IS THE Oireachtas fit for purpose? The Dáil returned last Tuesday, 19 days after it broke up for Easter. It is now due to sit for 11 weeks until the summer holidays on 8 July.

It would be misleading to say that the new term got into full swing on Tuesday when all the TDs returned to the Dáil chamber. Instead, it slowly crawled back into action.

For most people, the working week starts on a Monday morning between 8 and 10am. The Dáil re-opened at 2.30pm on Tuesday with a number of TDs asking Taoiseach Brian Cowen a series of pre-prepared questions. Cowen duly responded to them with a series of pre-prepared answers.

The relentless onslaught of the economic crisis over the past two years has raised a lot of questions about the Oireachtas. Is politics broken? Is the Dáil reacting fast enough to the greatest financial catastrophe in our history? Do we need a more efficient parliament?

A look at how events unfolded in the Oireachtas last week is unlikely to inspire confidence. The pre-prepared question and answer sessions include questions that were obviously tabled some time ago. They become dated.

For example, Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny, and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin all asked Cowen about the outcome of the government's involvement in the all-party northern talks at Hillsborough. The Hillsborough deal was agreed on 5 February and the outcome of the talks has been well documented.

Similarly, all the opposition party leaders asked Cowen to report about his recent St Patrick's Day trip to the US. It is well over a month since 17 March.

At 4.15pm on Tuesday, Leaders' Questions took place. Also held at 10.30am on Wednesdays, both are the only two times in the week when the Opposition can ask Cowen about the issues of the day where Cowen has no prior knowledge of the question he is going to be asked.

The controversial issue of Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher's €1.5m pension top-up dominated the agenda in Leaders' Questions on Tuesday and Wednesday. Only Gilmore and Kenny were allowed to put questions to Cowen.

In the UK House of Commons, Leaders' Questions takes place once a week and lasts for half an hour. Before the British parliament broke for the elections, David Cameron could ask prime minister Gordon Brown six questions, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg could ask two and a number of randomly drawn backbenchers could ask a question each to Brown. Surely a similar system for Leaders' Questions in Ireland would be worth exploring?

Much of the Dáil's proceedings last week were taken up by the second stage debate on the Central Bank Reform Bill 2010. Nobody could underestimate the importance of this bill. It is the legislation that will re-structure the financial regulatory framework, under a new board called the Central Bank Commission.

The second stage debate on the bill lasted for a number of hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. At a recent Oireachtas sub-committee on Dáil reform – they have committees for just about everything – Sligo-North Leitrim TD Jimmy Devins was scathing about the second stage debate process.

He said, "The second stage debate is a farce", as TDs go into an empty Dáil chamber and read out long scripts for 20 minutes.

"I would bet my last penny that 99% of it has no relevance to the bill in question. It is an opportunity for people to talk about anything they like… [TDs] could easily make the relevant points in five or, at most, 10 minutes. This will allow much more time for the debate to be constructive," he said.

Fine Gael's David Stanton is one of the biggest internal advocates of Dáil reform and he recently complained that "the Dáil chamber has become a place where people read scripts to each other".

Thursday mornings in the Dáil are a complete charade. Shortly before 10.30am the Dáil buzzer rings and TDs make their way into the chamber.

The Taoiseach does not attend the chamber on Thursdays. When Bertie Ahern was in the role, the rules were changed so he would only attend on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It was often said of Ahern that he would perform the official opening of a packet of crisps so he spent Thursdays during the tiger years opening everything from crisp bags to off-licenses.

It would be wrong to label Cowen in the same way. Anyhow, he does not have as much stuff to open. Businesses are closing down nowadays.

But Cowen does not attend the Dáil chamber on Thursdays either. Tánaiste Mary Coughlan fills in for him and the Order of Business part of the day is a joke. Anybody wondering if the Oireachtas is fit for purpose would close the doors altogether, had they watched the Order of Business unfold last Thursday.

