Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I move:

To insert the following after "or an incumbent to nominate a presidential candidate": "; and

— amend the law to allow a petition signed by a minimum of 35,000 people who are eligible to vote in a presidential election to nominate a presidential candidate.".

Before I start on the topic, I seek a little leeway, given the events that have happened in Saggart over the last number of days, to express my utter horror, condemnation and disgust at the alleged sexual assault of a ten-year-old girl. My heart goes out to her and to her family. It is obviously beyond every family's worst nightmare. From what we know so far, it seems that there is a failure by the State here of a vulnerable girl who, though in State care, ended up in a situation where she could be sexually assaulted in this way. It is utterly horrific.

People are right to be angry about this situation but some people's anger is being abused by those who want to cause violence, those who want to spread division and those who want to spread hate, and last night's violence at Citywest Hotel will do nothing for the victim of sexual assault. The man who allegedly did it has been arrested for it and was not even living in Citywest Hotel at the time. I am sure the people living there were horrified. They were in fear last night. The children living there were in fear about what would happen if the crowd succeeded in breaking through. Instead of division and violence, we need to stand together with the victim, with the family and against the repeated failures of the State.

On this motion, the simplest and very easy part, which, in theory, I think every party in this House agrees with but some parties are not going to do anything about because it does not suit them politically, is that Irish citizens living in the North should be entitled to a vote in presidential elections. That is obvious. It is an opinion that is held by the vast majority of people. It is an easy problem to fix and it should be fixed with a referendum as soon as possible, and we all know the cynical reason that it is not.

The more complex and in a way more interesting area is the question of the nomination process for president, which has obviously come into focus. It is undemocratic. I agree with a lot of the criticisms that are made, such as about why we are discussing this now, but it is overly restrictive. It suits Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are the ones who made the rules. They told their councillors not to nominate anyone other than Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys. However, there is quite a gulf between the rhetoric of Aontú on this issue and the actual proposal. I listened to Peadar Tóibín's speech earlier and it was about "Let the people pick" and stop the political establishment curating the process, but the proposals from Aontú do not let the people pick. They keep the political establishment curating the process. Aontú's proposals just create a slightly lower bar for the curation of the process to ensure that, if these rules had been in place, Maria Steen would have been selected. They reduce, for example, the number of TDs from 20 to 14. The motion also allows for a candidate to be nominated by 110 councillors - that is a new development to say councillors as individuals can nominate - or three councils. I agree with all of those proposals in the sense that they lower the barrier slightly but we should not pretend that this allows the people to pick. Fast-forward seven years and, let us say, there is a highly conservative candidate who gets 13 TDs, and I presume we will have exactly the same discussion where we will be told it is an overly restrictive process.

That is assuming this motion passes, we actually have a referendum and so on. What is proposed by Aontú does not get to the nub of the issue in terms of letting the people pick candidates.

Let us be real, as everyone here must be, in acknowledging we cannot have a system wherein anybody can nominate himself or herself for President. On a practical level, there must be some barrier to standing for President. It is just not feasible to allow thousands of people to stand. It would not be a democratic process, there could not be an informed debate and there is the question of how a ballot paper could have thousands of names. We need some kinds of barriers to entry as a presidential candidate. The question is what those barriers should be. That is really what the discussion is about.

Our amendment puts forward that we need a new direct democratic process by which the people actually get to decide. It would be a process whereby a set number of people can nominate a candidate. We chose 35,000 because it is approximately 1% of the electoral register for presidential elections. A candidate would need signatures from 35,000 people to be nominated without the need for any votes from TDs, Senators or councillors. I hope the parties and Independent Members will support our amendment. It would lead to a real and radical democratisation of the nomination process, which is not provided for in Aontú's motion.

The only objection I have heard is a practical objection as to how our proposal would work. This is a process that works in many other countries. I just spoke briefly to my partner, who was involved in socialist politics in America. On multiple occasions, she collected signatures for ballot initiatives - in effect, referendums - and nominations for candidates. A name, address and contact details had to be provided for each person, which were then checked. That answers the objection as to what is to stop somebody from just listing and signing for 1,000 people from the electoral register. The nominee details are physically checked. In America, this is very common in lots of states, with different states having different requirements. In Florida, 145,000 signatures are required, while in Michigan, the requirement is 12,000. Requirements are different from state to state but the process is very common. There is also something similar in the European Union. Citizens' petition initiatives require 10,000 signatures from Ireland. A process exists in Switzerland. It absolutely can be done.

Calls for people to spoil their vote on Friday are pitched as an anti-establishment campaign. That is what we are meant to think the calls are about. However, it is very revealing to look at where these calls are coming from and who stands to benefit from them. Leading the Spoil the Vote campaign, from his Downton Abbey-style mansion, is multimillionaire businessman Declan Ganley. He said he was going to write "No. 1 - Maria Steen" on his ballot paper. He and Maria Steen have a lot in common. They are filthy-rich, anti-choice Catholic fundamentalists. Anyone who can afford to pay more than €20,000 for a handbag or to live somewhere called "Moyne Park Mansion" is, by definition, not anti-establishment.

See this speech in context