Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

We debated the outcome of the Lisbon treaty referendum today and I wish to bring in some elements of that debate and how they relate to this Labour Party proposal. There is a relationship between the European democratic deficit and the democratic deficit at home. Although the full results of a poll of 2,000 people carried out by the European Commission and mentioned in yesterday's Irish Independent are not available, they indicated that the vast majority of women voted "No" to the Lisbon treaty and that young people voted "No" by a margin of two to one.

There appears to be a huge disconnect between voters and what the majority of politicians and public representatives were campaigning for in terms of the outcome of this referendum. My colleague, Deputy Joan Burton, raised the issue of the disconnect among women voters and how that relates to how we, in Leinster House, operate.

When I was canvassing for the Lisbon treaty, many concerns were raised by constituents on why they had reservations about the treaty. However, a common theme, especially among those who might have voted "Yes" or "No" — everyone knows there were reluctant "Yes" and "No" voters — was a fear that too much power was going to Europe. People were not quite clear about what they meant by that. It was very difficult to argue that the Lisbon treaty would make Europe more democratic.

We need to do all the things we did before, such as having a National Forum on Europe and discussions in Brussels, but in the context the democratic deficit at national and European levels, we need to determine what powers we want to exercise here. We need to have such a debate in this House. The public is insecure about powers going to Europe. What that really means is that they are insecure about the powers we exercise here. We need to involve society in that debate and address the issue at local and national levels.

I read the Lisbon treaty, which I got as a supplement with The Sunday Times. I spent a day reading through it. It refers to subsidiarity, how decisions that are best taken at local and national levels should be taken here and about protections in that regard for national parliaments. There are powers which people do not want to go to Europe. They do not want a person they do not know dealing with issues. We need to figure out what those issues are and ensure we have more powers. We need to exercise better local democracy. That would do much in terms of people's insecurity about allowing Europe to make certain decisions. People want to know that decisions taken here would be genuinely debated and that there would be engagement.

Members of the Oireachtas and members of local government have fewer powers. The boundaries for the local elections were issued yesterday but they do not deal with the fact there is a councillor for approximately 1,000 people in some parts of the country but that in Dublin, there is a councillor for approximately 10,000 people. That is the reason so many young councillors on Dublin City Council, for example, have resigned their seats. They cannot cope with the workload and they are too remote from their electorate. They are doing jobs for which they are getting part-time pay and it is not sustainable. We are losing bright and, in many instances, young men and women councillors because we have not dealt with that problem.

This motion raises the issue of sitting days. Some six Bills had been passed so far in 2008. I looked at the past ten years in which 40 to 50 Bills were passed each year. There is no way we will reach that target this year at the rate we are going. Many Bills need to be dealt with. We have not transposed the Public Participation Directive into domestic legislation. Therefore, we are not dealing with the need for public participation and engagement in very important decisions in regard to the environment, local government and so on.

There is no urgency about how we will deal with the outcome of the Lisbon treaty referendum. I was elected a Senator in 2002 and the Dáil sat on 4 September 2002 and the Seanad sat on 12 September 2002 to deal with the outcome of the Nice referendum and to deal with legislation. We passed the final Stages of the European Union (Scrutiny) Bill which was a Labour Party initiative. On 7 June 2001, the Nice treaty was rejected and on 20 June 2001, the European Union (Scrutiny) Bill was initiated. That is how quickly we acted. In 2002, we finished on 11 July and we were back on 4 September 2002. We need that type of urgency and to ensure there is more engagement with the public in the civic and political process at local, national and European levels.

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