Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If we continue to see this extreme escalation in the rhetoric deployed in debating every issue, the change to our political culture will be permanent and deeply destructive.

It is extremely sad that two parties which claimed to the electorate that they are centre left have been full participants in Sinn Féin's cynical strategy of escalating rhetoric and disruption. They cannot even bring themselves to admit that mob behaviour on the part of Deputies is unacceptable. This is very stark when compared with past practice, and how the Labour Party in particular understood the difference between democratic opposition and destructive opposition.

Last week, a Sinn Féin spokesman said on Virgin Media that Leaders' Questions was set up at the foundation of the State to hold the Government to account. Leaders' Question were, of course, introduced not in 1919 or 1922 but as recently as 2001. The Labour Party opposed the introduction of Leaders' Questions because it felt that the alternative of a free-for-all on the Order of Business was better for the Opposition. The party also questioned the then Ceann Comhairle's rulings. It strongly opposed the changes but understood that its response should be proportionate. The Government of the day went with the introduction of Leaders' Questions following a two-hour debate.

The contrast with how the Labour Party and the Social Democrats have now co-operated as junior partners in Sinn Féin's strategy of aggression and disruption is striking. As well as the disruption of Dáil business, the extreme nature of many of the denunciations of Government are not harmless. On a near daily basis, there are attacks calling us complicit in genocide, destroyers of democracy and warmongers determined to send Irish young people to die in European wars. This type of extreme rhetoric and the mob disruption of parliamentary business must not be normalised.

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