Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State specifically referenced the citizens' assemblies and I was going to reference them. That is a great model of participative and deliberative democracy but we need to see that transformed into action. We need to have some sort of process whereby recommendations of citizens' assemblies are put in place. We ask these 99 citizens to give of their time and they generally produce outstanding recommendations but we need to have a way of making sure those do not sit on the shelf. Those other traditional avenues include planning, which has been cited. We need to rebuild people's trust in a planning system which is seen as not fit for purpose. We do not want to legislate for a situation where we lessen people's voices within that structure.

I would like to float the following idea with the Minister of State. In Denmark they have a festival of democracy, which is a lovely idea. They simply have a festival that is much like Electric Picnic but without the bands. It might suit people of my age category with nice early nights and quiet nights in. It is something that would map quite well to the Irish context and something we should look at.

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