We need to focus on the bigger issues

There are some signs that the present government is really serious about Dáil reform. The House is due to adjourn this Thursday and to resume on September 14. This means TDs will have their summer holidays cut by a month.
Up to now, the Dáil adjourned at the very beginning of July and did not resume until the last day or so of September. But I can remember the Dáil summer holidays lasting almost until Halloween, resuming just a few weeks before adjourning once more for the Christmas holidays, which lasted nearly until St Patrick’s Day. They took two weeks off to celebrate the national holiday, which brought them back just in time to adjourn for a four-week break at Easter. Those Easter holidays lasted right up until early summer. In fact, Dáil sittings were just one long holiday.
TDs, of course, always argued they were not in fact on holidays but were beavering away on behalf of their constituents. Doing the work you might expect county councillors to do.
Now, I believe that not alone are the summer holidays to be cut short but TDs can also be expected to be in the Dáil for longer periods during Christmas and other festive periods.
Instead of sitting two–and–a–half days a week they will be in their offices in Leinster House for four days a week.
I don’t want to hold my breath because I have been hearing about Dáil reform for as long as I have been hearing about Seanad reform and that’s as long as they have been talking about draining the Shannon. When John Bruton was elected Taoiseach in 1994 he promised the Dáil would be sitting normal office hours – in other words, five days a week from around nine to five each day. I think we might be as far away from that as ever.
However, real Dáil reform would not necessarily have to do with sitting hours or days but with making the Dáil more relevant. The fact is that the vast majority of TDs have little or no influence on the legislation that comes before the Dáil. Even Government backbench TDs have no say in Government business.
New legislation has, of course, to be debated and passed by the Dáil. But the debates are not really debates. The bill is introduced by the relevant minister, who reads from a dull script prepared by a civil servant. The minister’s speech is followed by the main Opposition spokesman, who also reads from a prepared script and they are speaking to an almost empty House. Well, why should TDs turn up to listen to dreary speeches they have already read or heard before? They are not there to clap or to criticise. They are there merely as vote fodder with no other useful function.
A lot of TDs are happy enough with that situation but there are exceptions, such as George Lee, who believe they might have something to contribute other than making up the numbers. However, they are not allowed.
We will have to wait until later in the year to see what exactly the Government proposes to do to give more power to individual TDs, whether those TDs come from the Government or Opposition benches. We have been promised changes in that regard by the present Government, so we will have to wait and see.
It is also of some slight interest to see that a new dress code is to be introduced for deputies attending the Dáil. It is, of course, important that due respect be given to Parliament but TDs should not have to be told what not to wear and what to wear. They should be mature enough to know that themselves. There can, of course, always be doubts about some items of clothing. Jeans, for example, were never accepted as proper attire for men or women in the Dáil. As far as I know, the ban on jeans is to remain.
Male TDs and members of the Oireachtas press gallery were always expected to wear ties but I understand that rule is to be relaxed. This rule was always applied more strictly to members of the press than to TDs since the late Independent TD Tony Gregory absolutely refused to wear one.
I remember a colleague being ejected from the press gallery because he was wearing an overcoat. He was not allowed to do the work he was sent there to do. He explained to me later that he was embarrassed because the zip in his fly had broken so he wore the overcoat to cover the problem. “They will not allow me to sit on the gallery wearing an overcoat but they don’t seem to mind if I sit there with my fly open,” he said.
I guess that rule will still apply.
That brings me to the biggest story to emerge from the Dáil during the week and that was to do with the crude remarks made by Independent TD Mick Wallace about the dress worn by Fine Gael TD Mary Mitchell-O’Connor, whom he referred to as ‘Miss Piggy’.
Have we not lost all sense of what is happening in this country at present if this was the major story to come out of the Dáil during the week?
The brightest and best of our young people are being forced to emigrate because there is no work for them at home. Thousands of people are unable to pay their mortgages, no matter how hard they try. Schools and hospitals are closing down because there is no money to keep them open. Old people are dying in their homes because there is nobody to care for them.
One might expect the Dáil would be in uproar and that the gates of Leinster House would come crashing down with the weight of protesters trying to get at the TDs inside.
But no, the front pages of our newspapers are full of a stupid remark made in private by one or two Independent TDs about the dress worn by a colleague.
Surely we have lost our way somewhere along the line.