Vol. 297 No. 7
I move:
“That Seanad Éireann:
notes:
- that a majority of members of the Oireachtas have expressed their support for the full restoration of the Oireachtas Library and Reading Room on the ground floor of Leinster House, and its furnishings and full complement of staff;
and calls on:
- the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission to abandon its proposals to convert that space into an additional committee room and events space.”
I second the motion.
This motion speaks for itself but I want to put the background to it on the record. The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has not decided anything on the closure of the Members' reading room. The Committee on Standing Orders and Dáil Reform has received a submission but has not approved it. The submission would mean the existing reading room, which is the shared facility of Senators and Dáil Deputies, would be converted into a fifth committee room. I want to put on the record of this House that the fixed estimated costs for making that conversion involve an outlay of €3.7 million and that the annual extra cost for having it as a committee room would be €1.63 million, meaning that in the first year of operation this would cost more than €5 million.
The proposal is being mooted at the Dáil committee on the basis that the Dáil is going to expand, it needs to be more family-friendly and that somehow, if items such as Taoiseach's Questions and Minister's questions were taken in the reading room below, the Dáil could sit fewer hours. No proposal has been made, for instance, to use Mondays, Fridays or, indeed, to ask for the use of this Chamber on occasions when it is not in use by this House, but this proposal has been put forward.
It has been represented to the Library staff that this proposal is unstoppable, the direction of travel - the phrase that was used - is clear, it will be approved, they say, within the next three weeks, and there is nothing they can do about it. This means that the Library staff in this House will be no longer here at all and they will be in a premises in Merrion Square. There will be no direct face-to-face librarian service, even though the print collection is in the basement of Leinster House 2000.
This will be the only parliament house in western Europe which does not have a Members' reading room and library service, if this goes ahead.
Hear, hear.
Apart from the scandalous cost involved in it, of over €5 million, I have to say that the whole project has been clouded in mystery and almost the subject of deception. The affected members of staff of the Oireachtas, the Library staff, were told that the Members were in favour of this project. As Members in this House will know, I wrote out to all the Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas and asked them where they stood on this issue. I can say that they stood, by a very clear majority, against it. Practically none responded in favour of this proposal. More than 60% of the Members of the Houses who responded indicated formally to me that they supported the maintenance and reinstatement of the room.
I want to say something about the actual project itself. Apart from the expenditure of that amount of money, it has involved the serious mutilation of a protected structure. Members will see, from the photographs that I have circulated, that the existing fittings and furnishings were removed, but what they may not know is that the floorboards were all taken up and they have now been replaced by chipboard on beams. The original floorboards of a protected structure have been taken out. The entire character of the room has been dramatically changed. It looks like a semi-used backroom in a down-at-heel hotel in the middle of nowhere. It no longer looks respectable and it is no longer an inviting space to go to. If this proposal goes ahead, the staff will be no longer available in this House. The only contact between Members of the Oireachtas and the Library staff will be by computer. That is where we are going now.
Let us be clear about this. Leinster House is a shared house between two Houses of the Oireachtas. The Dáil committee has not even agreed to this; it was just confronted with these figures recently. It is a small committee of people, most of whose members, I think, are against it. No committee of the Dáil, however, has the right to say that the Seanad's facilities are going to be abolished in this way, without consulting this House. No effort whatsoever, as far as I know, has ever been made to consult the relevant committees of this House or the Members of this House, or to even canvass the general opinion of Members of this House, as to whether this proposal is acceptable.
I am not here to cause trouble but I have seen the vandalism that has already occurred by the mutilation of that room and the ripping up of the floorboards. It is a breach - and I want to put this on the record - of section 51 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to do this to a preserved structure. If you own a house in Merrion Square, you cannot rip up the floorboards and put down chipboard without consulting the planning authority, but it has happened in this House without our knowledge.
For the purpose of completeness, there is a proposal to open a room in what is called the Duke's Library. I can show Members photographs of what is proposed. It looks like what I would describe as a photo from an IKEA catalogue, with about six or seven armchairs in a room to substitute for the service which is available in the library at the moment. Members are entitled to go in and talk to the librarians, who have given this House incredible, politically-neutral and confidential service for decades now. Members are entitled to look up periodicals, regional papers and the like that have been published, and they have been doing it for years. There is no majority in Dáil Éireann for this proposal, there is no majority in this House for the proposal, and there is no decision by the Oireachtas commission in favour of this proposal. The Library staff have been told by some people on the staff of the Oireachtas that this now cannot be stopped. They have been told to effectively take their medicine on this issue and accept that they are being moved out of this House in favour of this proposal.
