40% of TDs have their buttons pressed by other politicians on a regular basis
OK, so we know Fianna Fáil's Lisa Chambers and Niall Collins pressed the wrong buttons whilst voting in the Dáil chamber.
Lisa claims to have pushed Dara Calleary's button by accident, whereas Niall voted on behalf of Timmy Dooley SIX times on Thursday. Neither Calleary or Dooley were in the room at the time.
Mr Collins and Mr Dooley have since stepped-down from the frontbench and Ms Chambers is under investigation.
But how can this happen? How in the name of Miggeldy Higgins can our politicians be so blasé about decision-making?
Dermot and Dave chat to Today FM's Political Correspondent, Seán Defoe, about the process involved.
He say;
"In the Dáil chamber, usually every week, whenever there's a division or a challenge put down in the Dáil, they save up all the votes til Thursday afternoon and they all come in and do about an hour, and hour 20 minutes of block voting so everything that could get voted on gets done in one chunk".
Defoe's research reveals that 40% of TDs have their buttons pressed by other politicians on a regular basis and even more surprisingly, a lot say, "sometimes you forget to vote because you only have 60 seconds".
That doesn't sound good enough to us. Surely a better system is needed?
Check out Seán's chat in full by pressing the play button on screen.
