Irish Constitutional Reform

Michael Williams

Issue 393, vol.99, Spring 2010

The most important reform which this country needs, is to separate the legislative function from the executive. The Head of the Executive should be elected directly by the people. This executive President – who will not be a member of Dail or Senate – will be responsible for all government departments, for running the country, for giving effect to legislation, for handling our relations with other states. The President will select, for assistance and advice, a Cabinet – who will not be members of Dail or Senate, but who will be drawn from the entire population. Individual Cabinet members may or may not take direct charge of a Government Department.

Dail and Senate will continue to be the only law-makers, and the Dail will determine levels of taxation and other fiscal matters. The ratio of one T.D. per 20,000 – 30,000 people will change to one T.D. per 35,000 – 40,000 people (so reducing the total number of T.D.s). The number of T.D.s per constituency will increase from three to eight, increasing constituency size and making it harder for a candidate to get elected through the support of a small clique.

There will be no Dail-to-Senate or Senate-to-Dail cross-over candidacies : the Senate will attract only people wishing to contribute their wisdom to the community. The new Constitution will be reviewed after a limited term – say, fifty years.

The effectiveness of such a constitutional blueprint will become apparent on both the legislative and the executive fronts. T.D.s will be freed to give their whole attention to legislating. Under the present system, by contrast, there is the temptation to devote their energy to currying favour with their constituents, with a view to re-election. This can be done by taking on the functions of Citizens’ Advice Bureau and messenger-boy for constituents individually (“He’ll help you to jump a queue in a government department, or get you something from a government agency that you’re not entitled to”). Or it can be done by lobbying for a more generous share of public funds for the T.D.’s constituency as a whole (“He’s responsible for the new swimming-pool down the road”).

On the executive front : in drawing up his Cabinet a Taoiseach is limited under the present system, in strategic terms, to the talent-pool represented by the less-than-one-hundred non-opposition T.D.s (many of whom have spent their time positioning themselves for re-election). An executive President, by contrast, will be able to draw on the whole country’s top layer of executive/managerial talent.

The proposed reformed Constitution should make it impossible for a small group of T.D.s to maintain a hold on a Taoiseach – where, in a ‘hung Dail’, their votes had been necessary to elect him, and where they can later threaten to withdraw support.

Michael Williams is a former solicitor and a retired mediator.