An overnight breakthrough in the long-running row over Dáil speaking time has seen Government and Opposition parties unite around a plan to offset planned increases in speaking time for Michael Lowry by agreeing an annual three months of “political silence” during which all political parties will “stop talking and start listening”.
Under the plan, politicians will invite members of the public into the Dáil chamber to “tell their stories” to sitting TDs and Ministers for the three months beginning April 1st and ending June 30th every year. Sittings of the Dáil during this “annual period of listening” will be confined to sessions where ordinary citizens – chosen at random – will be invited to address Irish politicians on the challenges and issues facing their own lives.
Under the scheme, polling company IPSOS-MRBI will be commissioned to select Irish citizens living in Ireland at random to “give politicians snapshots of their own lives”, with the Dáil set to listen carefully to stories outlining the real-world impact of housing, health, migration, crime, education, and tax and welfare policies.
Speaking to Gript last night, Fianna Fáil TD Joe O’Kennedy said that the plan was something that the public have wanted for a long time: “We’re great at talking in this place, but really bad at listening. That’s something we can all agree on. And frankly we all agreed that the rows over the last few weeks were a bit embarrassing. Irish people want to hear less from their politicians, and they want us to listen more”.
It is understood that all parties in the Dáil have agreed to the plan, other than People before Profit Solidarity, with a Labour source saying that “getting Paul Murphy to shut up long enough that we could tell him the plan has proved impossible so far”.
It is understood that key to the plan has been the support of Fine Gael backbenchers, for whom the “three months of silence” idea “came naturally”.
“For some of these fellas, not talking is the normal way of things anyway”, one Minister said. “The average Fine Gael backbencher gets elected and says not one single word for five years as it is, so you could really say they were the inspiration behind the whole scheme”.
Sinn Fein are understood to have agreed on two grounds, both believing that listening to the public’s concerns will put pressure on the Government – “it will be a three month drumbeat of public discontent, and that suits us”, said one source – and on the grounds that one unexplored way to improve Sinn Fein’s poll ratings might be for the public “to get a break from Mary Lou’s voice”.
Meanwhile, Michael Lowry, whose initiative for more speaking time has been widely attributed to be the primary cause of the breakdown in Dáil relations over the last few months, is understood to have reluctantly agreed to the new “listening” initiative, in return for concessions from the Government. It is understood that these related to a guaranteed number of speaking slots for members of the public hailing from his native North Tipperary, and the presence of armed guards to arrest any member of the public who mentions the Moriarty Tribunal.