The Minister for the Environment has come in for quite a lot of political stick since he floated his ideas about Dail reform last month. His proposals to reduce the number of TDs from 166 to 120 or less and, simultaneously, to abolish multi-seat constituencies have been branded by Labour and Fine Gael as an exercise in kite-flying. Even my esteemed colleague, Denis Coghlan, has suggested that Fianna Fail is trying for a third time to rig the electoral system to its own advantage.
But Noel Dempsey is absolutely right. We can all argue about the details - what balance should be struck between the number of TDs directly elected to represent new single-seat constituencies and the number chosen from party lists, or whether the cut-off point for party representation in a list system should be 2 per cent or 5 per cent. However there should be no doubt that we must replace the clientelist system we have had since the State's foundation with a more effective PR-based alternative.
Clientelism has undermined, perhaps even destroyed, the legislative role of the Oireachtas. As Willie O'Dea candidly noted, backbenchers spend 80 per cent of their time servicing individual constituents "to the detriment of the national interest".
No slouch himself when it comes to pleasing his own Limerick East clients, he described as "inordinate" the amount of time TDs spend communicating with their constituents via clinics, even funerals and on the lobbying of officials.
Writing in the Sunday Independent on August 8th, he said the present system dictated that "the garnering of a few dozen medical cards is more vital to political survival than any creative, well-researched Dail speech on health service reform".
Every TD knows Mr O'Dea is telling the truth when he suggests they have all become slaves to the proverbial parish pump. As a result, the Dail has been reduced to a glorified county council, with most of its members engaged for most of the time in what the Minister of State called a "ridiculous diversion of energy and resources".
And because of multi-seat constituencies, where every TD must perforce be "constantly looking over their shoulders", in Mr Dempsey's words, all of this wasted effort is likely to be duplicated or triplicated.
No matter how much they refurbish Leinster House, it reeks of decay - systemic decay - particularly at this time of year when the Dail and Seanad are in the midst of their summer recess.
Notoriously, the Dail sits for just 88 days a year - barely more than half as many sitting days as the British House of Commons - and never on a Monday, because that's the day the local authorities hold their meetings and nearly half of our TDs are councillors, too.
There is a void at the heart of democratic politics and it is symbolised by the Dail chamber. Visitors are constantly astonished to find it is usually almost empty. As Mr Dempsey has written, they probably assume the absent TDs are "at home ploughing their fields or off on the tea" when, in reality, they are working in their offices, acting as conduits for individual constituents in their dealings with the State and local bureaucracies.
Ministers suborn batteries of civil servants to work full-time on constituency matters, something that would simply not be tolerated in Britain. Whatever about the ethics, they are acutely aware that many of their predecessors lost their seats to political colleagues or opponents simply because they took their jobs too seriously.
The present system suits the Civil Service, and the Department of Finance, in particular, because it can get on with the real business of running the country, with minimal supervision from parliament. Right now it is cobbling together a £38 billion National Development Plan which will have a profound impact for decades after its cut-off date of 2006. And if the views of any TD, other than those in Government, has been sought on what this plan should contain, I would be more than surprised.
Nobody outside the cloistered world of the Merrion Street mandarins knows who, if anyone, they have consulted before deciding, apparently, to long-finger yet again the issue of regional development.
The public interest demands that the Dail is radically reformed in tandem with the devolution of more powers to local government. Of course, we should have fewer TDs; if Britain was proportionately as well represented, there would be more than 3,000 MPs in the House of Commons. These fewer TDs, perhaps no more than 100, should also be paid more. If half of their number were chosen from party lists, there would be a better chance of attracting talented people who currently shun politics because they see it as mere "messenger boy" drudgery.
As for the fear that Mr Dempsey's kite is just another cunning plan by Fianna Fail to do itself a favour, even if the party did disproportionately well the first time out under a reformed PR system, the electorate is now so volatile, particularly in Dublin, to put this right at the next available opportunity. Political scientist Michael Laver has also said that, with a low threshold of 2 per cent for parties to qualify for representation, the result would probably produce a legislature with more or less the same composition as the current Dail.
So why all the knee-jerk reactions? We need a modern, democratic legislature to frame laws for an increasingly complex, open and sophisticated society. The Minister should publish a Green Pa per ail reform to flesh out his ideas, we should have a reasoned debate based on truth - and get on with it.