Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I was thinking about what I said earlier about how sometimes we have to have moments of silence to collect our thoughts and not get engaged in conversation that is hostile, because I do not know if it serves our people. I listened to representatives of the Irish people today. Many people spoke, which I thought was good in the end. It is great to hear new people and it was good to hear a diverse range. We are representatives of the people. I heard Deputy Michael McNamara say earlier that he is a republican. I believe in that because I am a republican too. I believe in our democratic, constitutional republic. This House is important in that regard because this house was set up by a couple, with a woman running the place as much as anyone else, at a time of enlightenment when republican ideals came to fruition. The first tune that I learned when learning to play the fiddle, or in scratching at a fiddle, was "Rights of Man", which is a hornpipe. After that sold in New York, a month later it was for sale on Grafton Street and the queue went up the street. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was written partly in Merrion Square. It must have been written in this house, where Lord Edward FitzGerald was raised with the republican ideals that the people are sovereign. We have no king or queen and no kingmakers in this process. We are all republicans. I believe in our courts as the protection of the rights written into the Constitution. It is not just us. We have a protection against what we may do in our court system. I believe that the role of the media is important. Our media is under real stress at present. I was talking to somebody earlier on about the pay of people in the media at present, which is very low. It is important, because how can we have a discussion if it is just in the enclosed, self-contained, self-reinforcing views of social media, and we do not have independent assessment of the options?

I believe in our public service. I have worked at local government level, as an NGO campaigner, as a Minister and as a Deputy. For all our failings, of which there are many, I believe in the public service as an extension of this democratic constitutional republic that we have. I believe that we are at an interesting stage in the world, not just here. I am old enough to remember the late 1970s to the 2008 crash. The suggestion that the market will deliver for our people is no longer a story that is credible, not only because of the inequities that it brings with regard to gross income inequality or wealth inequality, or the gross ecological destruction that it brings in its wake, but also because it is a "me" story. It is a story that looking after "me" will rise all other boats and I do not think that people believe that so much any more, if they are homeless and cannot pay their way. We need a new story. We need a "we" story which captures people's confidence and imagination, the way it did in that moment of enlightenment at the end of the 18th century.

When we look across the Irish Sea, while I do not want to dismiss the Houses of Parliament, we see the British Government seeming to dismantle the BBC and engaging in all sorts of changes such as getting rid of a Chancellor, while a poor civil servant collapsed yesterday. Following a discussion with a secretary, he was up all night working. I worry about what is going on in the world. I worry that in the search for a new "we" story, people are looking for false "we" stories. In America, it is "we" against the elite, which has seen the Administration through, and in Britain, it was "we" against Europe, as if Europe was the source of all that was wrong. We have to avoid divisive "we" stories which are not true to what we need to do next.

We need to move from the market doing everything to us as a Parliament really raising our game and the State doing much more. That is why I stand with confidence for the public service. When we of the left, and we are of the left, believe that this is the way to go, we will not get there by dissing everyone and saying that we are the worst. We are not the worst. We are a remarkably good country, even with all the things that are going wrong and need to change.

Coming with that republican perspective is the fact that the people are sovereign. I listened with respect to different people in this House. I respect the mandate of Sinn Féin and, as Deputy McDonald says, I respect the people who voted for Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin will have to be part of and listened to in whatever we do, in whatever form it is, whether in opposition or in government. We respect Sinn Féin and always have, for all the history that we could go back over. We also respect Fianna Fáil. Deputy Micheál Martin knows that. We worked together in a way that was collaborative and tough but we worked in the national interest in a way that was true, in my mind. I say the same to Fine Gael and to every other grouping. Deputy Róisín Shortall and the Social Democrats have worked well together with us over the last four or five years. We have similar views. We have also worked well with other groups and Independents. That is what we will try to bring to this new Dáil. For our mandate, this idea of us working collectively is needed. If we are talking about change, the changes to address climate targets which we, the scientists and the young people who could not have been clearer in this house all say we need to reach, are beyond compare. There has never been as big a leap or such a fundamental change in how we manage our land, run our transport system, economy and how we get our energy. It is everything. I believe that one of the smartest lines in the election was that the Greens are worried about the end of the world and other people are worried about the end of the month.

We must make this leap in a way that ensures that people can reach the end of the month without being broke, worried, homeless or fearful regarding where the rent will come from. Such work was done in the Thirty-second Dáil. We worked collectively on climate issues to agree that there must be a just transition and social progress as we make the change. We should not underestimate the scale of that change and we should not do it in a divisive way. It is wrong to blame it all on suckler farmers who, God help us, are the least rewarded, least intensive and least everything else in terms of what we need to change. They are the people who are closest to our land and best at looking after it. We will not blame it all on them. The media did not serve the Green Party well in terms of how they portrayed this story. The only things they said were that we were going to kill every cow and that we are about a carbon tax and nothing else, as if that is the only change we need to make.

In the coming weeks, the Green Party hopes to work with various groupings in the House to tease out what that change is. It is connected to change on housing and our health system. Going green will be good for our mental and physical health. I hope every Member will engage in that process. We will all have to do so one way or another, whether on committees, in government or in opposition. However, we need to dial things down because if we do not, it will not work and we will fall prey to the failings we have seen in other western democracies. The idea of western democratic constitutional republics is under threat. We have the opportunity as a Parliament to rise above and hold the flame that we, as representatives of the people, will look after the people and treat everyone with respect. We need to go back to that core republican ideal.

All Members will be aware that we are very lucky to be in the hands of the Ceann Comhairle. That was evidenced by his election earlier today. He should take note of some of the suggestions that have been made. Deputy Sherlock stated that it may be possible to progress some non-contentious committee work when the Dáil resumes. We probably need to do so regarding Europe and Brexit. We need to be informed about some of the difficult decisions in that regard. Committees should begin to meet when the Dáil resumes, even if it takes a few weeks thereafter to form a Government. The work is done at committees. This is an honourable House. Members should hold on to the sense of excitement and pride they feel when they walk through the gates of Leinster House on the first day of a new Dáil. We live in a democratic constitutional republic and what we do in committees is important, honourable and, at this time, critical.

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