Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

As I hope it is clear to anyone who has read the Labour Party document, we have put much research and work into it. It has been in preparation for several months. However, it was published against the background of an outpouring of criticism of the political system, to a considerable extent sparked off by the decision of the Government to close down a week's plenary session in the Dáil, for a mid-term break, only about a month after a long summer recess. Of course, that sort of public criticism is aimed at politicians in general. It is only rarely that attention is drawn to the fact that it is the Government alone, not politicians as a whole, that determines the length of parliamentary sessions and organises parliamentary business.

That Government decision encouraged the view that the Dáil, and our national Parliament generally, is losing its relevance and that the people who are elected to serve have only their own interests at heart.

Much of that criticism is superficial and uninformed. As we say in the document, the vast majority of elected TDs of all parties are dedicated to the interests of their constituents. They seek to live up to the commitment they make when elected that they will give all their constituents loyalty, hard work, and, in the words of Edmund Burke, their "mature judgment and enlightened conscience".

The recent practice of blaming every politician for the performance of a few is not only unfair, it is corrosive. Fianna Fáil has been successful in tarring all of us with its brush.

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