Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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This is an issue right across the board. What is democracy? If it is just about elections, we can look at the example in America and the requirements that must be met to be a candidate for president. It is the same at the lower levels if we were to talk about the Senate and Congress races and the lobby groups involved. I am not entirely sure this is exactly what anyone in Greece, where the concept originated, or anyone else exactly meant by democracy. There is always an element of this relating to everything. Democracy has to be more than even elections. If we are talking about working-class areas, it is about the engagement of State services across the board. It is not just politics. Sometimes politics is only as good or as weak as some of us in the room, and others, and how much we engage.

We all know that drugs are a major issue, for example, and particularly so in large urban working-class areas. People are dealing with a large element of what has become very normalised in this context, from drug debt intimidation and so on. The political process is not offering people in those areas any solutions on a day-to-day basis. I get this. That is one thing. There is an absolute failing and when we fail people, we leave them open to whatever else might result.

The witnesses dealt with social media platforms. Our only hope in this regard is that all of it changes in the near future, which could be in the next year or two. We hope moves will be made in this context. We are up against entities with more resources than half the economies of the world. Advertising works, though. If people get messages that resonate with them emotionally, they will buy into them. Deputy Howlin said something changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some people got worked up about several issues and whole communities were created in this fashion. Now, sometimes on these particular issues, the people involved did not manage to get traction outside of them. On the issue of migration, they have, in the sense that people are now aware of the local hotel that has been taken over and other issues. Politics failed to deal with this and to say here is how the system works, here are the issues and this is how we are addressing them. This is just the way it is. There is an element where this situation has impacted on the whole of politics. It has impacted on the Government but also on the political collective. We failed to address all these issues and therefore we left the space open for others.

The social media companies have been utterly disgraceful regarding what they allow on their platforms. I am not necessarily talking about disinformation; I am just talking about idiots who are shouting and screaming, and who suddenly go viral and keep people online. They make money out of it, so it is happy days for them. That does have an impact. That is all well and good because these are the problems on some level and they need to be addressed. The question is how we can deal with this issue. We must have an audit of the need out there and address the existing issues. We could be talking about everything from health deficits right through to the supports families need, which require that we facilitate people and ensure they do not fall onto the wrong track. We must ensure they can get into education and the workforce. We must also deal with the underlying issue of poverty. Again, I get that none of this is straightforward. I have this real issue here.

In fairness to the witnesses, they have put out the questions. They have some of the questions. We are not asking the correct questions at times, but finding the answers is even more difficult. The witnesses have pointed out several things that are wrong. There was the disengagement with working-class communities. The issue concerning social media was spoken of. The disengagement from the political process and whatever else was observed. The issue now is how we can widen the level of engagement. It means there has to be much more emphasis from us on how disengagement happens. Addressing this problem, however, will require resources and this will be especially the case in working-class areas. The reality is that we have not put those resources into those areas.