Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I move:

That the Ceann Comhairle direct the Clerk of the Dáil to issue his writ for the election of a Member to fill the vacancy which has occurred in the membership of the present Dáil consequent on the resignation from Dáil Éireann of George Lee, a member for the constituency of Dublin South.

This motion is in the name of the Labour Party Whip, Deputy Emmet Stag. It is now more than four months since George Lee resigned as a Member. When Deputy Seamus Brennan died in July 2008, the vacancy was left unfilled for a period of 11 months. The people of Dublin South have been under-represented now for a combined period of more than 16 months during the past two years. There has been a vacancy in Donegal South-West for more than 12 months arising from the election to the European Parliament of Pat the Cope Gallagher. There has been a vacancy in the Waterford constituency for more than three months arising from the resignation of Martin Cullen.

It should not be acceptable for vacancies in the membership of the House to be left unfilled for such a long period. It is fundamentally anti-democratic that the people of Dublin South, Donegal and Waterford are being denied the level of representation to which they are entitled. It also sends out a message that membership of the Dáil is not important, that politics is not important and that our democratic system is not important.

In Britain, which has a similar system of parliamentary democracy, by-elections are held within a matter of weeks of the vacancy occurring in the House of Commons. In fact, the practice in the early decades of Dáil Éireann was to have by-elections within a space of a few weeks. For example, in 1927 Kevin O'Higgins was assassinated on 10 July and the consequent by-election was held on 24 August. Even in recent decades, normal practice has been that a by-election is held within a couple of months of the vacancy occurring. Two vacancies occurred during the lifetime of the last Dáil and the by-elections were held within about three months. Let us consider the 28th Dáil, which sat from 1997 to 2002. Some six vacancies arose and on no occasion was the by-election deferred for as long as one year.

In the past, various Governments have been tardy about calling by-elections but this is the first Government to have adopted a policy that all by-elections should be delayed for as long as possible. I have no doubt that if it believed it could get away with it, it would delay them indefinitely.

The legal and constitutional rights of the people of Dublin South, Donegal and Waterford cannot be ignored indefinitely. If the Government persists in refusing to hold the by-elections, other remedies may have to be considered. From a case taken in 1994 by a Dublin South-Central constituent, we are aware that the High Court, in granting leave for a judicial review of failure of the Government to proceed with the by-election in that constituency, stated there was an "arguable case that the Government of Ireland has a constitutional obligation to set down and support motions for the issue of a writ for the holding of a by-election after a reasonable time". The case never went to a full hearing because the by-election was held in the meantime. If the Government persists with its current attitude, it may be only a matter of time before some aggrieved voters in one of these constituencies resorts to the courts and takes the matter out of our hands.

In recent months, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party have trooped in here to defeat attempts to move the writs for Donegal South-West and Waterford. The longer they deny the people their democratic rights, the more the anger of electors will grow.

The country needs a fresh start and the people need new hope. Events last week showed the skewed priorities of the Government again. On Wednesday, the chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank admitted to an Oireachtas committee that the lion's share of the €22 billion of taxpayers' money that Fianna Fáil had put into the bank will never been seen again. On the same day, the Government announced that it was putting another €250 million of taxpayers' money into the EBS. At the same time, the Government was forcing through the Dáil the Social Welfare Bill that is supposed to be about reforming the social welfare system and supposed to activate jobseekers and lone parents. However, without backing up these proposals with genuine job opportunities and access to quality training, education and literacy improvement, the effect will be simply to further impoverish people who are already living on subsistence levels of income.

Earlier this month, figures were published showing that, for the 12th successive month, the number of people on the live register is more than 400,000, with the most recent figure at 438,000. Another set of figures was published by the Central Statistics Office which disclosed that a total of 41% of those now out of work are classified as long-term unemployed. In other words, they have been out of work for more than 12 months. When I raised these shocking figures in the Dáil last week, all the Taoiseach could do was shrug his shoulders and state that it is not possible to go back to the low levels of unemployment we had before Fianna Fáil plunged the country into economic chaos. The Labour Party will not abandon the unemployed and job creation will be the number one priority if our party is in Government after the next election. The Labour Party has already proposed several initiatives to get people back to work. One of our key proposals is for the creation of a strategic investment bank. This should be a key plank in Ireland's jobs strategy. Its structure and role would make a major contribution to the immediate task of promoting recovery, while also playing a central role in the transformation and restructuring of the economy.

If the Government is so confident that we are turning an economic corner and that it is doing such a great job, then neither Fianna Fáil nor the Green Party should have any fear of facing the electorate. Their continued refusal to allow the by-elections to be held shows they do not even believe as much themselves. They are whistling past their political graveyard. When the people get the chance to vote, there is no doubt about the political verdict they will pass on this discredited, demoralised and politically bankrupt Government.

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