Thrace-Tailteann�s legislature has been changed from the old, unicameral parliament with advisory council, to a bicameral form consisting of Senate and House of Deputies.  Either house may propose legislation amendments, but in practise only the Senate is small enough to allow for the necessary debate.

Sixty Senators are elected every two years.  Half of the Senators are elected by citizens over 35 years of age in regional constituencies, an age limit which is disputed by the strong Freedom To Vote movement..  The other half are elected by groups such as university graduates, employers� and trades unions groups, the civil service, and local district councillors, as well as the President.  Almost all Bills drafted by the Cabinet are put before the Senate before being debated in the House.

The House of Deputies is legally required to have at least one Deputy for each million people; the current size of the House is 1,500 Deputies.  They are elected by citizens over 18 in much smaller regional constituencies than the Senate�s, by proportional representation with an average of nine Deputies per constituency.  There is little protocol in the House and has often been described as �government by open outcry�, a situation helped by the large number of Deputies and the incentive to attend the House created by a time-rate wage for parliamentarians.  Votes on legislation can be especially nightmarish, which led to the building of eleven separate voting chambers and a system of �head count� before the introduction of electronic voting.  As can be imagined, both the previous and current systems pose a problem for party whips.

The most recent Parliament elections saw the Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats gain seats, to the detriment of the Social Democrats. The result has been a shift to the right and to liberalism in proposed amendments.  This is one of the factors in our previous move away from Authoritarian Democracy, the political philosophy of the Social Democrats.  However, legislation passed recently has strengthened Social Democratic policy.

Elections to the Parliament take place every two years.  The Leader of the Parliament is the head of the largest party (currently Christian Democrat leader Larry Fuller).  If there is a vacancy, a by-election is held to choose a new MP.  That MP sits until the next major election, when he or she may run for office again.