Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Civil War came to an end through a very simple communication between W.T. Cosgrave and Éamon de Valera, who incidentally did not want the Civil War and was trying to deal with the problems on the republican side at that stage, through Parliament itself. W.T. Cosgrave asked Éamon de Valera to accept two conditions in bringing the Civil War to an end, first the acceptance of the Army and, second, that a majority vote of Dáil Éireann would represent the sovereign wish of the people. I agree with Senator Quinn on that. I have always argued that Dáil Éireann is the absolute epicentre of the Irish constitutional experience. The 1919 declaration was based through the establishment of the Dáil - a decision made by the 78 Sinn Féin Members at that time to secede from Westminster and establish the Dáil.

Our parliamentary democracy is crucial to what we are about. We have a written Constitution and it is the Taoiseach's absolute objective to protect that Constitution. Any fundamental change of how we do politics here requires changing the Constitution. The Government has already put constitutional referendums to the people and more will follow. We are intent on completing our reform programme. The very first decision was taken on parliamentary inquiries. It was taken in the first six months.