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Working Our Own Land
Read more about: Democracy, Economy, Electoral Register, Fianna Fail, Government, Labour Party, Nationalism, Policy, Republicanism
The latest Sunday Business Post/Red C opinion poll shows Fianna Fáil support rock solid at 35%. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has previously called this poll standing ‘acceptable enough’, and he seems confident that it provides a firm foundation for the party’s 2007 election campaign.
I was polled by Red C last week and, as well as confiding my voting intentions to the interviewer I was happy to tell her that I buy my meat from Tesco, I don’t have private health insurance and I live in a County Dublin town with greater than 1,500 population. This last snippet helps the pollsters to balance their sample and ensure it is representative.
The 2002 Census found that about 40% of the state’s population live in rural areas or town of less than 1,500 people. A corresponding figure for the UK can’t be found on the UK Census website but as long ago as 1881 80% of Britain’s population were urban dwellers, and the population of London alone is larger than the entire population of the island of Ireland. It follows, I would argue, that our representative and administrative needs are not the same as Great Britain’s. We work our own land.
I’ve been struck in recent times by how often Irish commentators disparagingly contrast Ireland’s ways of doing things to the way Britain goes about its affairs. A few years ago one Sunday Independent writer mockingly described Ireland as not being ‘a real country’. One may agree or disagree, but at least the man wrote what, I assume, he meant.
When the ritual annual complaint goes up that our legislature is lazy and our executive unaccountable because our Dáil sits for fewer days each year than the United Kingdom’s House of Commons does, I ask myself ‘what is the subtext of that whinge?’.
Our parliament and our government make our decisions here in Ireland to meet our needs and not because we need to mimic what our good royalist neighbours and former colonizers in Britain do.
The 2006 Census preliminary figures also gave rise to another ritual topic for the lazy-minded commentariat, namely the gripe that we in Ireland have too many TDs relative to our popluation size. Again, comparisons were made with the level of representation in the UK’s House of Commons — the implication being that what Britain does is what Ireland SHOULD do.
The subtext in both instances, it appears to me, is that Britain provides a norm from which we the Irish have deviated.
This notion of Irish deviation from British ideals also frequently manifests itself in another favourite topic for the complaining tendency in Irish public discourse — town planning. People who should, and possibly do, know better relentlessly peddle the myth that planning is an objective value-free field of technical expertise (originating in Britain, incidentally) which we Irish persistently offend against. It is not.
Ireland’s planning system, first legislated for under Eamon de Valera in the 1930s, manages Ireland’s development needs. Planning officials do not make development policy they apply policies made by our elected public representatives at national and local level. Planners personal opinions and aesthetic judgements are a private matter best kept to themselves.
At the summit of our planning system is the appeals board, An Bord Pleanála, introduced by a Labour Party environment minister in the 1970s. In about 10% of cases coming before it An Bord Pleanála does not accept the recommendation of an official whose job it is to write a report on a planning appeal and make a recommendation as to how s/he feels the Board might decide the case.
That is our system. The inspector makes the report and recommendation and the Board makes the decision. Yet time and time again the commentators wag their fingers and tut-tut at An Bord Pleanála for its decisions, suggesting that it was insubordinate of the Board to disagree with one of its servants agents or consultants. The Board, like the officials, has the job of implementing policy, not of making it. In many cases those very consultants have been hired from the UK, and do not appear to understand that Irish development policy is independent of the policies which they have learned in England, Scotland or Wales. And I will only make passing mention of the curiosity of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland telling Irish people that they can’t build houses for themselves on their own land.
So the next time you hear someone moaning about our Constitution, our Oireachtas, the Irish Statute Book, or the fact that we are now apparently the second wealthiest people in the EU, pause a moment and ask yourself what is the subtext, what is really being said?
OK, Captain sub-test you’re saying that because it is our system we shouldn’t ever change it and Heaven help us if we were to use anything that is used across the water?
“When the ritual annual complaint goes up that our legislature is lazy and our executive unaccountable because our Dáil sits for fewer days each year than the United Kingdom’s House of Commons does, I ask myself ‘what is the subtext of that whinge?’.”
Actually, part of the compliant is that we pass less legislation that other jurisdictions. And we have a pretty weak committee system and the executive isn’t very accountable by any standards.
I rest my case. Why compare anything our represntative democracy does with the charade of the elected dictatorship and the ceremonial parliament at Westminster, with its single-member constituencies, members who frequently have no personal connection, maybe not even a residential one, with the constituencies they are elected to represent. And the windbaggery! I ask you.
To be honest, Frank, I think you’re reading too much into the fact we often compare our system to the UK’s. You need to remember that of all the other countries in the world, it’s the one whose political system Irish people know best and have the most exposure to besides our own. This is natural and inevitable.
But rejecting something just because it’s the way them across the water to it strikes me as a little silly. We do some things better than them, some things worse and there’s no shame in taking the elements of their system that work better than ours and using them. But the same goes for ideas we could borrow from many countries.
For instance, one of the flaws in our system is the fact that very little real debate happens in the Dáil; what little there is is overwhelmed by the vast number of pre-scripted speeches and monologues. Is it fair and reasonable to compare this element of our political system to that of other countries, even if one of those countries is “the old enemy”? I think so.
Your post, I’m afraid, is an example of how this country still hasn’t managed to mature politically: we still feel the need to define ourselves in opposition to the UK rather than developing an identity of our own.
Your post, I’m afraid, is an example of how this country still hasn’t managed to mature politically: we still feel the need to define ourselves in opposition to the UK rather than developing an identity of our own.
Quite the opposite, I protest. My post was making the valid and reasoned point that many in this country continue to fall, perhaps unconsciously, into the old habit of knocking Irish independence, its institutions, and the decisions of those democratically elected institutions, by invidious comparison with the oddity to our east.
Frank has a point on the number of Dail members. But the real problem is not comparisons with Britain, it is low productivity rates. Is there a case for giving the Seanad the capacity to scruntinise EU laws and directives for instance?
Frank, my comment “Actually, part of the compliant is that we pass less legislation that other jurisdictions. And we have a pretty weak committee system and the executive isn’t very accountable by any standards.” is more directed at the example of the US Senate committee system but you made the assumption that I was referring to the British system, so who is the person with the subtext problem.
We have as an independent citizenry a responsbility to continually test our structures and institutions to ensure they are doing the job they are supposed to do. Otherwise, we’re simply giving ourselves over to a new elite and that wouldn’t be very republican of us now would it?
Mick,Dan
As far as I’m aware the Seanad scrutinises all primary legislation, which usually includes within it the powers for ministers to make secondary legislation.
Surely the the of a government’s performance is how it has measured up against its own programme for government and its legislative programme.
I don’t see how you can with any credibility at all draw comparisons between the federal assemblies in Washington and the Oireachtas. Underlying your aomplaints is the notion that you don’t like or don’t agree with the eemocratic decisions of the Irish electorate and the governments they have elected.
Dan, your comaprison is weak given that the executive in the US is the President who addresses the assembled representatives once a year.
and Dan,
It’s not right of you to be putting the words that you did into my mouth when you wrote “you’re saying that because it is our system we shouldn’t ever change it and Heaven help us if we were to use anything that is used across the water?” My subtext was that we are an independent state and theredore we make our own decisions for our own reasons, subject to the obligatiosn we agree to under international treaties.
Mick,
Apologies, only the first paragraph of my 6.53pm comment is addressed to yourself.