ones. TDs elected in these would be supplemented by 83 elected from party lists.
Each voter is given two ballot papers, one for a local constituency and one for a party list. The allocation of list seats to parties is done so as to ensure that the overall allocation of seats is proportional to the votes cast for party lists.
Thus, if one party won 50 seats in single-seat constituencies, and was due 60 seats on the basis of its national share of the vote, it would get 10 "additional" seats, the top 10 names from its party list. If another party won no seats at all in the single-seat constituencies but was due 20 seats on its national share of the vote, the top 20 names on its list would be elected.
This, broadly, is the system favoured by Mr Noel Dempsey, the Minister with responsibility for electoral reform. There is no doubt that it does provide a feasible way of retaining proportional representation in Ireland while getting rid of multi-seat constituencies.
There will, however, be a price to be paid, and this has yet to sink in among the Irish political class. AMS creates two types of deputy, constituency members who fight and win elections in their local area, and list members who owe their place in ail parliament to being put high on a list by their party hierarchy.
Fighting for top places on party lists would create a totally new form of intense internal party competition, which might well change Irish parties in many unexpected ways. List TDs might even come to be seen as second class citizens, not having won any election at all in a personal capacity. List deputies in the Japanese lower house, the Diet, for example, have been unflatteringly referred to as "zombie Diet men".
These pressures will bear in different ways on different parties. On almost any assumptions about new constituency boundaries, Fianna Fail would on past form win most of the constituency seats. This would leave Fianna Fail TDs with formal responsibility for the lion's share of the nation's constituency work. It would also leave most voters with a Fianna Fail TD as the only person to turn to with local constituency problems.
The other Irish parties would win most of the list seats. This would leave their TDs with little formal responsibility for constituency work. It would also leave them depending for their place in the political sun on their position on the party list, and thus on the good graces of their party organisations.
These striking consequences of introducing AMS elections to Ireland have yet to be thought through in any serious way by Irish politicians. Having thought them through, they may seem an acceptable price to pay for getting rid of those detested multi-seat constituencies. AMS could certainly do this job, but at the same time would change the internal life of Irish parties in many intriguing ways.
Michael Laver is Professor of Politics at Trinity College and director of the Policy Institute. He is author of Playing Politics: the Nightmare Continues and A New Electoral System for Ireland?, published today by the Policy Institute