After Fixing The Economy Ireland Now Looks At Its Democracy

The current Irish Government was elected in February 2011, after the Republic was bailed out by the EU-ECB-IMF economic programme in November 2010. The government is a coalition between Fine Gael (affiliated to the European People´s Party) and the Labour Party (affiliated to the Socialists and Democrats).

The first priority was to exit the bailout - a goal accomplished in December 2013´.  However, this involved continuing new taxes on income that the previous government had imposed following the collapse of a housing bubble and a government rescue of the banks. It also meant that other taxes, charges and levies were imposed in addition to cut-backs in public expenditure, including a freeze on public sector recruitment. There has been a remarkable economic recovery, partially due to favourable external trade conditions,  but many of the new fiscal impositions remain as there is still a huge public sector debt.

In addition, the Government elected in 2011 also promised democratic reform and set up a Constitutional Convention to consider a limited number of reforms. The 100-member Convention had 66 citizens (selected by a polling company to be representative of gender, region. socio-economic and employment status), 33 politicians (29 drawn from the Republic´s parliament, with 4 from the Northern Ireland Assembly) and an independent Chair. The Government promised to consider the reports of the Convention within four months of receipt of those reports. The Irish Constitution (adopted by referendum in 1937) can only be changed following approval in a referendum. However, only the government can initiate amendments.

39 Irish Referendums

When it comes to referendum votes, Ireland is in the top ten: watch the assessment offered by Gavin Barrett, the Jean Monnet Professor at the University College of Dublin, given at a recent international workshop in Dublin also featuring insights into the Scottish, Swiss and European use of popular votes on substantive issues 

Three groups, which advocate people-initiated referenda, hope to influence the outcome of the General Election.  Among them are the political party Direct Democracy Ireland (DDI) and two groups, 1Yi and Reinstate48, which seek to influence voters without having any candidates.  With three days before polling, debate has focused on health services, crime, employment, housing, taxation and the economy.

The DDI party has 18 candidates standing in 16 of the 40 constituencies from which the 158 TDs (members of parliament) will be elected. As the opinion poll data does not report any figure for DDI, this suggests that support is less than 1% nationwide. However, in a 2013 by-election in one constituency, the DDI candidate got over 6% of the votes beating the Labour Party, the junior party in Government.

The Republic´s electoral system is officially known as Proportional Representation using a Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV). In practice, it is a constituency based open list system in which voters rank their preferences for candidates in order 1,2,3,4,5, 6,7 etc. There are two key points. First, Constituencies must have at least three parliamentary seats. Second, votes are cast for named individuals whose party affiliation, if any, is given on the ballot paper.

Considerable influence of small parties

People vote specifically for candidates not parties. This electoral system makes it possible for candidates from small parties and without party affiliation (independents) to become TDs (MPs). Depending on the outcome of the election, these can have considerable influence on both the formation of government and on specific policies.  Even if no DDI candidate is elected, their votes could have an impact on who is elected depending on to whom these votes transfer, should DDIcandidates be dropped during the election count.

In February 2015, a businessman set up the 1Yi-movement for people-initiated referendums. This was in response to the way in which the Government established metered charges for water supplied to domestic residences. Until 2015, most water and wastewater services were supplied by local authorities without metering and paid for from general taxation. As part of the EU-ECB-IMF bailout programme in 2010, the government agreed to change the basis on which water services are supplied. This gave rise to protests all over the country.

1Yi is calling on voters to support only those candidates who commit in writing to the 1Yi´s two aims. The first is that the incoming government, within 6 months of taking office, will set up a People´s Assembly (similar to the Constitutional Convention) to devise the laws and procedures for people-initiated referendums. The second step is that, within a year of the People´s Assembly being set up, the government hold a referendum on the proposals put forward by the People´s Assembly. By now campaigners have written commitments to the 1Yi aims from over 24% of the 550 candidates  standing in the election. This includes Sinn Féin and Green Party candidates.

The Reinstate 48 (R48) was established last summer with the sole aim of restoring to the people of Ireland the democratic rights given to them under Article 48 of the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State to make, amend and repeal their own laws.
Reinstate48 is primarily a web-based campaign that asks voters to pledge to vote only for those candidates supporting direct democracy. At the time of this writing , nearly 3,500 voters (and 40 candidates from 25 constituencies) have signed the pledge. To create awareness of this campaign, R48 is crowd-sourcing funds for some advertisements.

No way for citizens to trigger votes

Direct democracy by citizen-initiated popular votes was written into the Constitution when the Irish Free State was founded in 1922. But it was dropped by the Government in 1928, when the losing side of a civil war (which followed independence) tried to use it to modify some measures of the Treaty between Ireland and Britain. That losing side became Fianna Fáil — which won political power in a general election in 1932 and dominated Irish politics until the 2011 general election.

In 1937, de Valera (Fianna Fáil founder, who became a long serving Taoiseach/Prime Minister and later President) proposed a new Constitution that was approved by referendum. Although it specifies that the Constitution can only be changed following approval in a referendum, amendments can only be proposed by the Government. Citizens´ initiatives have not been part of Irish governance since 1928.

At this stage, opinion polls suggest that that the outgoing government will not return to power. Thus the formation of the next government could give some power to advocates of citizen-initiated referendums. However, the manifestoes of the four major parties (Fine Gael 28%, Fianna Fáil 20%, Sinn Féin 18%, Labour 7%) do not contain any reference to people-initiated referendums, although they all promise to implement other recommendations of the Constitutional Convention.

Parties (including Sinn Féin, PeoplebeforeProfit/Anti Austerity Alliance, Greens) supporting support people-initiated referendums have 25% support. In addition, many non-party independents also support people-initiated referendums. At this stage it is difficult to know what government will be formed and what policies will be adopted after the election. This year , is the centenary of an armed insurrection (known as the Rising) that led to most of Ireland becoming independent of Britain in 1921 after two years of armed struggle. It could be that the new government will be some form of a coalition between Fine Gael and Fianne Fáil, the two parties which resulted from opposing side of the ciivl war which followed independence.  If so, the large support for smaller parties and indendents may yet result in more popular support for citizens´ initiatives, as a means of having issues issues raised and decided on without waiting for the next general election.

Donal O´Brolchain has advocated citizens initiatives in Ireland as one of the checks and balances needed to limit the scope for excess by the powerful - elected and appointed, public and private, local national and transnational.  He made a number of submission advocating direct democracy to the Constitutional Convention.