Madam, – Elaine Byrne’s column of January 27th (“Political reform needed to restore faith in democracy”) is a timely reminder that democracies must constantly renew themselves if they are to retain and strengthen public trust.
In 2007, as part of the Democratic Audit Ireland project, TASC published Power to the People?, assessing the state of Irish democracy. While we found that Ireland was doing very well in certain areas, there were significant democratic deficits.
These included high levels of inequality, a low level of public engagement with the democratic process and insufficient oversight of the workings of government – including the operation of public bodies.
One issue of public concern is the perceived political patronage involved in appointments to state boards, and Ms Byrne correctly identifies political appointments as one of the areas requiring fundamental reform.
TASC believes that merit and diversity must be the twin pillars of our public appointments process, subject to the overarching principle of independence, and we will shortly be publishing a set of policy proposals in this regard. – Yours, etc,