Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----who describe us as decorative and wilting flowers on the Fine Gael front. We are not very decorative, but we certainly resent the fact that we are described as such by someone who has decided on his own volition to be a voice in the wilderness of politics for many years. The only problem for Deputy Broughan is into which wilderness he decides to drop every time there is a new Dáil. The Independent Alliance made a decision which is not shared by many on the other side of the House that it would decide to enter Government if it could extract or agree the terms which it needed from a Government coming into power.

We believe that in the last few weeks we have agreed such a programme and a programme which will begin, and no more than begin, a radical change in Irish politics. The Independent Alliance consists of an extraordinarily disparate group of Independents who have found it difficult to come down this road but have managed to agree on enough things to be a coherent and cohesive group and to have found themselves in government in a very short time. To those on that side of the House who are so sceptical I say that I welcome today the ideas that have come from that side already. I welcome the ideas of an anti-corruption agency made by Deputy Catherine Murphy. I say she should come and talk to me about that. I do not know what my powers are and I do not know what I can do in government but I will try to do so. I and those of us who have come to power by this route will welcome and adopt ideas coming from the Opposition benches, from our own benches and from our colleagues in government. That is what the new Dáil is about. That is the only way it is going to work and that is why we are in government.

People are sceptical but I had a conversation last night with the Taoiseach. I was talking to him about Dáil reform and I asked him about an issue - a last point I had forgotten to ask about earlier - which was the abolition of the Economic Management Council. I thought it was going to be like one of these thorny topics which we had been through over the last few weeks. He told me okay, it is gone, that it had been needed for a particular time and it is not needed any more and I was to consider it gone. To me that was very encouraging because it meant that one of those obstacles to Dáil reform, one of those rather secretive bodies that had dictated to the Cabinet and to the Dáil the agenda of what came out to the country, was now a thing of the past.

It was only a small thing, but to me it was something significant that was happening. It was something which I hope begins to mark the reform that this Government has already promised in the document we have been discussing today, the programme for Government.

There has already been a U-turn on Seanad reform by this Government. The Committee on Dáil Reform, which I have sat on up to recent days and which Deputy Ryan has set on, is an all-party group which has been able to find agreement on matters of great importance to us all and will reform the way everything happens in this House.

I am not promising the world, but I am saying what the world is now promising. Let us give it a chance. Let us talk to each other, because what I have seen today is a certain amount of bankruptcy. However, it is not on this side of the House. The contest in this Dáil today has been between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin and other members of the Opposition. We do not want to see that. Let us see ideas come from them rather than see them sniping at each other on that side of the House.

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