Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I want to deal with the judgment and the Government's approach to it. It is worth putting formally on the record of the House what was said in the High Court yesterday. I notice that the Tánaiste studiously avoided doing so in her speech. The judgment stated that "the court will declare that section 39(2) of the Electoral Act 1992 is to be construed as requiring that the writ for a by-election be moved within a reasonable time of the vacancy arising". The judge went on to state:

Has there in fact been unreasonable delay in moving the writ for the by-election in the Donegal South-West constituency? The Dail has a five-year term and the unprecedented delay, in this instance the longest in the history of the State, represents a significant proportion of the term of the current Dáil.

The judge went on to declare that there has been "an unreasonable delay in moving the writ". Interestingly, the judge referred to a different court case, Dudley v . An Taoiseach, in which the issue arose as to whether the Government is obliged to set down and support the motion for the issue of a writ, or at least not impede or impose such a motion after a reasonable time. The judge stated: "I would hope, however, that there is no need to make such further order."

The reality is that this Government is afraid of the electorate. We know that. Without the court judgment, as my colleague Deputy Kehoe said, quite clearly this writ would not have been moved today. The truth is that writs should be moved for all of the remaining three by-elections simply to ensure that the representation to which people are entitled is provided in this House.

I want to make one straightforward and simple point: at present, there are no court proceedings in being in relation to the other three by-elections. Quite clearly, it would be highly inappropriate that there would be one in being in respect of Dr. McDaid who only resigned this week. There are now solid grounds, however, for taking court proceedings in respect of the other two. The Government is now trying to misuse the courts at taxpayers' expense and make what could only be described as-----

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