Reinstate Article 48 "Direct Democracy" Initiative

finbar10

For those sympathetic to the idea of citizens initiatives (allowing voters to directly trigger referendums via a sufficient number of signatures), the following website http://www.reinstate48.ie (alternatively: http://www.r48.ie ) might be of interest.

A citizens initiative mechanism actually existed for a while in article 48 of the Irish Free State constitution. The aim of "Reinstate Article 48" is to get such a mechanism restored to our current constitution. This R48 campaign seems to be targeted at the upcoming GE. Voters can publicly sign a "pledge" on the website (just over 3000 signed up so far). There's also a list of GE candidates (25 so far) by constituency that have promised to support the introduction of a citizens initiative mechanism into the constitution if elected.

IMO there's much to like about their campaign. Their slogan is snappy. They've kept their message simple and streamlined. Article 48 of the original Free State constitution would be a reasonable way of implementing citizen initiatives. It also has a nice historical resonance (relevant as we approach 1916 and other centenaries). There's quite a nice 5 minute video of Diarmaid Ferriter on the website giving some of the historical background to this article 48 provision.

On the negative side: I'm not sure this campaign has been terribly successful in spreading its message so far. I only chanced on this website by accident and I'm personally quite interested in the topic of political reform. I could easily have gone up to GE and remained completely unaware of this initiative. Worryingly, there's also a preponderance of Green Party candidates on their candidate pledge list (though there are others with different affiliations too). I contacted the initiative itself about this and they assured me that everyone on their committee is politically unaffiliated. This initiative seems to be a wholly voluntary effort, run on a shoe string.

Anyway, I thought it might be worth pointing people towards this "Reinstate 48" initiative (a citizens initiative mechanism with adequate safeguards is one of the political reforms I'd like to see happen).

Slydice

I've not followed your post well or that website... but the idea of Article 48 sounds really appealing to me:

CONSTITUTION OF THE IRISH FREE STATE (SAORSTÁT EIREANN) ACT, 1922.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1922/act/1/enacted/en/print

it shall on the petition of not less than seventy five thousand voters on the register, of whom not more than fifteen thousand shall be voters in any one constituency, either make such provisions or submit the question to the people for decision in accordance with the ordinary regulations governing the Referendum

I looked it up and found it was reviewed in 2001 by "THE ALLPARTY OIREACHTAS COMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION" who made a "Report of the Constitution Review Group":
https://www.constitution.ie/Documents/Oireachtas%206th-Report-Referendum%202001.pdf

The consensus in the Review Group is that there should be no
provision to allow constitutional change to be proposed either
directly or indirectly by means of an initiative.

The committee:

The committee comprises eight TDs and four senators:
Brian Lenihan, TD (FF), chairman
Jim O’Keeffe, TD (FG), vicechairman
Brendan Daly, TD (FF)
Senator John Dardis (PD)
Thomas Enright, TD (FG)
Séamus Kirk, TD (FF)
Derek McDowell, TD (LAB)
Marian McGennis, TD (FF)
Liz McManus, TD (LAB)
Senator Denis O’Donovan (FF)
Senator Fergus O’Dowd (FG)
Senator Kathleen O’Meara (LAB)

They list their arguments for and against it in the report.

Manach

Offhand from my reading of the history of that earlier constitution, that was never utilised. Perhaps it might be better to look for contempory examples of such. For instance that of the Swiss system, which (based on newspaper articles) seem both the be wide ranging and allow them a greater say on the running of their country

Dardania

Di heard about this in Switzerland I think.

Don't know how I feel about it. On one hand, makes me feel if I'm passion ire about something, I can do something. On the other hand, it means others can. A bit like monorail in the Simpsons.

In Switzerland, I understand many more than usual in comparable countries can't name the president - less of a focus on the ruling politicians than what we would have - they're more relegated to civil servants.

finbar10

Manach wrote: »

Offhand from my reading of the history of that earlier constitution, that was never utilised. Perhaps it might be better to look for contempory examples of such. For instance that of the Swiss system, which (based on newspaper articles) seem both the be wide ranging and allow them a greater say on the running of their country

The problem with the Irish Free State constitution was that all through its history it could be changed by a simple parliamentary majority. The intention was that for an initial settling down period (8 years) that would be the case and then it could only be changed by referendum. Towards the end of that 8 year period, a judge decided that the clause specifying the 8 years was also amenable to being changed. So they bumped the 8 years up to 16 years!

The Dáil was also supposed to bring in legislation to give effect to this citizens initiative mechanism within two years of the constitution's inception. They didn't of course. There was also a provision that the people could trigger a referendum to force such legislation to be brought in. Sufficient signatures were collected to do this. De Valera was actually involved with this at the time (he was publicly a big supporter of this mechanism). The government's response was simply to delete the mechanism. Of course, when De Valera later brought in his own constitution, a notable absence was such a citizens initiative mechanism (the duplicity of politicians I guess! ).

