Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That announcement has been made in the Seanad.

I thank everybody for their contributions. As we have said before, one of the issues the public is concerned about is that they want the current systems to work better. They do not want new systems. We create many new systems and they have not worked better. That is why, in many instances, local and national democracy is being questioned. As I said earlier, and it is important in regard to Fórsa as well, it impacts not only elected representatives but public servants and people on the front line in so many areas, including our hospitals in the accident and emergency departments, where they have to tolerate behaviour that they should not have to tolerate, and the levels of this behaviour are growing and need to be addressed. We see the burning of trams and the police are unable to feel they can respond. We see protests outside the houses of public representatives. The incident last week was one more in a series. It cannot continue. The laws clearly are not defined well enough, are not there, or the Garda members feel they do not have the ability to deal with them at this time. That is the fundamental protection of democracy. We cannot allow people who want to undermine democracy the platform on which to do it. Democracy has to protect itself above all and protect the people who serve either as elected representatives and as public servants. Part of the reason so many people want to leave the public service and go to another job, as shown by the survey, is the abuse they are getting for which there are no consequences. If there were consequences, then we would not see the abuse because people would think twice before taking to Twitter or to the footpaths outside a person’s private house in the belief that intimidation is an appropriate form of protest. It is not in a democracy.

I thank my colleagues for being here. By some miracle we have actually finished before time, which is unusual for this committee. I thank attendees for making a contribution. For our next session, after the local elections, we have invited the leaders of the political parties to come here to discuss the draft recommendations of the report which the members of the committee will put together based on the witnesses' contributions. We will ask political parties to include in their general election manifestos and, it is hoped, a future programme for Government a plan to address many of the issues which were brought up here today so that we can strengthen local democracy and, in doing so, democracy in this State into the future.