Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Somewhere along the line it was decided that talking was better, jaw-jaw, not war-war. Early democracy began in ancient Greece. The Minister, Deputy Deenihan, is a great student of Greek, and remembers much more of it than I. It was the Greeks who perfected representative democracy with their assemblies, and that was continued into ancient Rome with its senate. Although we criticise the British for much, British parliamentary democracy is the foundation on which most representative democracies and parliaments have been based ever since, and we should give them credit for that. That was continued and adapted in countries such as the USA, which had its own very interesting experiment in democracy and is now probably the biggest democracy in the world.
Ireland's experience with parliamentary democracy is conflicted because we were never in a position to talk just among ourselves. Over our heads was constantly a sword of Damocles, or a big club, and it is still there in the form of the country with the biggest nuclear missiles. Democracy is very fragile, and must survive in an atmosphere where people will resort to other means. We have seen this in our country up to very recently. Where there is no parliamentary democracy there is a vacuum, and chaos follows. That is why it is so important to us to protect and preserve our democracy. Our experience was shadowed. Despite all the wonderful work of "Grattan's Parliament" by Henry Flood, William Molyneux and Jonathan Swift, when it suited the British to put an end to it with the Act of Union 1800, it was kaput. Bagairt, bréaga agus breab was what we learned at school. Britain closed the Parliament down by means of threats, lies and bribes. That is how our Parliament voted to dissolve itself.
Only Daniel O'Connell was able to fill the ensuing vacuum, and thank God he did.

It is hard to imagine what would have happened in this country for that 50 year period when he was virtually the voice of Ireland. Then there was Parnell, Redmond and all those great parliamentarians who fought a great fight, once again, under circumstances where they could only go so far because Gladstone agreed to bring in the 1886 Home Rule Act which would be very important had it gone through at the time and might have obviated some of the many problems that occurred in the North later. His own party rebelled because it did not suit certain sectors. Once again, Ireland's interests, even though represented properly and democratically in parliament were overthrown in the vested interests of what the British saw was good for Britain. Right through until modern times we have had that.

Parliaments do not always guarantee democracy. We have seen where parliaments have been used to subvert democracy. I got into trouble last week for mentioning a certain gentleman from Germany. The Nazi party was democratically elected, admittedly it did not have a majority. It had something of the order of 30% of the poll and got into government legitimately but was not in five minutes when it started to subvert that parliament and eventually set fire to the parliamentary building, the Reichstag, and moved on. We must always remember that we are privileged to be in parliament. We in this House had to fight a very hard battle to preserve this particular Parliament.