Dan O’Brien is getting to grips with some of the fundamental issues in today’s IT:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0720/1224320450711.html?via=rel

I know he has never allowed himself to be constrained within the economics ‘silo’, but it’s good to see him striding in to territory that the pol sci heads might consider theirs alone.

Irish voters have to decide as to whether the primary role of TDs is to act as their personal brokers with an overmighty, centralised and expansive government apparatus or to subject this expansive apparatus to scrutiny, restraint and accountability. These are not mutually exclusive activities, but one has to take precedence over the other. The profound failures of governance, policy and regulation, interspersed with relatively short periods of moderately good governance, over the last 35 years have been caused by the almost excessive focus on the former activity – and an almost total neglect of the latter.

But voters can’t choose unless they’re offered a choice. And so we’re back to the primary responsibility of existing and aspiring TDs. While the preference of some voters for independents and others outside the traditional party ‘mainstream’ might be viewed as a preference for a traditional ‘clientelist/broker’ relationship, it might also signal a disaffection with the traditional ‘my party, right or wrong’ approach of the dominant party TDs – irrespective of their voters wishes.

So, to all TDs and aspriring TDs: decide whether or not you wish to give voters a genuine choice about what you do – and then do it. Among all electorates in long-established democracies, Irish voters have a well-deserved reputation for thier patience and their willingness to bide their until they have an opportunity to cast judgement in the secrecy of the polling booths. Currently the patience and willingness of many voters to bide their time are being sorely tested. Governing politicians and all TDs should not abuse these laudable and long-standing attributes of the vast majority of Irish voters.

IMO, Elaine Byrne simply pointed out that the current culture of the public appears to be such that they will look for ways to circumvent Freedom of Information provisions, even if such measures are explicitly grounded in Constitutional articles. I agree that she did not say this, but that is what I took from her response. Her resp

As I pointed out in a recent article in the thejournal.ie
“Abuses of position, cronyism and corruption need secrecy. We have learnt this from investigative reporting, tribunals, leaks and special inquiries. What is less obvious is that bad management and inefficiency also thrive in an atmosphere of secrecy.”
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-cronyism-and-corruption-%E2%80%93-one-quick-change-would-help-fight-them/

The kind of circumventing FoI provisions suggests that the culture and practice of the senior public service has little sense of fiduciary responsibility. There are other examples
1) the Dept of Finance
“Who is to blame? Ultimately, and again, it is political leaders. But that does not exonerate officials, and all the
more so in a political system where top-down pressure for change is unusually lacking. Among the central questions… why officials,… did not do more to drive change, particularly in administrative and technocratic areas with few if any political implications…. Why was it beyond the ambition of senior officials to take advantage of this to beef up their own capacity and bring on board the sort of expertise that any finance ministry needs in a modern economy?..”
Dan O’Brien “Looking back on a unique absence of foresight” Irish Times 28 June 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0628/1224273464255_pf.html

2) the Dept of Health and beyond
“However, we have learned most about how the civil service operates from the enquiry by John Travers into the Health Department’s performance in charging poor people for long-stay institutional care. What it reveals is more damning than even the findings of the Cromien report on the Department of Justice had been. The illegality of the Department of Health’s behaviour over nearly three decades will now cost the State many hundreds of millions of Euro. Travers’s summing up, ‘long-term overall systemic corporate failure of public administration’ at the highest levels,
certainly has very much wider application than just to the Department of Health and Children…….

Over all these years, as Travers notes, an immense amount of administrative resources within the Department of Health were wasted ‘in attempting to defend a legally suspect charging regime and in undertaking a sequence of reviews of a practice clearly seen to be problematic……

Frustrating the Ombudsman
The performance of the Department of Health and Children is put into a wider context by the comments of the Ombudsman on the Travers Report to the relevant Oireachtas Committee in June 2005. She claimed that nothing of what Travers had uncovered had been revealed to her predecessor…In his presentation to the Dáil Committee in 2001, her predecessor had referred to ‘a
breakdown in the accountability relationship between Ministers and senior civil servants and at the very least a distinct lack of transparency in that relationship.’”
William Kingston “Systemic Corporate Failure of Public Administration” Reflections on the Travers Report Studies
94 (394) Winter, 2005 p. 385-395

The Travers Report was on “Certain Issues of Management and Administration in the Department of Health &
Children associated with the Practice of Charges for Persons in Long-Stay Care in Health Board Institutions and Related Matters.”
(http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/committees29thdail/committeereports2005/document3.pdf)

Perhaps most Irish voters can’t decide between having TDs as their personal brokers with an over-mighty, highly centralised and expansive government apparatus or using their TDs to subject this expansive apparatus to scrutiny, restraint and accountability – with a traditional preference for the former. Many British voters seem to be much more in favour of the latter – and their MPs, having long been in disgrace and considered ineffectual, are realising that they have to bare their teeth at, and to bite, government, if they wish to be re-elected.

Perhaps an increasing number of Irish voters will come to realise that’s what their TDs are really for; but, then again, perhaps they won’t. There seems to be this innate distaste for, even fear of, robust, adversarial disputation and confrontation. And, of course, smothering and suppressing any dissent or confrontation suits those who exercise power and influence absolutely perfectly.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0710/1224319720433.html

Molaim

Yes, indeed.
For an example of what is basically wrong with our way of governing ourselves, it is worth listening to the interview of John McGuinness TD, Chair, Public Accounts Committee(PAC)/Dáil on Morning Ireland on Friday 6th July last. He was being interviewed on the proposed PAC investigation into the banking crisis.. All the quotes are what John McGuinness actually said

“….We would urge the Government to make a quick decision in relation to this report and to allow the Public Accounts Committee to complete its work and to get the inquiry under way. We see a clear roadmap ahead where if government makes the decision early, we could be holding public inquiries as early as January next year…”

“…and secondly we would ask that the whole issue of compellability, to compel witnesses to attend , would be dealt with before we set off on the inquiry….”

“…Well, having examined all of the aspects of this inquiry, we’re convinced that with Government approval and the various changes in legislation that yes, it can go ahead. The legislation can easily be done before the end of this year. …”

“…We’re now dealing with €64bn taxpayer’s money and I believe that it is quite clear, given that Brendan Howlin is our line minister, we are responsible to him, that there is no need to change the rules in this regard. ….”

“…There are three pillars to this inquiry and if we are allowed to do this, we would base it on the report we now have which is as I said a clear road map. …”

This is a very clear an expression of the complete subservience of the Dáil to the government. It also shows clearly the total control of the Government/Executive on any possible inquiry that any Dáil committee might judge necessary.

What is worse is that the PAC Chairman does not appear to see the complete ineptitude of his position, when he describes a Government Minister as “our line minister” He goes further and takes the complete opposite view of what modern forms of parliamentary democracy are supposed to be about whe he said ” we are responsible to him”

I suggest that few, if any other TD or Senator, would find anything wrong with the perspective underlying what John McGuiness actually said, because they do not actually believe in the complete separation of the directly elected legislative assembly/Dáil from the executive/Government.
Separation of powers only means the special position of the judiciary.

With this perspective on all side of the Dáil and in all political parties, it is very difficult to have any faith in the workings of and outcomes from the Constitutional Convention.

The full interview starts at minute 21 on this podcast
pod-v-0607122ndhour53m59smorningireland-pid0-3239400_audio.mp3

If this link does not work, I refer you to the RTE Morning Ireland website section for podcasts
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_morningireland.xml
The interview was broadcast at 08.24 ie. the second hour.