Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree in principle with the extension of votes to include those living abroad and in Northern Ireland. However, I accept the argument put forward that it would be impossible to give the same weight to that vote. We are known to be a country with a diaspora of 70 million people. I accept that they are not all passport-holders but it would be very easy to have more voters from abroad than Irish-based voters. There is a strong case to be made for the weighting of that vote, that there would be a different weighting for the vote of a person living abroad than for a voter living in Ireland. This should be easy enough to achieve because we successfully transact much of our financial affairs online so there should be a secure way, therefore, to enable online registration of voters. Senator Cáit Keane referred to a system that is worthy of consideration.

The proposal that 13 seats would be maintained for councillors is valid. Direct election by councillors is a valid system but I believe it is widely misunderstood. It is often commented by the public that the system is not democratic. It is democratic but in a different format. Some councillors who cast their vote may have been elected to a council by anything from 1,000 to 4,000 votes, depending on the local constituency. Therefore, if such councillors have the pulse of the people in their area and if they are then using their judgment to give a vote to a particular Senator, I think that carries a certain punch. The proposed breakdown is good. However, I am disappointed at the retention of the Taoiseach's nominees for constitutional reasons because it is viewed with some cynicism.

I believe the House was retained because the people believe in a second opinion and they did not trust the Government. They did not want to see a power grab. They were very wise in deciding that they wanted to have a second opinion available. If we are to think of the Irish public as a nation and are to consider our position within Europe then, as has been said by other speakers, we need a very distinct role for scrutiny of EU legislation and scrutiny of ministerial regulations that do not go to a vote in the House. For example, we are dealing in Galway with a proposal for a bypass. This proposal has come up time and again but it meets with all these restrictions. I am not saying I fully agree with the bypass because what we are being offered at the moment is a through-pass, not a bypass. The proposal has been met with restrictions around NHAs and SACs that enjoy incredibly high protection in Europe, in fact more protection than the citizen. That is not a joke. Those regulations and directives should have been scrutinised adequately in a House of the Oireachtas. When it goes to the floor at any public meeting the Oireachtas Members blame Europe when in fact we should be blaming ourselves because we are not scrutinising in advance. Nor are using all the mechanisms to inform the people in advance in order to get their views.

Equally, yesterday I had a motion before the House that Montessori teachers currently enjoy restricted recognition to teach in special schools at primary level. The Minister has committed to removing that restriction so that those teachers will never again be allowed to teach in special schools at primary level-----