Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with every word that Senator McDowell has said.

It is no wonder people have such little respect for politicians when we show such little respect for ourselves. We are the citizens' assembly. We are the persons who have been given a mandate to tease through all sorts of issues, difficult and less difficult.

One of the most serious issues of our time, one of the most difficult and neuralgic social issues - although at least the Irish people have been given an opportunity to speak on it at various times, unlike those in other countries - is now to be put to a randomly chosen group of persons. The deficiencies in that process have been eloquently described by Senator McDowell. It is also reasonable to suspect that this is really about giving an appearance of public legitimacy to the demand for some kind of initiative. When one hears people such as the Minister of State, Deputy Regina Doherty, already speculating about the outcome of the deliberations and looking forward to the eventual legislative and constitutional initiatives that will follow, that gives the game away. The cat is out of the bag. It is a put-up job. It is about pretending there is some kind of public demand for something for which there may or may not be a public demand, which should at least be discussed here and nowhere else before being put to the people.

The Minister of State, Deputy English, stated that the previous convention model worked well. He was not well briefed. If there were to be an examination as to how persons came to be on the convention and the number of former and present party hacks who were on it, I believe it would show there were a couple who found themselves on the convention, which is, to say the least, mathematically surprising. Indeed, some who were involved in the organisation of that convention and its activities would be embarrassed. I believe there were persons on the inside who asked awkward questions and it caused a certain measure of embarrassment, although the issue never really took off in the public mind.

I would like to know whether we will be entitled to know the precise history of how each person in the assembly gets to be on it. If, as Senator McDowell advises us, there will be all sorts of situations in which people, when contacted, simply refuse to participate, how long will it be before the organisers start to ask for suggestions? Is that not what will happen? There will be this self-selecting and mutually recommending activity going on. Will we be allowed to find out? Will be allowed to have a tracker on how each and every person who ends up on this assembly actually gets on it?

It should not come to this. Whatever one's views on the issues that are being discussed, we should have more respect for ourselves, as the Oireachtas, and we should not support the motion today for that reason.