Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

We believe there is no constitutional problem with the Bill. We have sought legal advice from constitutional lawyers on it and we use language in the Bill that is fully sympathetic to the language of the Constitution. The words were chosen to meet the needs of the Constitution. The Bill seeks that a new Dáil select and appoint Ministers. This is a key point. The Constitution demands what is necessary. It states a successor needs to be selected from the new Dáil and appointed to the position of Minister. That is exactly what the Bill also states.

It is notable that in the ten years I have spent in the Dáil, on most occasions that Governments opposed certain Bills they did so under the banner of the Constitution. When there is something good in a Bill that is hard to argue against, such as the democratic premise and the necessity for democracy in this Bill, very seldom do we see Government parties rush headlong into that particular objective because it does not look good for members of the Green Party, Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael to say they oppose the premise that Ministers should be fully elected.

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That is a hard thing to argue on the streets of one's home town, on one's local radio station or even on the national airwaves. Therefore, when a Government is faced with the choice as to whether to go headlong into what is actually a positive or healthy thing in a Bill, it often lifts the banner of the Constitution. It is just funny on this occasion because on most occasions, the Government will say it has received advice from the Attorney General that the Bill is not constitutional. Then there is a back-and-forth in the Chamber, with the Opposition asking to see the advice and Government saying it never shows the advice. On this occasion, however, the Government has not even gone as far as to say the Bill is unconstitutional or to say the advice of the Attorney General is that it is unconstitutional. All the Government is saying is that it is a little iffy, that it may or may not be constitutional. That is not a good enough response to set back a Bill from being discussed on the next Stage. I will read out the words of the Bill itself:

On or before the specified date, the Taoiseach shall, with the previous approval of Dáil Éireann, nominate for appointment by the President the successors in office of those Ministers who have ceased to be members of a House of the Oireachtas.

The Bill is designed in sympathy with the needs of the Constitution.

I am surprised by the words of Deputy Nash on this. He stated in his contribution - I am paraphrasing but I think I am doing justice to what he said - that he does not see that a Minister who has been democratically elected is preferable. That is a shocking statement. A democratic mandate is not just preferable but sacrosanct. It is without question necessary. Going back to Lincoln - "government of the people, by the people, for the people" - or any of the great democrats who have gone before us, they have built the idea of mandate at the centre of executive government. Deputy Nash also stated that the Taoiseach could come into difficulty in a future Dáil if the Dáil were not to play ball with the Taoiseach and not ratify his or her preferred ministerial appointees. That is like saying a future Dáil is likely to believe that a Minister without a democratic mandate is preferable to a Minister with a democratic mandate, which, again, is very hard to see because any Opposition party preventing the swapping out of a Minister with no mandate would find that a very difficult sell anywhere in the country. It would definitely be a challenge to a Taoiseach in the future to face such a situation. It would be a headache. However, perhaps that headache would be enough to give that Taoiseach a kick in the backside to get Government formation done in a timely fashion. Perhaps we would not see 150 days slide by.

There was a process on the most recent occasion of Government formation whereby what are now the Government parties were meeting each other once a week. We in Aontú were involved in that Government formation. We contacted Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. It was five or six weeks before they responded. It should be remembered that we have a pandemic washing across the world. We had a Government without a mandate, a Dáil unable to legislate, freshly minted Deputies unable to ask questions of Ministers of State and Ministers of State not able to come in to answer questions. We had Ministers simply saying it was none of his or her business and to wait until the next Minister came along. It is an unsatisfactory situation when the Legislature cannot legislate. I refer to the idea that we would see that democratic deficit, that crisis that existed just a few months ago, as something we just move on from and do not seek to tackle. Moreover, when an Opposition political party puts up a reasonable response and is open to future developments in respect of a Bill to improve it and make it suitable to the other political parties, that opportunity is not grasped.

The Minister mentioned the Seanad and said two Seanadóirí can become Ministers. In fairness, though, do we not agree that the Seanad needs reform? I, for one, believe the Seanad is undemocratic and needs to have a stronger democratic mandate in the future. There is probably a room full of reports on Seanad reform somewhere in the Houses of the Oireachtas. Nothing is happening about that, unfortunately. Just because the Seanad is undemocratic and there is a process that allows for an appointee of a Taoiseach to become a Minister does not necessarily mean we should start from that position legislatively to try to fix this situation.

As Deputy Gannon rightly said, there was a radical urgency and a hunger among the people during the most recent general election campaign. It is interesting that when I first floated this Bill, it got support from right across the political spectrum. People who would not necessarily share my politics at all came out strongly in support of the idea that democracy is sacrosanct and that Ministers should be democratically elected. There is an urgency, and there was an urgency in the process of Government formation that did not happen. Democracy delayed is democracy denied. How long does it take for the will of the people to be stopped before it is undemocratic? It seems to me that the process we have now gives no end date to that difficulty. There is a real and practical necessity for this place to be able to legislate in future. If we close our eyes to this now, I guarantee that within the next 20 years, there will be a moment in time when the hands of the Dáil will be tied, unable to legislate. There has to be accountability. Of course, there are Ministers who retire and, as such, do not go through the test of the election, but in the main the test of the election is a serious one. How many Deputies sit here without the idea of the test of the election constantly in the back of their head? Everybody has it in the back of their head when they work here.

By voting against this Bill, parties are voting against the implementation in a timely fashion of the will of the people. By voting against the Bill, they are voting against the premise that Ministers should have a democratic mandate. By voting against the Bill, they are highlighting the separation of this bubble from the urgency of the real world. I ask the Minister of State to reconsider and have a discussion among Cabinet. I am not saying by any means that the Bill is perfect. We are the smallest political party in the Chamber. We do not have the resources of other political parties. We certainly do not have the resources of the Government drafters. I ask the Government to work with us on this, let the Bill proceed to Committee Stage, bring forward the Government's amendments and let us make sure we do not have such a democratic crisis again.

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