TDs' constituency work did not cause crisis
Posted on December 12, 2010 at 10:50 PM
This is a letter from me published in the letters page of the Sunday Tribune today, 12 December, 2010. I wrote it in response to an article by journalist Diarmuid Doyle in last Sunday's tribune 'Our politicians are the way they are because we keep electing them to be that way' (5 December, 2010) which can be accessed on the archive section of the Tribune or at this link:
http://www.tribune.ie/article/2010/dec/05/diarmuid-doyle-our-politicians-are-the-way-they-ar/
TDs' constituency work did not cause crisis
Reading Diarmuid Doyle's opinion piece on TDs (News, 5 December), it was depressing to see yet another journalist buy into the idea that it is the type of TD elected to our Dáil that has caused our economic problems. In this view of politics, the culprits for the economic downturn are those TDs who are in touch with their constituents.
As a TD who believes in the importance of my role in keeping in touch with my constituents I wish to make these points: 1) voters contacting their local TD about their issues did not cause our banking and financial crisis. At present, TDs are contacted mainly by people who are suffering from the impacts of our economic downturn. Previously it was the people who were on the wrong side of the Celtic tiger that made up the majority of those attending TDs' clinics. What a TD learns from constituency work about the impact of policies, legislation, and budgets on people who live their lives out in local communities, matters.
2) Lobbyists, and the rich and powerful don't go to TDs' clinics, nor do they attend local meetings. They just have a word in the minister's ear, but you don't hear many journalists complaining about the increasing amount of time spent by TDs and ministers with lobbyists, and the lack of regulation of that activity.
3) 'It was the ideology stupid' – Our economic and banking crisis was caused by particular policies that were implemented by particular parties and individuals and underpinned by a particular ideology held by those parties and individuals. In other words, journalists and commentators who promote the idea that it was the type of TD elected to our Dáil that caused our problems are promoting a great red herring that allows the real culprit, political ideology, to go scot-free.
In my view, the last thing we need right now is a Dáil full of TDs who would see themselves as too important to talk to the people who will bear the brunt of the decisions of the Dáil over the next few years – namely their constituents.
Joanna Tuffy TD
Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2
December 12, 2010
Comments
You are of course right about the cause of the current crisis. However, the problem with constituency work long predates the crisis and its causes.
If all TDs operated as you outline, letting their clinic contacts inform their political argument, there wouldn't be a problem.
The thing is that many TDs use their constituency work to build up a system of lies, that they can use their position to get "stuff" for their constituents. On a grand scale it stops being a lie and becomes a stroke. This happens when we get a well-placed TD holding the balance and demanding public spending in one constituency rather than another.
It may be possible short of amending the voting system to save the virtues of your way of doing things while at the same time doing away with the lies and strokes. I just don't see how.
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