Dr. Elaine Byrne:

Again, I refer to my shoe and shoelaces argument. In many respects, Ireland has some of the best practice legislation on governance. However, it is about implementation and culture. There have been various scandals in the last year, for example, relating to Seanad appointments which present a picture to the public that there is somehow unorthodox influence over appointments in public life, when often these things are regulated.

On the Constitutional Convention, as somebody who was part of the reason that it happened through the "We the Citizens" initiative, I am very disappointed by it. It was a missed opportunity. Many of the questions that were presented to the Constitutional Convention were not the big questions of the day. There is a tendency in the Government to focus on numbers in its reforms, for example, how many local councils there are, how many Deputies there are, what are the salaries of particular individuals, whether somebody should vote at 18 years old or 16 years old and whether the age to be President is 35 years old or 21 years old. There is a focus on numbers in the reform programme by the coalition, rather than on where power is, which was discussed by the witnesses before the committee yesterday. I think the Constitutional Convention was a missed opportunity.