Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have listened to a good few contributions and I would like to make a contribution concerning the proposals pertaining to the adjournment of the House generally. Last month the Irish people chose to elect a highly diverse Dáil.  Each Member of this House carries a mandate and a duty to represent those who elected them and to fight for the policies they advocated when seeking support.

I congratulate all new Members who have been elected. Each of them has an obligation to work towards resolving the many issues that we met on the campaign trail. I offer commiserations to those who were not successful in being elected but who had the courage to put themselves forward and compete in a parliamentary democracy.

No one in here carries the right to claim to speak on behalf of all of the people, or to tell others what their mandates represent. We have had an element of that already this afternoon. There is only one core message that we must all acknowledge, which is that a strong majority of the Irish people have voted for change.  They have voted for a change of government and a change of priorities and, of course, they have voted for a different type of politics.

The Fianna Fáil Party has emerged from this election with the support of over half a million people.  I want to welcome my new colleagues and to acknowledge the incredible work of our members in every part of the country. We have gained the largest increase in vote of any party and have more than doubled our representation.  We did so based on a very clear platform of priorities for this Dáil and a specific approach to delivering the change we believe is needed.  We argued that the outgoing Government should be replaced and that Fine Gael policy in particular had been divisive and unfair.  This remains our position.

Following this vote, the most urgent question for us all, as Members of the Dáil, is how we will move forward in addressing the desire of the people for change.  It is our intention as a party to continue to work for the permanent removal of the now acting Government.  As we have been outlining in discussions with various parties, groups and individual Deputies, our immediate priorities are for urgent action on the housing emergency, addressing the growing inequality in the availability and quality of employment, reversing damaging health policies, and implementing a series of measures to support communities and families. We have been encouraged by the response in many of our discussions to date and have indicated that we will continue them in a more intensive manner after today’s votes. There has been a lot of talk about strong government.  I believe that what the people want first and foremost is good government.  Some of the worst governments in the world are strong, and the acting Government was rejected by the people after five years of the strongest majority in our history.

We should all realise that one of the arguments that failed to persuade the people was the claim that there would be chaos unless we immediately had a new Government with a solid majority. If we respect the will of the people, then it is time to put aside the argument that the speed of formation and the size of the majority are what matters in choosing a new Taoiseach and Government.

Following this vote, the situation we find ourselves in is far from unprecedented.  Dáil Éireann has twice in the past failed to nominate a Taoiseach on its first day.  There have also been instances in which a Taoiseach lost support and there was a delay in electing a new Taoiseach. In 1992, the formation of a new Government took nearly two months.  During that time urgent business was addressed, including the passage of critical Supplementary Estimates and a Finance Bill measure. Given the fact that the budget has already been passed and there is no urgent Government measure which requires Dáil sanction, we clearly have the time to deliver a Government that respects the views of the Irish people. In fact, Ireland is relatively unusual in how fast it normally carries out the business of Government formation.  This may well be one of the reasons for the fact that the focus is often placed on who holds power rather than what they do with it.

We have already talked about the need to reduce the excessive control of Government on the work of our Parliament. Let us now show that we are serious by taking up this challenge at the start of the 32nd Dáil in an inclusive and urgent way.  Let us do this with a commitment to making this a Dáil in which all Members have both the opportunity and the obligation to contribute and be accountable. Motion 5bis a commendable step in that direction, but we are keen that the committee reach a conclusion before 6 April and that it make recommendations that can be immediately introduced to amend Standing Orders in a way that will fundamentally alter how we do our business in this House.

Reform cannot just be about how we ask questions and the timing of legislation; it has to be much deeper.  We need a Dáil that is more independent of the Government, but we also need a Dáil that is more expert in its work and in which the proposals it considers, whichever part of the House they emanate from, are subject to real scrutiny. That is why I and my party took the initiative, while many of the counts were still ongoing, of calling for Dáil reform as the first item on our agenda.  We welcome the fact that there is now a consensus on this. The failure of Dáil reform efforts in the past has been founded on the fact that the process has been in the hands of a Government majority.  If we truly want to change the way we do our business, then the best way to do this is to reach agreement on reform before there is such a majority in place. This is an issue that we as a party have addressed repeatedly in recent years, publishing a list of more than 100 specific reforms.  We have gone beyond general principles and set out exactly how procedures and structures can be reformed in order to implement those principles.

The consensus in favour of a cross-House committee chaired by our new Ceann Comhairle is welcome.  Certain reform efforts require consideration of constitutional issues as well as complex statutory provisions. However, many simply involve the passing of procedural amendments.  We believe there is enough detail in the proposals that have already been prepared by parties and Deputies to ensure that proposals for immediate and specific reform can be ready within weeks. I am pointing that out despite the degree to which some Deputies in today's debate have tried to scoff and pour scorn on the urgency of Dáil reform. People talk about Irish Water and the debacle that it became. That is intrinsically connected to the issue of Dáil reform. Why? It is because the Water Services Bill was rammed through in 24 hours without any proper scrutiny in the House at all.

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