Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Do the witnesses think it is important for us to debate the strategy? The public are losing confidence and things are not going in the right direction. I do not think anybody could argue that things are going in the right direction at the moment. Notwithstanding differences of opinion, how important is it for us to have this debate? Even at our own committee, the Chair and I were very keen to have this discussion this morning but a number of committee members believed that we should not have the discussion at all because it might undermine the Government's new plan. I would like the witnesses to comment. I believe that we need an open debate; we do not need the political management of information and evidence, and we should not be afraid of openly debating the various strategies in front of the public in a very open way.