I have no hesitation in proposing this motion. I think it has all-party support in this House. It is a scandalous insult to this House that the proposal has been progressed to the point it has to waste €5 million on it for the very dubious reasons that are set out in the documents I have before me, such as that the gender quota will increase to 40% in the next election for candidates. As if that is going to change the sitting hours of the Dáil per se. I do not understand that proposition. It is also asserted that there will be ten more Members and therefore more requirement for speaking time. It is a big joke.
I find what has happened repugnant. I find it really annoying that when I canvassed all the Members of the Oireachtas on this issue, the response of some people was to say that it is going to go ahead anyway, even though no competent body has approved it, even though what they have done already is unlawful, and even though what they have done already is to rob this House of its facility without even a pretence of consultation.
I second the motion.
I agree with the motion that has been tabled before the House. I thank and commend Senator McDowell on bringing the issue to our attention. I think it might have passed us by had it not been highlighted by our colleague. The message that I think will be clear from probably every speaker is that there was no consultation. We were not consulted on this. It is a facility for the Oireachtas for both Houses. I think it says a lot about the Oireachtas if there is not going to be a library facility and a reading room in what we currently have. What type of Parliament do we want? Surely we should be encouraging the use of facilities like that, as opposed to removing access to them. I genuinely feel for the librarians, who have given fantastic service. It is a very sorry way to be treated in terms of the role that they play here and the value that they have.
I am not sure where we go from here and what actions we take out of this motion. I might suggest that it could be a matter to put on the agenda of the Committee on Parliamentary Privileges and Oversight, CPPO, for further discussion. Certainly, to my knowledge it was not discussed at the CPPO, which is where we have all of our discussions around matters concerning this House and decisions of that nature. That certainly needs to be addressed. I completely concur with Senator McDowell's remarks that it is not reasonable, nor is it okay, for one House to make a decision affecting the other House without consultation.
The same would not happen in reverse, nor would it be allowed, and there should be due respect given to both Houses of the Oireachtas. I place on record my support and I am fairly certain all of the Fianna Fáil Senators have given support to this motion. Had it not been for the work of Senator McDowell, many of us would not have been aware as to what had happened. An interesting point was raised around the ripping up of floorboards and if that was compliant with the planning laws. Certainly, it seems as though there might have been a more laissez-faire approach taken to adhering to those things inside Leinster House and there are questions to be answered in that regard. It may seem like a minor thing to those looking in. It may seem as though it is irrelevant but it matters in the Oireachtas that Members are consulted on facilities like this and on decisions taken that affect the Members. Decisions should not be taken for us and on our behalf without us being told about them or being asked for our views. It might be the Library today; what will it be tomorrow and what will happen further down the line? There has to be a healthy respect for one another in these Houses, from Oireachtas staff members to how we run the Houses, and also for the Members who work in this House. The decisions taken today matter. Whenever we all leave this House, there will be new Senators and TDs coming in. It is important we maintain those facilities for future generations as well and that this is an Oireachtas where we can be proud of the facilities offered. It sends a bad or wrong message that we do not value this type of facility. The Library reading room is an important part of the offering in Leinster House and it is widely valued by all Members. Certainly, I have not heard one Member speak in support of the removal of the Library and its staff. I heard the plan was to allow it be an additional committee room, as and when is needed, or an event space. If that is the proposal, that is quite worrying. There is no reason why the Library - a bit like the Seanad Chamber - cannot, on occasion, be used for event purposes. That already happens so there is no need to remove the facilities that are there. It can still be used as an event space. As it stands, we are reasonably tight for committee space but every committee gets its slot, the place works fine, and we are all accommodated. That is not a huge challenge currently and, as I understand it, there are no proposals to add any new committees so I am not sure why the extra room is needed. Some of the rationale for this proposal does not really makes sense to many of us and the reasoning behind it is not properly explained. I will finish on this question. Who is making the decisions and who should be making the decisions? The lack of consultation on this has really irked Members and has got people's backs up for the reasons I have outlined. I commend the motion to the House. I am happy to support it on behalf of the Fianna Fáil group. I thank Senator McDowell for tabling the motion and for giving us an opportunity to have our say and put our views on the record. It is the first time we had an opportunity to say how we felt about this issue of the Library reading room.
Before I call on the next speaker, I welcome Deputy John Lahart to the Gallery along with the board of the social enterprise, Partas. They are most welcome and I thank them for coming to Seanad Éireann today. I hope they enjoy their visit to Leinster House.