FreudianSlippers

I have concerns. It's clear from the Irish Water debacle that most Irish people do not understand the Constitution, what its purpose is and how it operates. Allowing a relatively small number of people to be able to mandate any old stupid thing to be put to referendum is a fantastic way of ensuring that we have a useless and ridiculous Constitution.

A possible way of resolving this, however, would be to reinstate Art. 48 but remove the ability to amend the Constitution. It may sound like this defeats the purpose, however it does not - allowing people to propose legislation (and presuming such a proposal is successful) if that legislation is contrary to the Constitution then it would follow that a referendum to amend the Constitution would be required.

To go back to my Irish Water example, it would allow legislation to be passed (and on the contrary allow prevention of a repeal of same) without putting something stupid about the government owning Irish Water into the Constitution (where it absolutely does not belong).

johnnyskeleton

Manach wrote: »

Offhand from my reading of the history of that earlier constitution, that was never utilised. Perhaps it might be better to look for contempory examples of such. For instance that of the Swiss system, which (based on newspaper articles) seem both the be wide ranging and allow them a greater say on the running of their country

One significant difference that I can think of off hand is that acquiring signatures back in the 1920s would have taken a lot of time and money.

Now, someone could put up an online survey monkey and get the requisite signatures in a matter of minutes and it would be difficult to assess whether those signatures represented 75k individuals or a load of people repeatedly signing it in different names.

Currently, Article 27.5 allows the President to refer a bill of national importance to referendum (although the Dail can overcome this if they call a general election and the new dail is in favour of the measure).

So, for example, President could have said that the Bank Guarantee is of national importance and either it goes to a referendum of the people or a General Election is called and if people vote for a Labour majority government (the only party that opposed the guarantee) then they won't pass it but otherwise it is passed.

This is perhaps a bit more sensible and less disruptive. I would be inclined to try to get the president to refer these things a bit more.

I wonder, if 75,000 people organised a petition to the President to refer the bank guarantee to referendum, would it have been? I'm guessing it might have.

So while I like the idea of having a referendum when people want it, I would be inclined to put safeguards in respect of same.

As FreudianSlippers points out, Irish Water is something that has exercised a great number of Irish people, but I'm not sure it really is of national importance, whereas NAMA is very significant but few people seem to care!

oscarBravo

We should also keep in mind that the cost to the state of running a referendum is in the order of €15 million.

View

Given that the level of "debate" in our referenda rarely rises above dire, this is not a clever suggestion.

While many laud the Swiss system, according to a Swiss friend, they once had a referendum on buying the latest and greatest "Model X"-A fighter jet or whether to buy the slightly cheaper not as latest and greatest "Model X" one instead - the entire debate degenerating into a "Top Trumps" style debate. :-)

View

Given that the level of "debate" in our referenda rarely rises above dire, this is not a clever suggestion.

While many laud the Swiss system, according to a Swiss friend, they once had a referendum on buying the latest and greatest "Model X"-A fighter jet or whether to buy the slightly cheaper not as latest and greatest "Model X" one instead - the entire debate degenerating into a "Top Trumps" style debate. :-)

andrew

Petitions are basically a really biased opinion poll. Now that it's so easy to actually carry out an opinion poll, what's their use? It seems like a better way to get what people want done, is to have some sort of mechanism whereby if a number of opinion polls conducted using an appropriate statistical methodology show that the majority of people support some policy, then the government should consider legislating for that thing.

finbar10

andrew wrote: »

Petitions are basically a really biased opinion poll. Now that it's so easy to actually carry out an opinion poll, what's their use? It seems like a better way to get what people want done, is to have some sort of mechanism whereby if a number of opinion polls conducted using an appropriate statistical methodology show that the majority of people support some policy, then the government should consider legislating for that thing.

Petitions are a different beast to citizen initiatives. Some countries now have mechanism where a petition with enough signatures triggers a discussion of topic by parliament or some parliamentary committee, e.g. in the UK or the EU mechanism. What you say above is then valid and I'd agree with you. In a citizen initiative mechanism, the petition goes on to trigger a full referendum.

finbar10

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

One significant difference that I can think of off hand is that acquiring signatures back in the 1920s would have taken a lot of time and money.

Now, someone could put up an online survey monkey and get the requisite signatures in a matter of minutes and it would be difficult to assess whether those signatures represented 75k individuals or a load of people repeatedly signing it in different names.

Currently, Article 27.5 allows the President to refer a bill of national importance to referendum (although the Dail can overcome this if they call a general election and the new dail is in favour of the measure).

