Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

There are two types of disfunctionality for anybody who examines management: structural deficiencies and system deficiencies. Both have been created by the type of governance to which this country has become accustomed because of Fianna Fáil's business culture in running the country.

I arrived into this House in 2007 as a new TD. I, like everybody else, would like to leave some legislative footprints in this House but I would also like to leave some sort of reform footprints here. Recently I picked up a book in which, amazingly, I get a mention. It is by Mr. Fintan O'Toole, who writes quite extensively about the myth of parliamentary democracy. He refers to a situation when I came in here first as a new TD. On the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2008, I tabled, in 2009, a simple amendment, not one that would have cost the Exchequer a cent. It was not to change Government policy, but merely to cite that the Government had created a technical error in the legislation and was citing the Health Act as dating from 2007 when, in fact, it should have been cited as dating from 2008. I tabled an amendment to the Minister to correct an anomaly or deficiency in the Bill that might create a legislative or legal difficulty further down the line, and the Minister rejected my amendment. At the next stage, on moving from Committee Stage to Report Stage, the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, came in with the exact same amendment that I had proposed at an earlier stage. I seconded it and I had tabled my own amendment as well, and he voted for mine. It is the only time in the three years I have been in this House that I have been successful with an amendment. This is the sort of ridiculous behaviour that goes on here on a daily basis because of the adversarial type of politics, and particularly the executive governance of Fianna Fáil and the stranglehold it puts upon the parliamentary operations of this House.

There are 166 TDs in this Chamber. Each of them, I assume, comes to work every morning to do the best job that they can. However, the working environment that this House has now become has made that job extraordinarily difficult, and sometimes impossible.

I will conclude with two critical points. Reform, in itself, does not produce the desired outcomes. In 2004, the Health Bill was brought before us here and the reform that gave us was the HSE.

We should no confuse reform with reductionism, which has become very much a mantra and a sort of Gospel in present times. We here have two jobs: first, to ensure the governance of this country in a sovereign way; and second, to ensure that such governance is not dumbed down to the lowest common denominator so that the operation of the State is reduced to such a level that we cease functioning as a democracy.

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