– Life along the Slaney

A TD’s work

is never done

What does a TD do? It seems like a simple enough question but when you think about it, the answer is not that straight forward.

At a meeting regarding the possibility of Educate Together getting the patronage of a new second level school in Gorey last week, no TDs were in attendance. Apologies from a few of the TDs from the South East region were read out initially by Karen Loughran who was chairing the meeting. There was vote in the Dáil apparently.

Following the opening speaker, Educate Together CEO Paul Rowe, Ms. Loughran returned to the podium to announce that a few more TDs had been in touch and would be unable to attend due to their commitment in the Dáil.

It must have been some sleeper members of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour who tipped off their master in Dublin that a phone call was required to say they wouldn’t be attending the meeting.

Now what I can’t understand is why they should have been there in the first place. The meeting was organised by the second-level working group from Gorey’s Educate Together to inform prospective parents about how they would run a second level school. It was never going to be a charged political debate with local representatives espousing the benefits or lack thereof of an Educate Together secondary school.

Yet this meeting will have been just one of thousands that TDs are invited to and expected to show a face at throughout the year in Wexford. Add to that funerals, christenings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, shop openings, GAA matches and tiddly winks games and the amount of time a TD has to actually do anything constructive in the Dáil appears to be very small.

The problem comes back to the current political system which means that TDs have to make sure their constituents are happy because if not, come next Election Day they will not be re-elected.

This means that politicians in Ireland are looking at keeping their own corner of Ireland happy and not looking at the country as a whole. They feel under pressure to attend every meeting or event they are invited to for fear of upsetting locals and lessening their chances of re-election.

As part of the Aftershock series of programmes on RTÉ 1 last week, Dan O’Brien looked at the political system and how it needs to be reformed. He says that our current system lead to “ineffective and underperforming governments.”

The programme went on to say that our political system creates politicians who are “pathologically attached to their grassroots.” This can be seen at every funeral and field day across Wexford when politicians show up for no other reason than it is expected of them.

What good can a TD do at the funeral of someone they never knew? Would it not be better to allow them to free up this time to meet with companies looking to invest in Wexford or attend committee meetings in the Dáil?

It is therefore important that as voters we should not decide on who to elect dependant on the quota of funerals candidates attend in the run up to an election but consider the candidate who will represent Wexford and Ireland as a whole.

The whole political system needs serious reform and this will have to happen at national level rather than local level but if it does happen then maybe TDs will no longer have to look at the narrow view and will be able to see what is good for the country as a whole which invariably will be good for Wexford as well.