Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach and thank him for his graciousness. We all came to the Seanad after 2008 to try to help this country to get back from the dreadful situation it faced. The Leader has implemented many reforms, inviting Nobel prize winners, the Orange Order, all the Irish MEPs, people from the United Nations and a European Commissioner. There has been reform and I hope the Taoiseach will appreciate and acknowledge this, as he too is a reformer. We have proposed 550 amendments - this is the hard slog that does not feature in newspapers. Some Ministers are willing to take them; some junior Ministers are not. I do not know if it is that they are afraid they will run the wrath of both the senior civil servants and the Minister when they go back to their Department. Where Ministers are willing to engage, however, we have done most useful work.

Parliament in Ireland needs to be strengthened. It has a great tradition. Burke, Grattan, Butt, Parnell, O'Connell and Redmond were never Ministers but they were great parliamentarians. Parliament has been downgraded in the Irish system. The Executive is too powerful and so is the permanent Civil Service vis-à-vis the Executive. We need more Parliament. The ideas in this House are extremely good. There was the statement by JFK, in which the President said he felt that Leinster House did not inspire the brightest ideas. In my two years in this House I have found it does inspire the brightest ideas. As Keynes said, in the end ideas are more powerful than vested interests. We have not taken on the vested interests. I have introduced Bills to deal with banking but there are the bankers, builders, accountants who prepared accounts for firms that proved to be fictitious, and auditors. We need much more accountability in Irish society and that is why the Taoiseach needs this House to assist him in that vital reform.

We must also look at what was termed "elitism" during the campaign. As the Taoiseach knows, 70% of school-leavers go on to third level and among the under 35 age-group about half the population has done so. The 1% posters that were around during the referendum campaign, which were not the Taoiseach's, were completely inaccurate. The two university constituencies we inherited have played a most valuable role. In my case, a Senator who was both a predecessor and a friend, Trevor West, had an ability to relate to people in Northern Ireland which was absolutely crucial. I have tried to follow in those footsteps. Some 96% of Presbyterians on the island do not live in this jurisdiction; nor do approximately 66% of members of the Church of Ireland. It was vital for us to keep open the Northern Ireland links. These were threatened during the referendum campaign, as the Taoiseach knows, and would have been a serious loss had this happened.

I can bring to the House the wisdom - or the lack of it - of 64 academic departments. We need that. I see all sorts of legislation on health insurance, on buses----