NOEL DEMPSEY, former Fianna Fail chief whip, recently made a personal suggestion for a reform of our electoral system. His proposal merits further debate.
The case for reform of our present multi seat system derives from the distortion of the legislative role of Dail deputies that results from the pressure on TDs to defend their seats not merely against contenders from other parties, but also against rivals in their own party.
The scale of this pressure can be judged by the fact that no less than half of those TDs from the two main parties who have lost their seats in the past eight general elections - two-thirds in the case of Fianna Fail - have lost them to contenders from their own parties rather than to opponents. In other words for the great majority of deputies the present electoral system actually doubles - or in the case of Fianna Fail trebles - what might be described as the normal democratic risk of a TD losing his or her seat to a candidate of a rival party.
The inevitable consequence is that TDs' natural concern to hold on to their inherently unstable jobs tempts them to spend a disproportionate amount of their time and energy nursing their constituencies which in many cases must impinge significantly con their attention to legislative duties.
Seven out of every eight TDS are, or have been, members of local councils. The vast majority of these first entered the Dail from this local political base; some win a seat from a TD of another party, but because of the working of the multi seat electoral system, many others succeed or displace a TD from their own party. In turn, they feel threatened by local councillors of their party, who can beaver away locally while, as TDs, they have to spend three or four days a week in Leinster House.
Now, despite Tip O'Neill's over worked aphorism about all politics being local politics, a political system that effectively confines participation in national politics to members of the small group of less than 1,000 people who have had the time and inclination to serve at local council level is clearly unwise. For, while such local political experience is in itself useful - a Government lacking in this element would clearly be at a disadvantage - much of the work of Government requires talents that may not readily be found among this very small group.
Our present electoral system thus has the effect of not merely distracting TDs from their primary legislative function: it has also been responsible for a most undesirable narrowing of the range of talent available to national politics. In a small country this is a serious defect of the system.
WHAT would need to be done in order to resolve these problems? The answer has to be the institution of single seat for multi seat constituencies. This would eliminate intra party competition at the polls, while still, in exceptional circumstances, leaving open a challenge to the re nomination of a sitting TD at the pre election convention of his or her party.
The trouble is that if there are more than two parties, a single seat constituency system can produce a totally distorted result when the victor is whichever candidate secures the highest individual vote in each constituency. Indeed if the pattern of party allegiances was evenly spread across the whole State, under this system the largest, party could theoretically win all the seats!
This defect of the British type single seat electoral system has in the past led some people here to suggest a single seat system using the alternative vote, i.e. voting 1,2,3 in order of choice for the candidates of the different parties, rather than just placing an X after a single name. The argument for this system has assumed, however, that the passing of preferences between non Fianna Fail parties would, by evening up the score vis a vis Fianna Fail, produce a reasonable alternation of governments.
But a detailed study of our electoral geography prepared by Senator Jim Dooge and myself at the time of the 1968 referendum on a proposal to abolish our PR system suggested that with our particular political geography, even with the alternative vote, single seat constituencies would tend to produce big majorities for the largest party, Fianna Fail, and could in fact give them an overall majority with little more than 40 per cent of the votes.
Deputy Noel Dempsey's recent proposal recognises this defect and thus the need to provide against the likely disproportionate impact of singleseat constituencies upon Dail representation - whatever the voting method used. His suggestion is that two thirds of the Dail members be chosen using the alternative vote in single member constituencies, and one third by means of a list system, which could, of course, be either national or regional.
Although Noel Dempsey was unaware of it when he made this suggestion, just 10 years ago an almost identical proposal was included in the 1987 Fine Gael general election manifesto on my initiative. At the time this suggestion dropped like a stone - for the manifestos of defend parties tend to be quickly forgotten. But Noel Dempsey's initiative suggests that the time for serious consideration of such a reform of our electoral system may now have come.
DURING the intervening decade the pressures on our politicians have increased alarmingly to the point, indeed, where these pressures now look like producing an increasing number of voluntary early retirements. The problem of the conflict between constituency and parliamentary duties has, indeed, recently been intensified by the proliferation of Oireachtas committees.
In the light of further study and analysis, I would now amend the 1987 proposal in one important respect. It now seems clear that if only one third of the seats were to be held in reserve to compensate for disproportionality in the results from the single seat constituencies, there would be a danger that the largest party might win so many of the constituency seats that it would be impossible to secure proportionality in Dail representation even if the whole of the remaining one third of seats were to be allocated to the other parties.
Accordingly it would probably be necessary - as in Germany where this system operates - for not more than half the Dail seats to be filled by constituency elections.
If, as Noel Dempsey has suggested, the total number of Dail seats were at the same time to be reduced to 150, there would then be 75 single seat constituencies, each with around 48,000 inhabitants and with electorates averaging 35,000. The existing, constituencies have electorates of up to 87,000, although some three seaters have 45,000 voters or less.
For any reform to go through it would be necessary for it to secure the support both of a majority of Dail deputies and of a majority of the electorate in a referendum, for this is a constitutional issue.
Now, while many deputies would certainly prefer to represent a single member constituency, they will also be understandably anxious about their prospect of being re elected under a radically different system.
As far as the electorate is concerned, if it is to vote for a change to a different system, it will also need to be persuaded that the advantages will outweigh the loss of existing rights to choose freely between candidates of the same party both at election times and when seeking the assistance of local politicians with their personal problems.
Neither of these potential obstacles to change will be easy to overcome. These are issues to return to in this column. In the meantime I wish Noel Dempsey well with his initiative.