David Norris (Independent)

I thank Senator Coffey for sharing time with me and I welcome the Minister to the House. It is very appropriate he should be here as he was chair of the committee and I sat at the first meeting. I do not agree with my colleague, Senator O'Toole, as I do not think anything very much will be done. The Minister will recollect that the first item on the agenda, this scoping nonsense, was an attack on university seats. The Minister was open about that and he changed it slightly. This is always what happens and it is complete and utter rubbish. Nobody in this House actually believes it. Perhaps it will happen, but it will not happen because people here believe it, because nobody does and that is what they will say privately.

I will not vote for this motion because of the inclusion of the councillors. This is what makes it a rotten borough really. It is highly dangerous and is totally undemocratic. That does not mean that I do not hold my colleagues in high regard as I hold them in very high regard just as in the same way I support population control. I do not think anybody should have more than two children but as for my friends who have five children, they cannot be wished away. I do not wish these people away but I wish to God they had never been procreated and the method by which they were procreated is obscene in the extreme.

All sides of this House put forward the idea and it was beginning to be implemented. A special committee of Seanad Éireann was set up to look into the situation of the renditions at Shannon Airport. This was scuppered because local councillors down in County Clare put the squeeze on the Government parties and the committee was abolished. This shows a distortion of the power through local parish pump politics and that is the main reason I object to the motion.

The only thing good about the university seats is the method of election. We are the only democratic bit in the whole bloody place. There is an electorate of 50,000 in our constituency and 100,000 or so in Senator O'Toole's constituency. We all refer to these things as ours; it is a constituency in which I stand. We have real constituencies. I do not think it is a good idea to multiply the numbers by one thousand in order to give the public the impression that there is some kind of democracy here. Unlike Senator O'Toole, I would be in favour of giving more power to Seanad Éireann. Why not? It is absolute nonsense that we are spancilled like babies and we are not allowed to spend money. Why not? How many times have we put down proposals here in this House and we have been ruled out of order because it would create a charge on the Exchequer? That is absolute insulting nonsense.