Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I suggest to the Minister that the fundamental flaw in his argument is that we have within the Seanad three Members and within the Dáil four, five or six Members who have not just walked away from their parties but have been thrown out of their parties for not following party policy.

Leaving that aside for a moment, I as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, the Minister as a member of the Labour Party and Fine Gael people as members of the their party have the benefit of the financial resources given to the party and which are used to provide a press office, secretarial backup, research or whatever. The money is spent for the benefit of each individual Member.

However, the Members to whom I have referred are deprived of that. They do not have those financial resources even though they have been democratically elected. They have a mandate from their electorate to represent them, but the State has decided through this and previous legislation not to equip them with the resources that enable them to function pari passu with every other Member of the Seanad or Dáil. We are disadvantaging a group of people who through no fault of theirs find themselves expelled from their parliamentary parties. I believe there is a significant rights issue attached to that and I ask the Minister to reflect on it. Perhaps we can revisit it on Committee Stage.