Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

I congratulate my colleagues who drafted this Bill, particularly Deputy Murphy, and for the constructive way it has been approached by the Technical Group. It is very important this is done now. Time and again, throughout presidential elections, there have been complaints about the procedure for selecting candidates. Everybody has paid lip service to it, as has happened with the Government and others today, and afterwards it is forgotten for another seven years until the next election. This was in danger of being repeated until our group tabled this Bill.

My view of the presidency and the procedures for electing, selecting and nominating a President is that it is a stitch-up between the political parties, as it always has been. It will probably remain so, judging by the Minister's reply which indicates there are no ideas in Government about radical reform of the nomination process.

The process was set out by Éamon de Valera in 1937 in a Constitution devised to a large extent for his own purposes. It was set up in a way that it would probably never go to an Independent but would always go to a political party, presumably and preferably at the time to Fianna Fáil. That has happened to a large extent. Those who were elected and could claim some independence have, however, always had definite political pedigrees. I am not talking in particular about Patrick Hillery or others who had such obvious political pedigrees which they wore on their sleeves, including Éamon de Valera, but about Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, both of whom had definite political preferences, who were allied to political parties and who would not have become President had they not come through the political processes one way or the other. They might have worn an Independent badge, but in effect they were both candidates for the Dáil for a political party.

The presidency and the presidential system, as it was set up, has worked brilliantly for those who set it up. It was set up to look after people who had done loyal service, maybe to the State, but also to political parties and who had come through the political process. That is something we should broaden, deepen, widen and change. One of the features of the recent presidential contest was that those who were candidates had to go through a tortuous procedure which was not merited.

It did happen that those who wanted to be independent candidates did eventually get nominated. I concede that. The system did facilitate them but that does not mean the system is right. They got through it but they had to go through a political process which was far too narrow and excluded many other people had they wanted to run. They all had political connections or political pedigrees of some sort which gave them a huge advantage when they were standing for the presidency.

I see no reason why the President should be a politician or an ex-politician. To some extent it is a disadvantage. It would be wonderful if we could elect a President who was non-political in the real sense, and I do not mean independent politically. I mean absolutely politically neutral, non-political, with no political leanings or views in effect but maybe was a great author, a great poet, who represented something completely different in Irish life, someone of whom we as a people are proud.

One of the chief criteria for electing a President is not that he or she should have served the State so well, in political terms, but that it should be someone of whom the nation can be proud and be a symbol when he or she walks into the Oval Office or at the Great Wall of China or anywhere abroad. We must be assured that it is an Irish person who will not let us down and not someone who has served well in this or the other House Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Independents or someone else. This should not be in the exclusive criterion but the system, as it currently exists, is weighted and biased very heavily in favour of those who have political connections, who have political friends, who had done political favours and have who have come through the system. They should not be debarred but it should not be that sort of advantage necessarily.

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