Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

I had intended to speak on housing, but I will defer that until 4 November because of two things. First, I congratulate the Garda Commissioner, Justin Kelly, for turning up at Citywest last night and supporting his people on the ground. What we saw was a despicable act of thuggery, the likes of which I thought we would never see in this country again. People were firing rockets at members of the Garda, setting Garda vehicles on fire, etc.

In speaking about that, though, I must also speak about what takes place in this House and the other House. Comments made, for whatever purpose, are frequently misused and interpreted on social media to drive the sort of thing we saw last night. Today, we heard about the spoil the vote campaign. We heard a democrat in this House speaking about spoiling your vote and writing whatever you want on the bottom of the ballot paper, which is the American style of things. Anybody who has been at an election count will tell you nobody is going to read what is written on the bottom of the ballot paper. It either has a one, two or three marked on it or it has nothing. They will all be thrown into the same pile of rubbish and nothing will be achieved by it.

People like me were accused of not supporting a candidate. I gave Declan Ganley my assurance that I would support him, because he asked me in plenty of time. He chose not to run, and that is his problem. To say we would not support people, though, is a factual lie. He had to admit on Virgin Media and Newstalk that in fact he had an undertaking from me. Now, for democrats to come in here and advocate for people to spoil their votes is, for me, an affront to the democracy I live in. Everyone in this House knows how difficult it is to go out on the hustings and get votes. To be advocating that we would spoil votes is, for me, anti-democratic and totally and utterly irresponsible.