David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy McGinley, who is welcome, but it is a bit disrespectful that we have had a conveyor belt of Ministers in a debate such as this and a switch over of Ministers when a Senator is on his or her feet. I say that in the context of having a debate on electoral reform.

A Senator, who is not in the House, spoke about simplistic slogans. I do not think we have had any simplistic slogans from any of the contributors so far. Until now, all the contributions have been very thoughtful, constructive and productive. Senators are quite rightly focused not only on what is proposed here but on the more substantial reforms which many of us in this House and outside it believe are necessary. The same Senator said we needed more substantial debate to deal with the wider issues. However, we are always putting off the time for that more substantial debate.

I am not in favour of this legislation and I will not support because I will not support window dressing. We have a golden opportunity to properly reform governance structures in this State. The Minister would have received real support from the Opposition and people outside the House if he had gone for the kind of reforms people want, namely, having political institutions fit-for-purpose and for 21st century Ireland which deal with the real issues affecting people and the real issues which brought our economy to a collapse in terms of the lack of regulation of banks and of other areas, which have not been touched.

All we are seeing here is the deck chairs being rearranged. It is all reduction, subtraction, cutting numbers, reducing the number of Senators, abolishing the Seanad altogether, if that is what the people decide, reducing the number of Deputies, reducing the number of councils and councillors and the measures in regard to the Údarás na Gaeltachta boards and elections. If one wants to talk about simplistic slogans, in simplistic terms, cutting is not reform, nor is abolishing. All we have from this Minister and this Government is cutting and abolishing with no real, meaningful and substantial reform. I will not support a Bill which does that.

What happened in this State over the past number of years was not because of a lack of oversight, accountability or transparency but because bad decisions were made by previous Governments.