TDs' stress shows up our token democracy

The phrase ‘sovereignty of the people’ rings hollow in the current feeble state of politics, writes VINCENT BROWNE

The phrase 'sovereignty of the people' rings hollow in the current feeble state of politics, writes VINCENT BROWNE

AT LEAST 20 Fianna Fáil TDs are anxious this morning about losing a fairly meaningless job. They are anxious in part because of the money (around €45,000 extra, on top of around €120,000 as TDs) and because of a loss of status. But also, because they would be relegated to a job that is entirely meaningless: the job of a TD. No influence, no power, no relevance, no status. Members of an institution, Dáil Éireann, that essentially is redundant.

And the irrelevance of our national parliament is testimony to the vacuity of our much heralded “democracy”, a “democracy” that only in a token sense can be described as “government for the people by the people”.

A few Ministers of State have somewhat meaningful jobs. Maybe the Minister responsible for the Board of Works, maybe the Minister for Children, maybe the Minister responsible for development aid, and perhaps one or two more, but that’s it. Worse than that, Ministers of State are effectively silenced. They may speak only “on message” and they have no say on what the “on message” is. They cannot even speak their minds at parliamentary party meetings. Limbo lads.

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But for most of them, being in Limbo is better than just being in the Dáil. Backbench TDs of parties in government have no say on anything at all, and if they dare speak their mind in public they are threatened with de-selection at the next election. If they are TDs of opposition parties, they also have no say on anything, because the Dáil has no say on anything.

Just note how irrelevant the Dáil has been to the recent crisis. Yes, it has provided a platform for the party leaders and for a few others, notably Richard Bruton, Joan Burton, Pat Rabbitte and . . . can’t think. But only a platform, and although platforms are hugely important, TDs have no role in determining policy, no role in inquiring into how we got into this mess, no role in examining options on dealing with the banking crisis, no role in deciding on how the pain of the adjustments should be allocated, or on how wealth, income, power and influence should be distributed.

No Ministers, no official, no banker, no anybody held to account for causing the gravest economic and social crisis we have experienced in 85 years. And, aside from Richard Bruton, as far as I know, nobody protesting about this fatuity.

If parliament is the fulcrum of our democracy, doesn’t it say something about the nature of our democracy that the fulcrum is so irrelevant to the great issues and decisions of our day? At the centre of the idea of democracy is the notion of self-government. Previously, people were “subjects” of a “sovereign”. The idea of democracy was that the people would be both sovereign and subject. Hence, self-government. But central to the idea was the sovereignty of the people.

Now the sovereignty of the people is exercised only through elections, where the people decide not on the specifics of policy and legislation but, in Ireland, on which of only two possible alternative government options they should vote for. And in so deciding, they have to grapple with a whole range of other considerations: personalities, traditions, geographic factors, maybe even the odd policy issue. But to equate this with the exercise of people’s sovereignty is a nonsense. It is at best a caricature of that.

This present crisis points to how necessary it is to give substance to sovereignty. It is unlikely we will be able to rescue ourselves from a crisis largely of our own making unless there is public support for the measures that are required – some kind of social solidarity. This spectacularly inept Government has done as much as it can to damage any sense of social solidarity. Its most recent debacle over the allowances for long-serving TDs, plus the parachute payments that are to be afforded to the redundant Ministers of State, is a vivid illustration of its vandalism.

We desperately need a plan to which the country as a whole can give its allegiance, and, given such social solidarity, we could succeed not just in rescuing ourselves from this fiasco but we could create a better society than the debris of the one we allowed evolve during the Celtic Tiger era.

And such a plan could come if the people were engaged in the process and if, eventually, the people were to exercise their sovereignty, via a referendum, to determine the fundamentals of policy that should inform how that is to be done. It would involve the national parliament examining the various options, and presenting them to the people to decide. It will be claimed that the issues are too complex for the people to decide – similar arguments were deployed against universal franchise. Yes, it would be messy and protracted, but it would be effective in winning the public support that is necessary.

And, incidentally, it would be democratic.