Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understood this was a motion of confidence in the Ceann Comhairle, yet almost everything I have heard in this debate has been about ancillary issues that are not relevant to confidence or otherwise. This is why this discussion feels genuinely insincere. I do not believe those who profess a lack of confidence actually have a lack of confidence. What this feels like much more is an attempt to drag on this issue, raise it over and over again and stop this House from doing the business it wants and needs to do. All of us who talk to the people in our constituencies who voted for us hear the same refrain: get back to work, do the business of the people, stop haranguing each other and get on with it. That is what we are trying to do but the opposite is the case given what is happening. Even in this debate, there has been jeering and haranguing from the other side of the House. It is not acceptable. The behaviour we saw here on 22 January and last week is not okay. There is nothing to justify it. It does not matter how much you disagree with what was done. This is a democratic Chamber that operates according to democratic norms. When the majority votes, you must accept that as a democracy and move on, even if you are unhappy with that. As the last speaker said, in the course of the more than 20 hours of meetings we had on this matter at meetings of the Dáil reform committee, we were essentially threatened by Members who told us that all hell would break loose and that we would see resistance like we had never seen before. That is the old Sinn Féin way. We do not do that here. This is a democratic Chamber elected by the people of Ireland, and what we want to do is get on with the work of those people, which urgently needs to be done. Let us do that. Let us recognise that no party has a veto on what this Chamber does, that no group can shout down the Chair and that no group can prevent this Government or this Chamber from doing its business. Let us get on with the work of the people.

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