It is meant to be the point where the members decide on the agenda for the day and TDs are allowed to ask the Tánaiste for updates on the progress of legislation. Instead it descended into a circus that lasted an hour and 17 minutes on Thursday.

After the Ceann Comhairle entered the chamber, everyone stood up to say the Dáil prayer in Irish and English. Then he called the TDs, who had submitted notices to his office under Standing Order 32.

Standing Order 32 is a rule that allows TDs to seek the adjournment of the Dáil at a time of national emergency. Instead it has become a vehicle for TDs to stand up in the chamber and raise a local constituency or topical issue. After raising the issue, TDs can issue a press release to their local newspaper or radio station. The TDs can proclaim they are taking the local issue so seriously that they have raised it on the floor of the national parliament.

Backbench TDs of all political creeds are using it but Fine Gael's James Bannon has to be the biggest culprit.

He is an affable TD who obviously does a lot of constituency work. Like all the other TDs in the chamber, he has been elected but the archaic system does not seem to give him and other backbenchers the opportunity to raise issues in the chamber.

As a result, he stands up most days before the Order of Business to call for the Dáil to be adjourned as he wants to raise an issue of national importance. The reality is that, more often than not, he raises an issue that is only of importance to the people of Longford.

During the recent Dáil sub-committee debate on how the Oireachtas should be reformed for the modern age, the former government chief whip Pat Carey proposed a solution to the Standing Order 32 shambles.

He suggested that a number of TDs' names should be drawn by lottery each morning to contribute to what Carey called "a Larry Gogan type quiz" with 30 seconds being provided for short questions.

A question would be addressed to a minister, from one of the lottery-winning TDs, on an issue and a short reply given. One can only assume that Carey does not propose replacing Séamus Kirk with the 2FM legend as Ceann Comhairle.

Last Thursday, after Kirk (quite rightly) decided that none of the issues raised by Bannon and others under Standing Order 32 were enough to warrant a national emergency, opposition party leaders Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore and Caoimh­ghin Ó Caoláin put questions on the banking crisis to Coughlan.

As this happened, a host of opposition TDs put up their hands. Kirk noted their names on a list and then called them one by one to speak.

They are supposed to ask the Tánaiste about how legislation was progressing through the Oireachtas. The reality is that some of the questions asked on Gogan's famous Just a Minute Quiz are possibly more closely related to Dáil legislation.

Kerry South TD Tom Sheahan asked: "What soothing words do you have for the farmers of south Kerry who have not received their REPS payments?"

His Fine Gael party colleague Paul Connaughton criticised the environment minister John Gormley for introducing a turf-cutting ban in bogs at a time when the price of petrol is so high.

After commencing at 10.30am last Thursday, the Order of Business eventually concluded at 11.47am. It is hard to imagine staff in any other workplace clocking in at 10.30am before spending over an hour debating what they should do for the rest of the day.

Due to the nature of the PR electoral system, most TDs do start work a lot earlier and work long hours up to seven days a week attending to their constituents. But there is certainly room for looking at a revamp of the Dáil's day-to-day running.

Labour Senator and Dublin South by-election candidate Alex White claims that a lot of what should happen in the Oireachtas has been contracted out to tribunals and those involved in the social partnership process.

The late Justice Liam Hamilton once stated that if questions had been answered in the Dáil in the way they were answered before the beef tribunal, then there would have been no need for that tribunal.

White claims, "If members of the Oireachtas were in a position to take the lead in respect of public scrutiny, then we would not need to literally contract out work."

The Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly recently criticised the workings of the Dáil in a speech at a conference on good governance.

It is incorrect to suggest that it is only the outsiders who realise politics is broken, as O'Reilly directly quoted the transport minister Noel Dempsey in her speech.

"We should return Dáil Éireann to a central place in public thinking. It should be the battleground for ideas, the location for intellectual debate, where the brightest and best work in concert to achieve optimal results over the long term, not cheap point scoring in the short term."

Dempsey's utopian idea is certainly fit for purpose. It remains to be seen if it will ever be put into practice.