Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Is the constitutional convention not a complete, utter and deliberate distraction from the real issues about which people are concerned? It is mere window-dressing to distract from the Government and the troika careering ahead with wholesale privatisation, cuts and austerity. The constitutional convention is supposed to deal with political reform. Given that the Government is privatising, slashing or cutting everything that moves, one is obliged to wonder what will be left for any political structure to govern in the future. By the time the constitutional convention has the opportunity to discuss matters, everything will have been either outsourced and privatised. That is, of course, if it ever gets to discuss anything of a serious nature.

If there was any serious intent behind what was envisaged, the one action that would have been taken would have been removing all of the political hacks from the equation. In the context of what is supposed to be a serious attempt to engage with the public on the need for political reform, I do not understand why there will be 33 politicians as members of the convention. Why are they needed? Why not have just one or two from each party, North and South? Why is it necessary for politicians to comprise one third of the members of the convention? What is the point in that? If there are sectors of civil society which are not represented at the convention and which want to be involved with it, why not remove some of the politicians and make it more representative of civil society? The criteria for selecting random members of the public from the electoral register are too limited and based on region, gender and age. What about social class and social and economic background, which are extremely important considerations? There is a need to broaden civil representation at the convention. We could to do so if we removed some of the politicians and made provision for a broader cross-section of society to be represented.

Why will the Government not allow the convention to set its own agenda? Why are politicians dictating what its agenda will be in advance? Why not allow it to meet and then decide - on day one - what it wants to discuss? If it was allowed to do so, the convention might have a very different set of priorities - in the context of what it might wish to discuss - than those set for it by the Government. If the convention was a serious attempt to engage with the people on the need for political reform, the Government would allow it to set the agenda. I urge those opposite to do precisely that rather than having a stage-managed, choreographed, contained and controlled convention which will discuss what the Government wants it to discuss and which will avoid all the substantial issues of concern to people.

See this speech in context