I also support the motion. As a former member of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, I was aware of the forum on family friendly and inclusive parliaments and the suggestion that a second Dáil Chamber would be an addition that could also be used as committee space. People have different views on that. From time to time, we could do with additional spaces such as committee space. As a member of the Joint Committee on Health, if you wanted to bring in a Minister in the morning on something urgent, it might have been the case that there would be no spaces until Thursday evening, which may not have suited. I agree with the suggestion that there is a need for additional space. That would possibly make sense and there was a suggestion from this forum. However, the question is where that space should be located and there was no agreement on any proposals regarding the reading room. We all saw the previous Seanad Chamber. I am aware efforts were made by the previous commission to see if that space could be retained for an extra committee room, for functions, or even as a second Dáil Chamber. That would be a preferable option but would be something that would have to be agreed between the museum and the commission itself. It would be preferable. The Oireachtas Library was, and still is, a fine room. The structure and facade is still there but the changes that have been made have removed the furniture and fittings that added so much and made the room as it was. I will not pretend I was a huge user of the facility. Perhaps that is part of the reason behind this. Again, other Members will have to speak for themselves. Perhaps it was not being used sufficiently. That is not to say it would not have been used in the future, that it should not be retained, or that a decision was made to change the structure or remove the furniture. Regarding some of the rationale or reasons given, including as is stated on page 6 of the report presented to the commission, that general longer sitting times might have a discouraging effect on persons who would otherwise consider a career in politics. I doubt it. Social media may have more of an impact on people considering a career in politics, as would the abuse a politician might get, public meetings, and the different things people might have as a reason for not entering politics. Most people accept that politics, certainly for those in, or wishing to get into the Dáil, is not a nine-to-five job. Whoever goes into politics thinking it is a nine-to-five job, be it in the council or the Dáil, will get a rude awakening. The long hours people may have will not happen every week and there are summer recesses and things like that so I do not see this as being a rationale for removing a reading room or for requiring additional chambers. Late nights from time to time also add to the politics. It adds something nice to politics or its theatre, which perhaps only practising politicians will appreciate. Sometimes, there is nothing wrong with that. I do not see why we should be saying we should be finishing at 6 o'clock and resuming the next day. Those rural Deputies and Senators, who come up to Dublin on a Tuesday and stay on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, do not go home bar an emergency. Those Members are here anyway and late nights are not an issue for them. They would have issues with votable business or late sittings on a Thursday but I do not think it would be a deterrent to those who are up here anyway. I just do not buy that.
Regarding speaking time, and as a former Whip in the Dáil, the biggest issue at the moment is trying to find people to speak on Second State on certain Bills. Perhaps this is because politics has come down to the soundbite, the posts on TikTok, and small short posts on Instagram. Talking to more established or long-serving politicians, they would agree that the Second Stage debates, the amount of time spent on those and the number of speakers, is less than it was in the past. There has to be a reason behind the fact that there is not the level of speaking as there might have been in the past. Again, I do not agree that this is an issue. Very few people suggested to me that they could not get in for a debate on Second Stage during my time as a Whip. Even now, there are generous time allocations in the main. There may be the odd occasion on which extra time could be provided by agreement so that is not an issue. I do not agree with the premise that late evenings would be a turn-off for people entering politics. Politics is a great profession. It attracts people who are interested in public service, community, their party, or in particular causes which they have come in on the back of. They want to bring the knowledge, experience, and passion they have to the floor of the Seanad, the Dáil, or indeed, the council chambers as well.
That would not turn people off. It is a privilege to be in these Houses and if it is required on occasion that we sit until 10 p.m., 10.30 p.m. or 11 p.m., so be it. That does not need to be a no-no. As I said, it does not happen every night. I disagree with that premise.
Additional space may be needed. There is increasing pressure on committee rooms from time to time, but other space can be found. Options in Agriculture House are being looked at for office space for new TDs and staff. Perhaps some other area could be looked at for a committee room. However, removing a facility that is, as Senator McDowell said, present in every parliament in the world, is still a beautiful structure and was a beautiful building as regards its fit-out should only be done by agreement of both Houses. It is a shared facility. That agreement has not been forthcoming from the commission or from individual Members. I am not sure who agreed to the changes that have already been made or where they came from. I do not think agreement for them came from the commission, so how did it happen? Who was informed that floorboards would be ripped up? I do not remember it. Who was informed that furniture would be removed tomorrow, next week or next month? I am not sure where that information was relayed either.
