Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

The experience in this House over the past 12 years is that Fianna Fáil in Government, regardless of the party that accompanies it, has sought to ensure that this Parliament plays as minimal a role as possible. There is no acceptance of parliamentary accountability or of responsibility for anything that goes wrong. There is no question of an incompetent Minister ever resigning, for any reason. Question Time in the Dáil has been played around with to the extent that it is little short of show business rather than a true parliamentary engagement. Every Minister who comes into this House knows that, because of the way Question Time is organised, if he or she talks long enough on any issue he or she will never be held to account for anything because the timeframes for individual and supplementary questions are limited.

This Parliament is not functioning in any shape or form as a modern Parliament should function. This is a consequence of the manner in which this Parliament has been treated by a succession of Fianna Fáil-dominated Governments whose sole objective is to ensure that Ministers are never held properly to account for their failings. We have an economic disaster that is a substantial result of failed Government policies, not only those prior to the May 2007 election but those implemented by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party in Government during the first 18 months of their period in power. There has been a complete failure to come to grips with the economic crisis this country confronts. Nobody in Government is willing to say: "We got it wrong. We apologise. We are accountable. We recognise the time has come for us to go and for the people to give a new mandate to another political party or to the specific policies required to get this country on the road to recovery".

This motion is a litmus test of the sincerity, first, of the Green Party in Government whose members propound their commitment to Dáil or parliamentary reform.

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