New constitution and new confidence needed
Issued : Monday 7 February, 2011
Labour candidate, Ann Phelan, has welcomed her party's plans for political reform, including plans to draw up an entirely new constitution and to make appointments to public bodies need agreement by the Dáil.
"The one thing that is common to everyone I meet on the canvass, is that they are really angry about the cronyism of the last 13 years of Fianna Fáil," she said.
"One area that is crying out for reform and it is something that makes people really angry is appointments to state boards and agencies," she said, adding it is estimated that Fianna Fail has appointed thousands people to state boards, some with no qualification at all other than being a friend of a politician.
"Public confidence in politics and in our system of government is at an all-time low," she continued. "The Labour Party knows that the economy is the first problem we would have to tackle in government, but the next priority must be to reform our institutions and restore public confidence in our democratic system."
She stressed her party's record on political reform, such as imposing spending limits for elections, the Freedom of Information Act and the Ethics in Public Office Act.
"Labour is determined to end the system whereby appointments to state boards are used as a form of political patronage and for rewarding friends and political insiders," she concluded.
