Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy says, we are so immersed in the neoliberal imperative. However, I can remember Ireland in the seventies. I got my first job in the eighties. I can remember it, dark and all as it was. There were certain things in respect of which there were received values, such as housing and health. I remember watching a documentary programme involving Alan Whicker in America. I apologise that these are all very ancient references. We were shocked when we saw an elderly man going to an emergency department in a hospital in Florida. The camera crew followed him and he was asked did he have health insurance. We were saying "Oh my God, can you imagine if that ...". We thought this was unheard of.

We are inhabiting that. We are in a hegemonic space that is more red in tooth and claw than even the United States is. In the area that I am interested in, disability rights, they have the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are more empowered. That is how far we have come. I am of a generation that benefited from all of the things that my grandmother and my parents worked for, such as free access to education, being the first person in my family to go to Trinity, and all that followed. I challenge that hegemonic space that we are in and the Gleichschaltung. I can see it since I came in here, with Government colleagues who want to do the right thing but, because it does not resonate with the ideological impulse we are so used to, they almost feel it is problematic, even though it is not.

I thank Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. On so many occasions in these committees, unfortunately, with different witnesses, it has been adversarial. Sometimes it can be a little negative trying to call out deficiencies and defects in things, but I really commend this Bill. As a way of thinking and challenging - it is going to sound like the lyrics of a Michael Jackson song and maybe I should not mention him - to have faith not only in young people but also that iterative process to think about the people who are coming next, to try to incrementally remedy or undo the damage that has been done, but to be thinking about it, as the Deputy said, beyond the five-year cycle. As he said about his children, does not that concentrate the mind? My hope is that they will move out before they are 50. That is my forlorn, vague hope.