Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I have no great problem with this legislation and will only comment on it in general terms. I am not a great supporter of any attempt to diminish democracy. I have always held the view that we must safeguard it, as it is fragile. Any country which shrunk democracy paid a high price for so doing. I am not suggesting the proposals contained in the legislation will shrink democracy in this country unnecessarily. However, weaknesses have shown up in the system in recent years. In the short time available to me, I would like to evaluate these weaknesses.

Weaknesses have shown up in Departments, many of which did not do the job they were supposed to do. Ministers did not call the shots, did not recognise the problem and did not take action when they should have. Heads of Departments also did not do their jobs. They should have taken action and issued warnings immediately when things were seen to be going wrong. The regulators also did not do their job. However, there is no point in going over the matter. The banking system did not do what it was supposed to do. The economy was turned upside down leaving us in a situation from which we will have great difficulty extricating ourselves.

The question that arises is whether the parliamentary system failed? I do not believe it did, as it was not allowed to function. It was dominated by a Government which slowly strangled Parliament. Once that happens, Parliament become irrelevant. Where does Parliament now finds itself? We are placed between local authorities which we all believe should have more power - in European Union member states greater recognition is given to regional authorities and as such, there is regionalisation with the establishment of the Scottish, Welsh and other assemblies - and the European institutions, including the European Parliament and the European Commission. There is no purer form of democracy than having direct elections to the national parliament. We can talk about the matter for as long as we like and can get as many experts as we like to analyse it, but there is substitute for this. Any attempt to circumnavigate the system, whereby experts are elevated to ministerial or any other office in the parliamentary system, is anathema and flies in the face of democracy.

Whenever we shrink democracy we enhance bureaucracy. It is as simple as that. When we remove, trim or reduce the powers or autonomy of parliamentarians, the corresponding change is the giving of more power to bureaucrats, which they love. For them, it is all about power. The longer one studies this issue, the more obvious it becomes. That is the reason so many experts are commenting on our situation. Have we ever before been beset by more opinions from experts than in the past two and a half to three years since the economy began running into the sand? The experts came out of the woodwork and continue to advise and tell us what we should be doing. Very often they offer contradictory opinions. However, where were they before everything went wrong? They were rallying the crowd and being populist. Let us not forget that populism is dangerous. Any European historian could tell us all about this and would not have to go too far back in time to do so.

I do not have a difficulty with the Bill. However, I caution that we must be careful not to trim democracy to the benefit of bureaucrats and administrators, thus reducing the quality of representation to which the people are entitled.

See this speech in context