The political system in Ireland needs reform and we know it.

The ship of state is sinking and there’s nothing we can do about it, so others have come in to bail us out. How it came to this is another debate. But since this crisis began more than two years ago, political reform has very much been on the agenda.

Many argue that we are not being best served by our representatives; that perhaps they are not fit to meet the challenges that confront our nation in the twenty first century. Yes, the system needs to be reformed. But we need to be clear first why we’re doing it if that reform is to be successful.

If we are proposing major changes to our political system in the hope that this will somehow change voter behaviour, then this is a mistake. And if we are proposing systemic reform in the belief that this will suddenly deliver us better politicians, then we’re fooling ourselves.

People vote for different reasons. Reducing the power of one’s ballot through a part list system say, or giving people fewer candidates to choose from, will not change those reasons. At the same time, changing the way a politician is elected will not radically change the type of people that go in to politics or the things they have to do to get (and stay) elected.

Changing the system isn’t going to change behaviour as the people in the system will just adapt to their new reality. If you want to change the system, you have to change the people – the voters and the people they vote for.

You have to give them a reason to change, you have to motivate them to think and behave differently. Give the people leadership and they will follow it. But give them glorified city and county councillors and they will follow them too.

To a point. And perhaps that point has now almost been reached. All of this clamour for change of the system is a readiness on the part of the people to think and act differently – a willingness to opt for something else if only it can be provided.

But can it? It bothers me when I hear TDs complaining that they cannot do their jobs – they cannot serve in the national interest – because the system doesn’t allow them to, but that once the system is changed they will all of a sudden be better politicians and better leaders. It is convenient rubbish. A clever excuse, but at the end of the day it’s trying to have it both ways. And it is ultimately an abdication of responsibility.

Take George Lee. Here was a person who had the potential to transcend the localism of our political system, someone who the people would elect because he was seen to have the ability to contribute to the national cause. But he lost sight of this potential himself and went off chasing car clampers and campaigning against bus lanes for local votes and cheap media coverage. He became disillusioned (with himself, arguably), and he left. Person-led reform of our political system was set back a decade.

And yet it is still possible, despite everyone getting their fingers burned on that occasion.

Maybe one is not enough. Maybe the answer is to have more – a critical mass of like-minded politicians to influence the behaviour, not just of the electorate, but of other public representatives around them. Never before has the opportunity to achieve this been so immediate, with the body politic looking for something new, and with a general election on the near horizon.

The ground is incredibly fertile. The only thing that is missing now are the candidates. Individuals willing to stand up and put themselves forward to their local electorate on national issues, not local ones; people who do not have any preconceived notions about how politics should be done, and who have the vision and the courage to show how politics could be done.

Yes, we still need reform of the system if we want to achieve the results we all so desperately desire: better government. Three key changes would be to devolve more power to local representatives; remove the whip on votes other than the budget and election of An Taoiseach; and, introduce term limits.

That could improve national politics. But only once we elect politicians who are national, not parochial. Until we do that, no reform will succeed.