People are only gradually beginning to understand the sheer scale of the public finance problem that has been created. We are borrowing €63m every day of the week, including Sundays. Apart from borrowing for investment, almost 30% of our day-to-day spending is now funded on tick. You don’t need to be MiCawber to know that this can’t go on. We need rationalisation in the way we deliver public services if we are to protect the frontline. If we can’t strip back on bureaucracy, we will be faced with the usual choice of deep cuts in entitlements or huge hikes in taxation.

Many do advocate increases in taxation, and it is certainly true that policy in recent years cut tax levels from sustainable tax sources down below what was necessary to fund legitimate levels of public service. However, the folly of seeking to raise taxes in the teeth of a deep recession was clearly illustrated this year. The Minister in his two budgets sought to increase tax levels by €6,000m. Now he has admitted that end-year revenue will actually be €8,000m less than last year. Our success in protecting vulnerable people from severe cuts in entitlement will hinge in the short term on our ability to rationalise bureaucracies and get down costs.

It is in that context that the radical proposals by Enda Kenny to abolish the Seanad and reduce the Dáil by 22 must be seen. We look to the political system to lead the difficult process of change within the public services. To lead with credibility, we must show that we are able to reform and rationalise the political system itself. The proposal involves reducing the size of the political establishment by almost 40% and with other knock-on savings making it €150m cheaper each year to run the Oireachtas. That is a really significant change. Indeed much more can be saved if Fine Gael’s proposals for cutting pay for office-holders and cutting political expenses are also implemented.

More with Less

Contrary to the comments from Vincent Browne in his weekly column, Fine Gael is also committed to radical changes in the way the Dáil works in order to make it more effective.

 We will revolutionise spending oversight by requiring units to bid for money on the basis of the performance that they will deliver.
 We will restore the investigative powers of the Oireachtas which have been thrown into question by court rulings.
 We will institute a new framework for the scrutiny and accountability of public agencies.
 We will strengthen the deliberative role of the Dáil in shaping legislation.

The quality of political decisions and of political oversight by a much smaller Oireachtas can improve from this package of reforms. It can deliver more with less.

Original Purposes Redundant

In Europe parliamentary systems that retain two houses are now in a minority. They are mainly found in very large countries, particularly where these countries are federations of previously independent states. The purpose of the second house is to provide the sort of regional representation that people fear would be lost in a unified parliament. They also remain in communities that are deeply divided on religious or ethnic grounds to guarantee representation for certain minority interests.

When the Irish Free State was originally established, the purpose of the Seanad was to provide representation for the Protestant Unionist minority who would otherwise be swamped. However, in the 1937 Constitution, that purpose of the Seanad was dropped and instead de Valera modelled the Seanad on corporatist thinking which had been developed in a Papal Encyclical and was popular across Europe (though sometimes among parties whose attachment to democracy proved to be slender).

If we look at the Irish Seanad today, it is full of deep anomalies and it is difficult to defend its make-up on any democratic principle.

 Six of its members are elected by an elite – the graduates of certain 3rd-level institutions.
 Eleven of its members are not elected at all, but are selected by the Taoiseach of the day to ensure that he will have a majority and that the Seanad can’t obstruct the wishes of the Executive.
 The remaining 43 are elected by the political club of councillors and members of the Oireachtas.
 The notion that the politicians elected from each of the five panels – administrative, labour, education, agriculture, industry – genuinely represent the accumulation of experience and wisdom from these sectors is an illusion. Qualification to join any panel is a crude box-ticking exercise that bears no relationship to accumulated knowledge. In any event social partnerships structures now fully fulfil the requirement to give voice to such interests in the political process.

The Seanad has long been redundant but up until now no party leader has had the courage to grasp this nettle. Some people complain that this is opportunistic by the Fine Gael. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that under the existing system, Fine Gael’s victory in the Local Elections puts us in a position to double our representation in the Seanad. If you are looking for cynical opportunism, it is worth looking at those leaders who wriggle out of the need to rationalise the political establishment, and instead seek to shape a wasteful luxury more to their own liking, and their own hopes of finding a soft landing when the electorate pass their inevitable judgement on discredited government, and those who prop it up.

This country has been talking about reforming the Seanad for 30 years now and nothing has happened. It is the role of leadership to recognise when the talking must stop and actions must start. Enda Kenny has seized that moment. It is the sort of leadership that this country craves at this time of crisis.