Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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We have covered so much and it has been a very discursive type of meeting. There are a few areas I would like to speak about but I will not go on at great length because we all could and I am very conscious of time. There are a couple of areas which I think are important. I really have a problem with this notion that the use of the term "far right" is a throwaway thing. It is not. There are people involved who are in politics, there are people involved who are elected, there are governments that are in power, and it is the job of people who oppose this, who are also involved in politics and have a very different view, to be willing to make their view clear and to label stuff that is unacceptable.

If people, regardless of whether or not they are the democratically elected government of a country, are behaving in a way that is totally unacceptable to you, I believe that you, if you are an elected representative, have an obligation to call this out, whether this is at international level in terms of someone conducting a military operation that borders on being war crime, if not an actual war crime, whether it is within the European Union, or whether it is people using their position and status, as Dr. Cohen correctly alluded to, to invent their own facts and peddle simplistic solutions to what are very complex problems. There is the middle ground, absolutely, between the people who have a right-of-centre view and left-of-centre view, and it is wrong to label everybody, but in not being willing to try to go down this route you cannot and should not shy away from the fact there is an obligation on politicians in the centre, for the sake of democracy, to call out governments, people in power and people seeking power.

I have a problem with some of what Dr Cohen said about communities and participation in democracy because I do not accept some views. There are people who will always say, "If you did this, well then" or "If this was here, well then" but the reality is you could consult until the cows come home and provide every facility in the world but if people do not like what is happening they will object. Sometimes it is the job of representatives to not just pander to this but to understand that sometimes there can be a greater good. Sometimes in politics part of the art of representing your greater community, and representing an enlarged number of people, is that you have to be willing to do something that is not going to be specifically popular at the moment when you do it. What is often done by groups that target a particular viewpoint is that they play to the idea that "if only we had participative democracy" or "if only we had this", then we would get a different outcome. At a certain point this has to be challenged. Participating in democracy is vital, it is really important, but so is leadership and so is representing the fact that certain decisions that governments and local authorities make are made in the best interests of a community and a greater community. All delivery cannot be done immediately. The world we would like to see cannot be done. There are real challenges. When it comes to the balance between representative and participative, it is very important that we recognise the other aspect to it, which is that what might be the correct immediate solution in terms of participative democracy for one community can have huge impacts.

I want to pick up on another point. Whether it is at European level, national level or wherever, we need to have greater feed-in from the community where views are held, in terms of influencing policy. Occasionally this disconnect is really fed by people feeling they are not listened to. This still does not mean that just because you listen, you are obligated. You will hear views which you diametrically disagree with. I do not agree as a public representative, and no matter what level of participation I am involved in I will not agree, with the views Viktor Orbán would annunciate or the people who support him would annunciate. I am never going to agree and I am very proud of the fact I will not agree with them. We must be willing to listen but we should be cognisant at all times that sometimes there is a greater good. These are just a couple of thoughts. I probably have not phrased them that well but I wanted to make the point.