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

I welcome the moving of the writ for the by-election in Carlow-Kilkenny. I particularly welcome the fact that the People Before Profit Alliance will have a dynamic candidate, Adrienne Wallace, a recent graduate who is now working in Carlow. She typifies the new generation of people who have come into politics largely as a result of the complete failure of the political establishment and typified by Phil Hogan, the man whose move to Europe has provoked this by-election. It says everything about Irish politics that the primary architect of the fiasco that is Irish water, the man who presided over the greatest political debacle seen in recent times in this State, gets conferred with the premier political reward that any Government can give, namely the most senior position in Europe. It is precisely that which has spurred people like Adrienne Wallace to enter politics and to get involved in the anti-water charges movement. They are sickened by the political establishment and feel compelled to become politically active.

Apart from making the election a referendum on water charges and austerity, Adrianne Wallace also wants to highlight the whole question of political accountability, as well as the lack of it, the failure of politicians to keep promises they made and the need to have mechanisms-----

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