Michael D. Higgins

“ All that radical individualism with its privileged view of professions and its side of the mouth politics with regard to benefit and privilege is what must be rejected.
This has a practical expression in Europe. If we create here a radical inclusive republic we will place it in a social Europe which accepts the interdependency of peoples rather than the aspirations of the elite property owning classes and individual countries. We would then be able to be a region in the global sense that offered guarantees about labour, security and peace. ”

“ Parliamentary democracy is incredibly important. For many years, people in Ireland struggled to have their own parliament and struggled to participate in it. But there is more to political power than voting once every four or five years; there is the exercise of power in every dimension of life. If a real republic had been founded, we should have been spending decades extending and deepening political power. To the credit of the Labour Party, that has been its intention and aspiration, however achieved, since it was founded in 1912. ”

“ People wonder why poverty has to reproduce itself in the same family from one generation to another or from one area to another and wonder why there is a difference between the quality of schools in one place and the quality of those in another. God did not make it like that. Nature did not make it like that. The people in the so-called Irish Republic made it like that and they maintained it like that. I remember in County Clare when one could point to the two or three people in the Labour Party because they lived in a galvanised house. ”

“ It is very important to act in the public space with whatever, as Connolly would put it, gifts of hand or brain one has, and to deliver it for one's fellow citizens. I was conscious in 1969, however, of the great failure of a country that then called itself a republic. I believe no real republic has been created in Ireland. The failure has been of three kinds. There has been a failure in making political power republican, a failure in making republican any kind of administrative power and a failure with regard to communicative power. ”

“ These are real reforms but they are empty and missing from the discourse. I have the impression that even though the Labour Party has produced 140 proposals which I strongly support, including in particular its proposals on citizenship, I find, generally, there is an element of fright in what those elected are suggesting as if they are offering themselves for reform, as if that was the major problem. ”

“ I will give my opinion on where I think this is going, having spent my lifetime, not just in elected politics but also in academic politics and the social sciences, another area of great failure. I say this as a founding member of the Irish Sociological Association and the Irish Political Science Association. One need only watch television and listen to radio to know what is happening internationally. A significant price is already being paid for the broken connection between the aspirations of the people of this planet and those who take decisions on their behalf. ”

“ The citizen deficit in Europe is its most serious failure. That is why those who want to defend their banks, be they French Presidents or German Chancellors, are defending their francs rather than the possibilities of Europe. They have put us in such danger as regards the European project.
There was a great opportunity missed to build a real inclusive republic in Ireland which would have reformed the relationship of Cabinet to the Dáil structures, that would have had a democratic, local government, that would have allowed opportunities for participation. ”

“ If one wanted to effect radical change, one would break the connection between the monopoly enjoyed by the Government of the day and Parliament. One would allow, for example, the establishment of a committee system with the right to initiate and change legislation. If one wanted to go further as in the Scandinavian model, it would be to allow committees to have limited budgetary powers, thus ensuring people who came into politics would have a career in politics separate from being on the Front Bench if in opposition or being in Cabinet if in government. ”

“ Those of us in favour of a version of Ireland where no one will fall below the floor must say it not only to ourselves but also to Europe. In addition, a highly participative inclusive republic was the one in the vision of those who made the case for Irish independence at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. ”

“ At the same time, very serious people are suggesting that parliament is what is irrational and that markets are rational when in fact all of the evidence shows it is the flow of international market capital which is completely unaccountable and is irrational. ”

“ It was only when the equality legislation was followed through with the Equality Authority and Combat Poverty Agency that it was possible to administer the benefit that had been won politically. That is the meaning of administrative power and is why we lost the Combat Poverty Agency and the Equality Agency to the right and had all the cuts. ”

“ There is a communicative power where there is no connection between the vulnerability, the struggle and the agony of ordinary people at this time and the description of what is news, of what is happening in the world which they inhabit. ”

“ Across Europe and the western world, people will say that they must be cynical about presenting what the viewing or listening public will accept as the news of the day. This kind of artificial connection between what is moral and what is ethical is incredibly dangerous. It is widening an excluded underclass in Ireland. It is creating people who will move quickly to conflict because there are no mediating institutions in Europe. ”

“ As a political scientist I find it quite extraordinary that so much attention has focused on changing the electoral system and so little on the structure of Cabinet power. There is no constitutional basis for the hegemony of the Department of Finance ”

“ People from backgrounds such as mine did not go to university, did not qualify in other universities and certainly did not teach in universities. I left that world to participate in public life which was part of the tradition of my family. I wish people from all walks of life took part in politics and in public life. ”

“ In one country after another across Africa and Asia, as people overthrow dictatorships they place their trust first in representative institutions and then, if they are let down, they are into a straight conflict with what are regarded as the forces of law and order. ”

“ In one part of the world after another, we have the assumption that rational parliaments will be able to solve global problems such as the food crisis, the environmental crisis, the energy crisis or whatever. ”

“ A terrible price would be paid for this so therefore one must put one's faith in representative democracy and having done so one wants it to work. If one wants it to work one must be open to making the type of institutional changes that I mean. How could this be carried? There is need for a discourse in which we are able to speak about the vulnerabilities that matter and where there is not a huge gulf between what we say in here and what is happening on the street. ”

“ One would make secure children from the time of birth to very old people who wonder whether they will have to leave their homes to die, as they frequently do within 18 months of being sent to a nursing home. One would make it possible that children share the same class and for that period of their lives at least would be able to be equal with regard to education. In addition to this, people would have decent housing.
This was the agenda when Seán O'Casey wrote about disparity. James Connolly took the Irish Citizen Army with its egalitarian agenda and placed it side by side with nationalism. ”

“ With regard to the Bill the question the people ask, which the new Government must address, is why. The new Government must speak endlessly about jobs. This is the point for people who lose their jobs or are told they must be made unemployed. ”

“ However, I believe an enormously high price has been paid for a kind of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism in Irish culture. Therefore, I believe we need to draw one conclusion. We need not suggest that that which has failed us should or can be repaired. ”

“ There is not one jot of evidence since the crash in the 1920s in the United States, as both Professor Samuels senior and junior have stated, that the markets are rational. There is strong evidence for the speculative consequences of markets. ”