Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Anybody who has an interest in politics or who has engaged in politics anywhere in the world will have found yesterday a particularly disturbing day, observing what is happening in the United States and in the United Kingdom, which we would all regard as being too great democratic institutions. On one side of the Atlantic, proceedings are being undertaken to potentially impeach a President, the charge being that he has asked a foreign power to investigate a political rival. In the United Kingdom we have the Supreme Court ruling that the Prime Minister broke the law in suspending Parliament. In those two countries it seems that politics is in a very dangerous and disturbing place, where any amount of middle ground discourse is almost impossible. Previously, there seemed to be an ability for people to find common ground in the centre of two opposites but now Brexit has become a religion. What Trump is trying to achieve in the United States has a similar type of religious zeal to it.Considering that these two great countries influence so much of what is good in democracy, I worry when I see what is happening. While we have been rightly critical of our own political system and institutions for so long, I am thankful that we seem to have been doing reasonably well recently, especially facing Brexit on 31 October. A dark turn was taken a number of weeks ago, however, when Members of these Houses were engaged in whipping up sentiment at public meetings in certain parts of the country using half-truths, mistruths and very poisonous language to try to get cheap votes, cheap rounds of applause and cheap support on the back of particularly vulnerable people.

I spent time as a Minister of State under the previous Government. The reason I have changed my view on the very existence of this House was because of how everybody here at the time and since has come together with one voice to speak on the issue of direct provision. What happened in Oughterard was a disgrace on the political side. We have an opportunity in this House to stand together and show a different side of Irish politics. I encourage the Leader to facilitate this discussion and ask the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, to come to the House to discuss the matter again. I acknowledge he has been here on numerous occasions to do so but it is incumbent on us to show a different side of Irish politics and the type of leadership needed rather than opting for the debased politics we see in the United Kingdom and America. The people of Oughterard have been let down terribly by the type of rhetoric used. We have chance to step into the space as a collective and show a little more leadership than was shown in that instance.