Number of TD's and Councillors

Trampas

Just wondering why does Ireland have so many TD's and Councillors for such a small country.

Is there any reason behind having so many numbers?

Nehaxak

Well seeing as how we're all using long life light bulbs now, there really is no need for so many TD's anymore.

ArmaniJeanss

Trampas wrote: »

Just wondering why does Ireland have so many TD's.
Is there any reason behind having so many numbers?

I don't know about councillors, but TD numbers are interesting.
People will say we have 166 for a population of 4,200,000, whereas the UK has 650 for 70,000,000 so therefore we must have too many?
As in if we followed the UK ratio we'd only have 42.

But what about a country with a population of just 400,000. Would you be happy to have just 4 people elected to run the country? I'd hope not as that way lies dictatorships. Conversely a democracy of 500,000,000 couldnt have a parliament of 5000 as its now too unwieldy.

So you need to move beyond a strict ratio of X representatives per Y people.

And the fairly incredible solution seems to be the 'cube-root rule'.
Basically get the cube-root of the population and you will be quite close to the amount of representatives that democracies worldwide have chosen
as the size of their parliament.
Ireland has a population of 4,200,000 I think and the cube root of this is 161, so with 166 TDs we are very close to the perfect amount !

seancoistine

Perhaps the problem is not the number of TDs, but what they do and how they operate. Even ministers have to keep doing clinics, going to funerals, attending to protest groups etc. And if they did'nt we would'nt elect them. And that is why they have such high expenses. If there were no expenses, they would go to work and stay there ..... maybe.

On the other hand, perhaps they politicians have reduced public participation and political competition to the trivial level becasue it suits themselves. The entire 166 of them were blissfully clueless as the banks ran amok between 2002 and 2006. They hardly showed a glimmer of understanding of what was in progress.

Now that we do understand what was going on there are things that should be done and are'nt.

Here's a few thoughs for the hard-working 166

The bank CEO's should be charged with reckless behaviour made pay back the bonuses they paid themselves for wrecking the economy.

The cost of building did'nt escalate during the boom thanks to the timely arrival of the East Europeans (no mention of a timely departure) . The money which was lent has'nt vanished. It has simply gone into the accounts of landowners and developers. What about unscrambling the eggs and identifying who has got it and asking them for contribution to NAMA.

Odilon Redon

We've got 166 TDs for 4.4m people. Just imagine what it was like in 1981 when we had 3.4m people and (wait for it) 166 TDs!

That's right. The population's gone up by a million and we've not one more TD. We could have another 50 if we used the same ratio as we had back then.

Kalashnikov_Kid

Odilon Redon wrote: »

We've got 166 TDs for 4.4m people. Just imagine what it was like in 1981 when we had 3.4m people and (wait for it) 166 TDs!

That's right. The population's gone up by a million and we've not one more TD. We could have another 50 if we used the same ratio as we had back then.

In a nutshell. Gombeen parochial politics + gradual decline in population = the joke of a party-political system we are left with today.

Trust me, we would NOT want another 50 TD's!!

redfacedbear

Garret FitzGerald had an interesting argument for why we need in and around 160 TDs.

It was along the lines of:

The Taoiseach has (or should have) roughly 40 jobs to give out (Ministers, Junior Ministers and Chairmen of Committees).

In general, only about 50% of a parliamentary party are competent and available for these promotions

Therefore a Government needs roughly 80 bodies to be able to form a competent administration

Therefore you need 160+ TDs for the majority to be 80+.

I think that the bolded bit is a shocker. Until we change the electoral system so that we get a better than 50% ratio for competence we could be doing more harm than good in reducing the numbers.

jmayo

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

I don't know about councillors, but TD numbers are interesting.
People will say we have 166 for a population of 4,200,000, whereas the UK has 650 for 70,000,000 so therefore we must have too many?
As in if we followed the UK ratio we'd only have 42.

But what about a country with a population of just 400,000. Would you be happy to have just 4 people elected to run the country? I'd hope not as that way lies dictatorships. Conversely a democracy of 500,000,000 couldnt have a parliament of 5000 as its now too unwieldy.

So you need to move beyond a strict ratio of X representatives per Y people.

And the fairly incredible solution seems to be the 'cube-root rule'.
Basically get the cube-root of the population and you will be quite close to the amount of representatives that democracies worldwide have chosen
as the size of their parliament.
Ireland has a population of 4,200,000 I think and the cube root of this is 161, so with 166 TDs we are very close to the perfect amount !

Or what about comparing us to say New Zealand.
Another island nation with approx. 4.3 million inhabitants.

Now they have one house in the parliament, they got rid of the upper house in 1950 and quel surprise their country didn't implode.
They have usually 120 seats in parliament.
The reason for the usually bit is that they can add a seat to ensure truly proportional representation for minorities.
And they have no president to eat up a few million more.
Now how the hell do they manage ?

We have too many mickie mouse town councils etc.
Our county councillors don't appear to do much bar go on junkets and massage planning.
Their hands are tied of course by central government holding the reins of budgets and the dept of environment having a large say in the infrastructure.