Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One does not destroy it in one fell swoop. The history books show us that those who subverted democracy did so in an insidious way by inches. All of a sudden, one woke up in the morning to find one's parliament was gone.

For our ancestors in the cave, there was no democracy. The biggest caveman with the biggest club became the tribal leader and everyone else did what he said. To a certain extent, this approach still obtains in undemocratic countries, except it is no longer a club that he wields, but an army of tanks and guns. It was a primitive way of organising society. Somewhere along the line, wiser heads decided that there had to be a better way. In ancient Greece, democracy first found the light of day. The word "democracy" comes from two Greek words, "dêmos" and "kratos", meaning "rule of the people". The Athenians were the first to formulate society on the will of the people when they formed their city states. The Greek work for a city state was "polis", from which we get the word "politician". Everyone had a say. In fact, there was too much of a say, because Athens needed to consult almost its entire population to make any decision before it trimmed the process down.

The Athenians began to hone and perfect a form of democracy. They even used a plebiscite, a crude type of referendum. For example, if a piece of broken pottery - this was called an ostraka - with a man's name on it was put into a bowl and a sufficient number of people followed suit, the man would be ostracised, in that he had to leave the city state for ten years. This is where the word "ostracised" comes from. I am giving a Greek lesson. The Athenians perfected their democracy and it worked. Athens went on to become one of the wealthiest states in the world.

The Romans picked up on this. Although they had kings at one point, they quickly turfed them out and put in place the senatus populesque romanum, the senate and people of Rome. The tribunes represented the people and the members of the senate, while a privileged class, had a democratic semblance. They made sure that no dictator could come to the fore. As we know, they dealt with the great Julius Caesar in a certain way.