The Citizens’ Assembly which the Government has decided to convene is, in my view, a somewhat ridiculous idea. That is why I spoke and voted against it in the Seanad.
The media have, in general, left the public largely in the dark about its purpose and its composition. Anyone that I have spoken to believes that it has been only convened to consider the whole question of the Eighth Amendment (which inserted a constitutional right to life for the unborn into Bunreacht na h-Éireann).
But that is not true. The same Citizens Assembly, surprisingly, has also been charged to consider and report on a number of other completely disparate and puzzlingly chosen topics, namely:-
- Global warming
- How we should plan for the growing number of elderly people in society
- How we handle referenda
- Whether we should amend the constitution to provide for fixed-term parliaments.
Does any of this surprise you or strike you as strange? Why should public money be spent on getting 99 people chosen at random from the electoral register by a polling company to consider these wholly unconnected topics?
The Assembly will be chaired by a member of the Supreme Court, Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, who is by any standard a very capable and independent-minded person. Its secretariat will commission expert advisors and reports, hear submissions from interested lobby groups, and deliberate on all these issues with a view to reporting its views to the Oireachtas, our national parliament.
The first point that needs to be made is that these issues are ones which under the Constitution are the business of the Oireachtas and its two chambers, composed in all of 218 members. These are issues of policy to be considered by legislators in any democracy. So why do the constitutional deliberative assemblies now need to convene a randomly selected group of 99 citizens to do their thinking and deliberation for them?
This is not a case of seeking a report from a group of experts on difficult and complex issues which are beyond the competence of legislators unguided.
On the contrary, the 99 randomly chosen citizens are being assembled precisely because they are not expert. If they are to hear experts and receive submissions from interested parties, why cannot the parliamentarians simply receive the same input directly?
What does the interposition of 99 randomly chosen citizens add to the process of receiving the evidence and considering it?
To take one issue, the 8th Amendment, any change to the Constitution will have to be considered by the Dáil and Seanad.
Why should the members of those Houses not hear at first hand the experts in question and deal with the interest groups for themselves directly? In what sense does the collective opinion (or more likely the set of diverse opinions) among 99 randomly chosen citizens on the issue refine the issues or winnow out the irrelevant? In what sense are they considered to be wiser or better informed than parliamentarians?
Is the Citizens Assembly anything other than an elaborate political focus-group? Is the Government using it as a risk-free exercise in market research?
Or will we be told that because the Citizens Assembly has heard expert evidence or the evidence of interest groups there is no need for the Oireachtas to examine the issues in the same degree of detail?
I am afraid that the dreadful truth is that the Fine Gael dominated Government simply wants “political cover” on the issue of the 8th Amendment.
The Assembly provides “cover” for doing nothing in the meantime while we “await” its reports. If the majority of the Assembly recommends repeal or further amendment of the 8th Amendment, that too will provide further “cover” for scared politicians. If the result is inconclusive, yet more “cover” for doing nothing. Like the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, our political class is heading off down the Yellow Brick Road in pursuit of courage.
Why are we even thinking of having a constitutional change in relation to fixed-term parliaments? Who came up with this idea?
We have had long-lasting parliaments and governments for twenty years. And before that we had a change of government from the FF/Labour coalition to John Bruton’s Rainbow coalition without an election in 1994.
The present constitutional arrangements work well as regards stable government. The minority government situation that we have now arises purely from political cynicism and certainly does not need to be sealed in place with a fixed-term parliament amendment to the constitution.
If a coalition government falls apart, and the members of the Dáil are not minded to replace the coalition with a different coalition as they did in 1994, the people are entitled to decide on the issue. We already have a constitutional role for the President to refuse a dissolution to a Taoiseach who has lost the support of the Dáil. What more do we need?
What good would be served in denying a Taoiseach the right to seek a new mandate from the people?
And for heaven’s sake, what new insight are 99 randomly chosen citizens going to give us on global warming? Or on the issue of aging?
Is the other extremely vague Assembly issue of “how we run referenda” a smokescreen for reintroducing a right for politicians to use taxpayers’ money to persuade us to vote the way they want us to? Or is it to change our right to be consulted by referendum on EU issues?
Having seen the somewhat similar Constitutional Convention (a mix of politicians and randomly chosen citizens) established by the last government at first hand, I strongly believe that the agenda and thinking of such bodies is largely driven by the secretariat’s agenda – especially in choosing expert advisors and witnesses.
Regretfully, I consider the Citizens Assembly to be a phony piece of window dressing, of political procrastination and bullet dodging, and a cynical waste of time and money.
Maybe its theme song should be “Ninety Nine Lead Balloons”.