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

First of all, I welcome the chance to discuss the issue of Dáil reform and make some comments about the wider need and popular thirst for political reform. This is at least a step towards addressing that concern. I pay tribute to the members of the committee who, by all accounts, have worked well together, not withstanding the differences of opinion that they have, in trying to make this Dáil function in a better way.

Some people are sceptical about what is being described as the new politics. Interestingly, the most sceptical people I have met are those in the media, who do not believe for a minute that there can be a new politics but believe that everything will revert to type sooner or later. While I believe there are fundamental policy and ideological differences between many of us on key issues of policy, that does not mean that it is impossible for us to move from the politics of being adversarial for its own sake to beginning to discuss policy and try to solve problems in a serious way and, where necessary, debate genuinely held differences of outlook, philosophy, policy or whatever, and let the public decide on those. I hope all of these measures will move us in this direction. Like others, I want to pay tribute to the staff who are involved in trying to collate all of the opinions on this and work it into a new system for organising the Dáil. I also pay tribute to the new Ceann Comhairle, who has played a very active and genuine role in trying to move this forward.

Before I get into the specific measures proposed, I want to make a general point. There were probably two things that in general terms drove the political and electoral choices that people made in the last election. One was the consequences of the economic crash, namely, austerity and the anger at the injustice and inequality of it, which was reflected in a fairly substantial, arguably historic, change in the balance of power in the Parliament. The other factor, as well as economic and social concerns, was the question of democracy. It was most popularly expressed in the idea of, and the anger directed against, the fact that people could make promises prior to elections and then do something completely different when they got in here.

This has begun to be reflected in a whole series of civil society-led initiatives calling for radical democratic reform, most notably the One Year Initiative, which calls for citizen-led referendums and provision for a certain number of citizens to be able to require the Dáil to hold referenda on issues about which enough people feel strongly. The idea is that people could petition in sufficient numbers for popularly inspired or people-inspired legislation and force us to address certain legislative proposals that would come from the people themselves. That idea of a direct and participatory democracy, which is not just about an election every five years but about an ongoing engagement between the people and the House of representatives, is something that we really must consider.

This leads me to another point about democracy. Here I quote a brilliant pamphlet James Connolly wrote in 1910 which should inform all of our attitudes towards democracy. I will read just a few parts of it. I cannot read it all because it is a brilliant but reasonably lengthy piece. Connolly said:

All hail...to the mob, the incarnation of progress!

In [its] civilising...work the mob had at all times to meet and master the hatred and opposition of kings and nobles; ...there is not in history a record of any movement for abolishing of torture, preventing war, establishing popular suffrage, or shortening the hours of labour led by the hierarchy.

In the course of [its] upward march the mob has transformed and humanised the world. It has abolished religious persecution and imposed toleration upon the bigots of all creeds; it has established the value of human life.

The rest of it, by the way, is brilliant as well. The pamphlet turns the popular - I would say the conventional - conception of politics on its head. It puts it the right way up, that it is the people who drive change and always have, and people elected to this House - all of us - need a bit of humility about that fact. The words "Teachta Dála" mean-----

See this speech in context