The publication last week of Prof Michael Laver's study* on a possible new electoral system for Ireland has launched an overdue debate on electoral reform. Prof Laver is right in saying that if we are to make any change in our electoral system, the most plausible alternative would be a system along the lines of that which is now employed in Germany and New Zealand, i.e. what is known as the "Additional Member System" (AMS).
This is because the pressure for reform comes from dissatisfaction with aspects of our present multi-seat system, and AMS is the only system that combines single-seat constituencies with proportional representation of parties in the Dail.
And proportionality of party representation in the Dail is a principle to which our people are rightly attached on grounds of equity and fairness.
If we were to move to a system that consisted only of single-seat constituencies, Fianna Fail would secure overwhelming majorities at each election because in the great majority of constituencies it is the largest single party.
Even if preferential voting (1,2,3, etc., in order of your choice) were retained, thus enabling anti-Fianna Fail parties to accumulate their votes in favour of whichever of them was most popular in each constituency, with 40 per cent or somewhat less of the popular vote Fianna Fail would secure about 60 per cent of Dail seats.
Thus, if the basic electoral system is to change to one involving single-seat constituencies, the achievement of a proportionally-representative Dail would make it necessary to introduce compensation for this imbalance by adding additional members to ensure adequate representation of non-Fianna Fail parties.
In Germany and New Zealand this is done by electing in the single-member constituencies half (in New Zealand slightly more than half) of the total parliamentary membership.
Then, from lists drawn up by the parties, extra members are added to even up the score by adding appropriately to the parliamentary membership of each party that secures a certain minimum share of votes.
In the Irish case Prof Laver suggests a 2 per cent voting threshold to qualify for additional seats, and I would agree with this figure.
In the Fine Gael Manifesto for the 1987 election I proposed a possible change to this type of electoral system. But that election had to be fought almost exclusively on the need to complete the process of re-establishing fiscal discipline through which, by the time we published our 1987 Budget proposals, we had already halved the borrowing rate from the 21.5 per cent of GDP that had faced us in June 1981.
As a result, the electoral reform proposal in that manifesto barely featured in the campaign - and, although some years later I raised the issue in this column, this electoral issue effectively disappeared from the political agenda until revived by Noel Dempsey, now Minister for Environment and Local Government.
After last week's launch by Deputy Brian Lenihan of Prof Laver's electoral study, this matter was debated on Prime Time. The principal objection put forward there to this proposed reform was the likelihood that under this two-tier electoral system the majority of those elected in constituencies, and thus responsible for looking after constituency problems, would be Fianna Fail TDs.
The corollary of this is that the majority of the added members without constituency responsibilities would come from other parties.
This is a serious point. However, I believe Prof Laver's approach exaggerates the likely scale of this problem. He estimates that, if this system had operated in last year's general election, of 83 TDs elected in single-seat constituencies, only between 12 and 19 would have been candidates of non-Fianna Fail parties (two Labour and 10-17 Fine Gael).
But there are in fact two arbitrary elements in Prof Laver's approach to this matter.
First of all Prof Laver insists on the use of the British first-pastthe-post voting system in the proposed single-seat constituencies, dismissing the preferential voting system on the grounds that it is an "untried system".
But preferential voting is in fact the only system used here since 1921 - not merely in multi-seat constituencies at general elections but also in the single-seat constituencies that these electoral areas constitute for by-election purposes.
Second, he argues that it makes little difference which system is used. But this is simply not the case.
The voting system used in single-seat constituencies can make a big difference, for nonFianna Fail preferences can accumulate in such a way as to push an opposition party with fewer first preference votes ahead of Fianna Fail on the final count.
Examples include the by-elections in Dublin South-West in 1959 and 1976, Cork City in 1979, Mayo West and Cork South-Central in 1994.
He dismisses on these two curious grounds the retention of preferential voting in his proposed single-seat constituencies.
THE present multi-seat system pulls almost all Dail deputies into local politics. For in the last Dail no fewer than 87 per cent of all deputies were, or had been, members of local councils.
The fact that quite a number are former council members reflects the fact that those who are appointed to government have to resign from their local positions.
In the present Dail this proportion of councillors or former councillors is still 86 per cent - and over 4 per cent of the remainder are close relatives of earlier TDs.
Thus fewer than 10 per cent can be described as people who have entered national politics from outside the system and who have also concentrated their attention exclusively on national politics.
The scale of the workload in multi-seat constituencies (which are, of course, on average twice as large as single-seat constituencies would be under the Additional Member System, and which involve duplication of clientelist representations to competing deputies), is the only one referred to by Prof Laver as a reason for abandoning multi-seat constituencies.
But the real weakness of our parliamentary system is this dual mandate at council and Dail level. For in very many cases this leads TDs to give more attention to their local than to their national responsibilities.
Thus the Dail is precluded from meeting before Tuesday afternoon, and many deputies return to their constituencies on Thursday evening to look after their seats. Some rural Ministers are also reluctant to risk their seats by spending a full five-day week in Dublin.
Against this disturbing background it is not surprising that Mr Dempsey is seeking to combine electoral reform with the phasing out of this "dual mandate" at local and national level.
Because of competitive constituency pressures it would be difficult to achieve the latter crucial reform without first changing the electoral system.
He is, I believe, the first Minister to attempt to tackle these crucial defects in our political system.
This vitally important issue of electoral reform is one to which I shall return in this column.
A New Electoral System For Ireland. Michael Laver. The Policy Institute in association with the All-Party Committee on the Constitution. £10