OPPOSITION ALTERNATIVES to Government policy on specific issues should be independently costed, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has told the MacGill Summer School in Glenties.
He said the independent research facility in the Oireachtas should be expanded, along the lines of the Congressional Budget Office in the United States or the facility in the House of Commons.
“With this we would have more detailed oversight of government and be able to enforce a principle that we have honest debates between detailed alternatives.
“The absence of costed alternatives distorts debate and gives the public no access to making its own evaluation of proposals,” he said.
“To give one example, a compulsory private health insurance model of funding health services is something I disagree with but it is credible to propose it.
“What is absurd is that it will shortly be 10 years since Labour first proposed it and committed to producing detailed implementation plans and costings.
“Neither of these have appeared even though their last manifesto promised its implementation almost immediately.”
Taking part in a session on the need for higher standards of leadership and governance, the Minister said there was a superficial conception whereby “a heroic individual achieves great feats by exhortation and winning public support”.
This was placing performance above substance and had “little or no relevance to the core challenges facing our country at this moment”.
“The leadership we need is leadership which is willing to take the right actions to get us through an unprecedented economic crisis even if they carry a heavy political cost.”
Opinion polls measured leadership, not popularity: “Leadership is recognised over time and through people looking at the impact of actions not their popularity.”
Fine Gael environment spokesman Phil Hogan TD said Ireland cannot be governed effectively by a system originally designed for 19th-century Britain.
“We cannot fix the economy until we fix our politics,” he said. “We have one of the most centralised states in Europe, built around a system of government which has few if any real checks and balances.”
With its “New Politics” plan, Fine Gael in government would “revolutionise” the system.
“To begin with, the people will be asked in a referendum whether they want to abolish the Seanad.
“We will also fundamentally reform the Dáil by reducing the number of TDs by 20, reforming the Dáil committee system so that it can truly hold the government to account, completely modernising the budget system and change the way legislation is passed.”
He added: “We can end ‘crony government’ in Ireland by opening up government and giving the Dáil, for the first time in its history, real power to hold ministers and public bodies to account.
“We can make our public sector and our system of government much more efficient by reversing the massive centralisation of power in Ireland.
“I am not suggesting that political reform by itself is a panacea for all that ails our country. Our problems are too big and too serious for that. But I believe that political reform can be part of the solution.
“It can also help restore the trust of the Irish people in the institutions of our Republic,” Mr Hogan said.
Sinn Féin Senator Pearse Doherty said: “There is widespread public belief that the political system has failed us.”
