We have to set up a high-powered commission, give it six months to report, and legislate on the findings

LEAD headline from page 1 of the Irish independent, Thursday, November 5, 2009: 'Lenihan told to tax lower-paid workers'. Same newspaper, same date, page 7: 'Harney fears roll-out of flu jab will take eight months'.

It takes no great effort of analysis and concentration to connect the OECD's advice to the Finance Minister with the Health Minister's admission that the swine flu vaccination programme will not be completed for a whole year after the World Health Organisation issued a warning about the coming pandemic.

The specific OECD advice that interested me most was not the flaws of the taxation system but the think tank's expressed opinion that Ireland needs political reform.

The ancient Greeks said that everything was political. You might challenge that in relation to numerous aspects of human life, but certainly the crumbling state of our administration is political in origin, and certainly it will not be remedied unless we take the subject of reform on board.

But what do we mean by political reform?

And how do we go about it -- always assuming that we have any intention of going about it?

The easy part is to say how we don't go about it. We don't go about it piecemeal, in the customary Irish slapdash fashion, especially if the operation requires changes in the Constitution, as it usually does.

Few things would please me more than the abolition of the Seanad. But we can't get rid of it without a referendum. So at the next general election we could find Enda Kenny promising a referendum, and keeping his promise, without touching all the other -- and far worse -- things that are wrong with the system.

To do the job right, we need full-blooded constitutional reform. But here, once again, the right way is not the simple way.

What we must not do is to set up a committee, or two committees or six committees, and then ignore their reports. On the numbers, I do not exaggerate. Mary Harney (yes, she of the flu jab) in her previous role as Trade Minister set up six committees to look into the question of competitiveness -- all of them a waste of time and money. Separately, two committees were set up to propose changes in the Constitution. Both produced excellent reports. Both vanished, like the profits of the Celtic Tiger, into thin air.

If we really mean to start again, we have to set up a high-powered commission, give it six months to report, and legislate on the findings within another six months. But before we start, we must have a clear idea what we want to achieve, and why.

On this point, let me give an example from the legislative, not the constitutional, field. Of course we should have a property tax, and of course we should have water charges. But the purposes of the two impositions are not the same.

The purposes of a property tax are to raise revenue and bring more equity into the system. It could help to keep down income tax rates (stop laughing there at the back). The rationale for water charges is environmental. (By the bye, what kind of administration permits water to be carried in rusty, leaking pipes installed over 100 years ago?)

What then is the purpose of constitutional reform? Let's say, it's for simplicity, to make the system more efficient and more honest.

So let us start by being honest; by grasping a nettle that has stung us so painfully in the past.

The abortion issue has forced more referendums, and produced more unsatisfactory outcomes, than any other question of public policy. As matters stand, abortion is legal in Ireland, but we have no certainty and no regulation. Stern opposition continues to any form of legislation. Who has the courage to propose that in a new Constitution abortion simply should not be mentioned and the question should be left to the legislators?

Next question: how do we choose those legislators? The PR-STV system has given us a lot of fun, but we have paid heavily for our fun. We simply must dump it and replace it with a list system. There is more than one choice of list system, and we should pick the most democratic one.

Should we reduce the number of Dail deputies? Almost certainly yes, but one thing bothers me. So wretched is the standard of representation that any figure less than the present 166 would make it impossible to form a credible government.

Half of 166 is 83. Can you get 15 cabinet ministers and 13 junior ministers out of that? On present form, the answer is no. But the underlying reality is even worse.

Twice in recent weeks I have had conversations with colleagues in which we tried to find 15 names for a national government composed of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour. With the best will in the world, we came up somewhere between 12 and 14.

It would help a bit if the new Constitution specified a cabinet of 12 and no more than seven junior ministers. It might help even more if the raising of the bar encouraged high-calibre competition among the potential candidates. At a minimum, it should reduce the danger that a Taoiseach might promote some crony or ninny, because the crony or ninny would face a greater risk of being found out.

And if the voters found that they could no longer give the crony or ninny a first-preference vote, and other election candidates a half-vote or "stroke", they might just start learning to take the whole operation seriously.

Is any of this going to happen? No. But it should. The words of Rahm Emanuel, whom I have quoted in the past, apply: "Never waste a good crisis. There couldn't be a better time."

jdowney@independent.ie

Irish Independent