The Summer Recess

[anewbeginning]

The Dail Summer recess must be reduced to no more than one month.

One of the reasons we are now in deep trouble, is the Dail took a 3 month break last year. When they returned the country was in much deeper trouble than need be.

How could any business properly function when it's managers opt to take a 3 month break in the middle of the year?

The long summer recess is another reason why this country is going down the tubes and why instead of turning a corner the government is still chasing the problem.

[Dynasty]

The Dail Summer recess must be reduced to no more than one month.

One of the reasons we are now in deep trouble, is the Dail took a 3 month break last year. When they returned the country was in much deeper trouble than need be.

How could any business properly function when it's managers opt to take a 3 month break in the middle of the year?

The long summer recess is another reason why this country is going down the tubes and why instead of turning a corner the government is still chasing the problem.

Maybe after june 5th we will see big changes,

I think let them have 3 weeks break,then get back to work and sort the country out ,it could work .Make a lot of people happy...........

[Christine Murray]

beware the guillotine, an ff favorite for pushing through cock-eyed legislation.

[Dynasty]

beware the guillotine, an ff favorite for pushing through cock-eyed legislation.

What i quoted could work out very good ,

Have to get them to listen to me .

[DCon]

all the teachers in the Dail probably think they should have teacher holidays to match their teacher pensions,

they will not give this up easily

[Dynasty]

all the teachers in the Dail probably think they should have teacher holidays to match their teacher pensions,

they will not give this up easily

they are TD's now elected by the people not teachers anymore. They might be glad to give up their free time for the betterment of Ireland

[fergalr]

Was it last year that we passed the lowest amount of legislation since the civil war? I saw a graph somewhere...

[anewbeginning]

Was it last year that we passed the lowest amount of legislation since the civil war? I saw a graph somewhere...

Probably.

The Dail is fast becoming an irrelevant joke and people are losing faith in it, especially when you see the minute gene pool from which FF are drawn.

I also think we as a country need to stop voting for members of dynasties on principle, especially in the current situation. We need more George Lee's and possibly David McWilliams in the Dail and less the sons and grandsons of gunmen, and have no clue about how to run a country other than have their equally unqualified civil servants advise them on everything.

[DCon]

they are TD's now elected by the people not teachers anymore. They might be glad to give up their free time for the betterment of Ireland

In their eyes they are still teachers and are entitled to their old job and their teachers pension.

[TommyO'Brien]

The Dail Summer recess must be reduced to no more than one month.

One of the reasons we are now in deep trouble, is the Dail took a 3 month break last year. When they returned the country was in much deeper trouble than need be.

How could any business properly function when it's managers opt to take a 3 month break in the middle of the year?

The long summer recess is another reason why this country is going down the tubes and why instead of turning a corner the government is still chasing the problem.

I don't think you understand how parliaments function. To equate a recess with a break or a holiday is simply wrong.

Parliaments fulfil a number of functions
- policy approval or influencing through motions
- legislation enactment
- keeping the government answerable through Parliamentary Questions (PQs), debates etc.

Parliaments meet in plenary sessions and committee sessions. The Oireachtas year is divided into three sessions, Autumn, Spring and Summer. At the start of each the government produces a list of legislation to be produced and hopefully enacted within that session, the A list (for this session), B list (which I think is planned legislation at heads level before cabinet but not for publication) and C list (early preliminary plans). For example the Civil Partnership Bill is in the A list of this session, the Summer Session (Easter-end of June or beginning of July). That means that the bill, barring unexpected developments - emergency bills that will take up the time it was allocated, etc - the Bill will have gone through either or preferably both houses by the end of this session.

Plenary sessions (when a parliament meets collectively in a chamber) are only one part of the job. Often the best work is done in committees, few of whom you ever hear about because the media don't cover them as they are too technical to be reduced to a 30 second soundbite for a bulletin, or 200 words for a paper. (When is the last time anyone heard of the work of the Oireachtas Scrutiny Committee that scrutinises EU legislation? It does fantastic work but is completely ignored by the media.)

What are wrongly classed as holidays, the gaps between sessions, aren't holidays in the way people presume. They fulfil a number of functions

1. They allow for the preparatory work for the next session's legislation
2. They allow politicians to read up on documentation that they simply would not have time to read during plenaries when the House may be sitting from 10.30am until 11pm that night.
3. They offer a chance for people to stand back from the routine of parliamentary business and plan longterm strategy, do longterm research and focus more on the macro than the micro that is the nature of plenary sessions, where everything is geared for today's vote on X, the private members vote this evening, PQs and press releases.

So gaps between plenaries are not holidays. People may take a holiday for a week or two within them, but they are very useful chances for people to stand back and do less pressurised analysis of issues, and in depth research.

The problem with the structure of the Oireachtas year is that it makes poor use of time. The long gap between the end of the Summer session in June or July and the start of the Autumn session on October is a hangover from the 18th and 19th centuries when parliamentarians were often landowners and needed to use July, August and September to harvest crops, etc. The judicial year operates on the same principle.

As a result, there are three recesses that are quite long (two a historical hang-over from the religious year, hence the ending of sessions at Christmas and Easter and the beginning of a new session afterwards). So what happens is that long gaps occur that are two long, and then sessions of 8-12 weeks may occur, which are too long. With parliaments frequently meeting until the early hours of the morning from around 10.30 twice a week and 2.30 on Tuesdays, politicians and their staff by the end of each session are frequently exhausted. A more sensible arrangement would be to scrap the long recesses, and break up sessions into 3 weeks plenary 1 week committee. So the Oireachtas would meet for three weeks in four in plenary, and devote the fourth week to committee work and research work. The summer session could be stretched into July, with the Autumn session starting at the beginning of September. Every eight weeks or so plenaries and committees could take a week off to enable parliamentarians to stand back from the micro of parliamentary process and take a broader macro analysis of issues.

The complication in Ireland is that the electorate demands its politicians be clientalist, and stubbornly cling on to that. Politicians who focus exclusively on policy invariably get sacked the next time for not doing enough constituency work. So a politician who wants to do longterm policy work has to devote at least half-a-week clientalist work to keep himself electable - otherwise he would lose his seat and be able to do 0% policy work at all. Jim Mitchell for example found that one of the reasons he did not get elected in 2002 was because he devoted so much time to his widely praised committee work that he had voters complaining that he was not doing enough on the ground 'for them'. (The fact that he also could not do enough constituency work on the ground because he had been battling cancer cut no ice. Articles in the media praising you for committee work won't win a seat - they may well lose you one!)

But speaking as if recesses between sessions were simply holidays is simplistic and factually wrong. The irony is that the journalists who push that myth privately all know it is garbage. But they play along with the myth. (One journalist spoke on radio last January about how all the politicians were 'on holidays' in January. They weren't. They were still working. Some took a week off in the month the Dáil was in recess, but were working still the rest of the time. And where was the journalist on the phone speaking to RTÉ about politicians' 'holidays'? In Ibiza on a three week break!!!)

The whole parliamentary year needs restructuring. The work the Oireachtas does needs restructuring. The problem is not that politicians are on big holidays. It is that too much is crammed into sessions that are two short and badly arranged. Recesses need to stop following the religious and agricultural calendar of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and be designed to deliver greater efficiency. Arguably a change in the electoral system to free TDs from excessive clientalism would be a necessary part of that change. But that would require the people's approval in a constitutional amendment, and there is little chance of they agreeing to it, as a massive chunk of the electorate see TDs as clientalist fixers, not national legislators, and quickly sack anyone who focuses to the national rather than primarily on the local.