Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. I support him today, as I did the last day when he referred to the use of the electoral register to form the citizen section of the constitutional convention. The Minister is correct to be strengthening and deepening Irish democracy.

I had one regret when we were here in February that I did not put down an amendment to extend the provisions of this Bill to Údarás na Gaeltachta but I had no idea that it was intended to abolish those elections. The position then was that Fine Gael was in favour, so was the Labour Party and Fianna Fáil merely wanted to delay them for two years. That is a great pity. As the Minister will be aware, it provoked a walk-out in the other House yesterday. For instance, 44 candidates stood on the previous occasion, seven of whom were women. Under the proposals in the Bill, there would have been 13 women contesting the Údarás na Gaeltachta elections. It would have been a wonderful boost, both for the women themselves and for the language.

The 10,000 signatures proposal on presidential elections brought by Senator Norris would be an asset to our democracy but it got fairly short shrift on Wednesday. We need to consider the Whip system as an obstacle to the democracy of the country. I believe it is based on Daniel O'Connell having the landlord beside the tenant to see how he voted. I ask for a relaxation of the Whip system.