So, for example, President could have said that the Bank Guarantee is of national importance and either it goes to a referendum of the people or a General Election is called and if people vote for a Labour majority government (the only party that opposed the guarantee) then they won't pass it but otherwise it is passed.

This is perhaps a bit more sensible and less disruptive. I would be inclined to try to get the president to refer these things a bit more.

I wonder, if 75,000 people organised a petition to the President to refer the bank guarantee to referendum, would it have been? I'm guessing it might have.

So while I like the idea of having a referendum when people want it, I would be inclined to put safeguards in respect of same.

As FreudianSlippers points out, Irish Water is something that has exercised a great number of Irish people, but I'm not sure it really is of national importance, whereas NAMA is very significant but few people seem to care!

Signatures can be collected in various ways. To give an example, Latvia has a citizens initiative mechanism in its constitution. A relatively small number of signatures triggers a process whereby all city/county council offices remain open for a month collecting signatures (remaining open even on weekends). During this period citizens have to visit their local government admin office, bringing all relevant id, to sign the petition. At the end of the month, if sufficient signatures are collected (the quite high threshold of 10% of registered voters) in Latvia's case, then a referendum will be triggered.

Latvia is interesting also in that its constitution was written in the same year as our Free State one (there are interesting similarities between the citizen initiative provisions in both constitutions). This Latvia constitution, of course, ceased exist during the Soviet Union period. It was restored afterwards however.

With regard to article 27 you mention above, interestingly, Latvia has a somewhat semi-presidential system. Its president can refuse to sign a bill into law (for a period of two months). During this time, citizens have the opportunity to launch a citizens initiative. If enough signatures are collected the bill will be put to a referendum. Otherwise, the parliament can later override the president's veto.

In the Free State constitution, the Senate had a similar power. Article 27 introduced by De Valera is a weak reflection of this. This provision also needs a Seanad majority. Given that this body is almost always government controlled it's unsurprising that this power has never been used. There are other hurdles. It cannot apply to a money bill so I'm not sure that Bank Guarantee would even have been subject to article 27.

Additionally, more than 50% of all registered voters would have had to vote against to strike down a bill (even with a 70% turnout a valid no would also have had to exceed 70%). Article 27 is a very weak provision given how our political structures are currently set up.

finbar10

oscarBravo wrote: »

We should also keep in mind that the cost to the state of running a referendum is in the order of €15 million.

If these were run fairly regularly I'm sure the average cost would come down significantly. The Swiss regularly run their national referendums at four fixed dates per year (perhaps running on average 4 or 5 at a time). We could just have a permanent referendum commission (not needing to form one from scratch at short notice each time). Anyway, democracy costs. The houses of the Oireachtas need over €100 million to run each year. I'm sure our relatively powerless system of local government doesn't come cheap either.

expectationlost

this idea of having allowing referendums (only) to overturn legislation how would that work?

Slydice

expectationlost wrote: »

this idea of having a referendum (only) to overturn legislation how would that work?

Well..

- the constitution overrules every other law in the land
(which is why laws can be challenged to the supreme court which makes a decision based on the constitution)

- a referendum usually changes the constitution
(by adding, removing or modifying some words in it)

- a referendum can be worded to ban a specific law
(example: No laws are limiting freedom of speech are allowed at all.)


So then, the government can try to make a law banned by the constitution but the supreme court will rule against it.
(continuing the example: the government makes a law saying:
'No one is allowed talk about the Fine Gael Goverment giving Dennis O'Brien the installation Irish Water meters contract'
but anyone, probably newspapers or political parties, could challenge the law in court and the supreme court would strike it down)

finbar10

expectationlost wrote: »

this idea of having a referendum (only) to overturn legislation how would that work?

I suppose technically the bill would be suspended before it was actually signed into law. In the Latvian case, the President can refuse to sign it for up to 2 months. In the Irish Free State case, a Senate majority or 2/5 of TDs could in theory suspend a bill for up to 3 months. In both cases, if enough signatures were gathered within that time then a referendum would be triggered. In the Latvian case, if the referendum was passed then that or a similar bill couldn't be passed for the remainder of that parliamentary term. I don't think the mechanics of how the Free State mechanism might have worked were ever really developed. The constitutional mechanism was deleted before supporting legislation could be enacted.

Italy actually has a somewhat unusual initiative system. There, only abrogative referendums can be triggered. These are proposals to delete existing laws (or even parts of aspects of existing laws). This was last used in 2011 where 4 laws were successfully repealed (two concerned with water privatization , one concerning nuclear power, and one which exempted ministers from attending court). Italy's mechanism, as is common, exempts money bills, international treaties and some other categories from this provision.

Personally, I think allowing initiatives on constitutional amendments would be sufficient. Though, perhaps some beefed up version of article 27 would be useful, allowing the president to refuse to sign bills of national importance and a referendum on them be triggered.