I commend my colleague and friend, Senator Michael McDowell, on driving this initiative. Let us be careful in what we are doing. I know we will have the full support of this House, if this motion is approved. The motion calls on the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission to abandon its proposals to convert the space into additional committee rooms and event spaces. That is to be commended. I fully commend the library and research unit. Its staff are professional librarians. They are not bookkeepers, book attendants or library attendants. They are qualified librarians and researchers who draw from their team here and in other parts of the facility to advise parliamentarians, including Senators and Deputies, in their work in drafting primary legislation. As Senator McDowell said, we get independent, impartial and confidential advice. It is not shared with anyone else, except in consultation with us. It is a critical service and it is especially important for the Independent benches of these Houses because we do not have the same resources as the parties. It is more important to Independent Senators and TDs who do not have a huge bank of resources to support them in independently validating legislation that is put before these Houses, which we have to put through the five Stages of a Bill.
This is a protected structure. I took the time to look at a number of architectural conservation reports on the restoration of this building. At all times, I was reminded that it is a protected structure. The designation of a protected structure is made by the planning authorities, in this case Dublin City Council. Dublin City Council is the planning authority for this part of Dublin and for all of Dublin. A protected structure is a structure of special interest for any one of the following reasons - architectural, historical, archeological, artistic, cultural, scientific, social or technical reasons. It can be because of any one of those criteria. The elected members designated this building a protected structure at some point. It cannot be removed from the record of protected structures without special provisions and I do not think it would ever happen in this case. Therefore, it is a reserved function, first and foremost, of the planning authority of Dublin local authority which has the power to carry out enforcement and ensure that there are no breaches of the law. There is no exemption for development in the planning and development Act other than in special circumstances. A declaration would have to be made by a conservation architect employed by Dublin City Council and the declaration would have to be validated by the council. A range of issues need to be dealt with.
I had the opportunity to meet former Members at a lunch hosted by the Oireachtas last Friday. Many of them raised the matter with me and were appalled, including Members from all sides of the House who use the library facility from time to time to read the newspaper or whatever. They were shocked. They could not believe it was happening. It is important to put out a call to those who do not know that all regional, provincial and local newspapers are filed here every week. TDs and Senators from all over the country go there, especially on Thursdays, but all week, to look at those newspapers. The provincial, local or county newspapers or radio stations that are watching today need to be careful as I am not sure that facility - while it might be a draw, to sit down, spread those newspapers out in front of us and read them - will continue. I am deeply concerned about that.
We need to look at many issues. More importantly, a room is a room and for those watching tonight, this room we are in, the great Seanad Chamber, is a reflection of the library below us in the building. The library and reading room, the research space, is below us. It has more or less the same footprint. It has the most beautiful stucco ceiling, architecture and fireplaces. The furniture that was in it has been dispersed. I can say where the furniture is, but I cannot say where the lamps, light standards, brass fittings and lovely glazed globes are. Surely someone knows and someone must be accountable. This building is owned by the Office of Public Works. We have a Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works. I intend to contact him tomorrow to ask him what he will do about it. He is a custodian of this building. He is legally responsible for it. We also have a Minister for heritage in the Custom House. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is in the Custom House. It has close working relationships with NGOs; heritage people, groups and advocates; and Dublin City Council. Perhaps we should ask Dublin City Council to investigate the alleged abuses and damage to this protected structure. I am minded to do it. I will reflect on this debate in the next few days. The relevant enforcement authorities need to hold the establishment to account. Who made the decision? It now appears that no one made it. Who is driving the decision to take all the furniture out, disperse the books and effectively push the people out of here?
We in this House value the direct contact with librarians and researchers. The Cathaoirleach and every Member of the House will know that traditionally, when we opened the door of the library, there were four desks in each corner. We could speak one-to-one with one of the excellent library research team and explain we were having difficulty navigating a Bill and wanted more background and detail on how best practice is applied in other jurisdictions. The staff would put us at ease, tease out some of the issues, help clarify our thought processes, give us a timeline within which they would come back with a preliminary report and tell us we could ask for further information. It is invaluable. I simply could not do my work in this House without the support of that brilliant, dedicated team of people. We are talking about a dedicated group of people and the conservation of an architectural protected structure, a beautiful room that was set up with lovely furniture, some of which is now scattered around rooms. I cannot say it is all scattered around rooms. I do not know whether it is all in the building. We need to know that. We have to hold people to account. We have to reclaim, hold onto, guard and protect the powers, functions and facilities that allow us to do our job as parliamentarians. We should do nothing less and should not apologise for making the case.
I say to the commission, Cathaoirleach, Ceann Comhairle and the chief executive of these Houses to pull together, work together and consult with us. We should not have to come to this Chamber tonight to get some focus and attention on the issues that are important to this House. Let us support one another. Let us protect our heritage, parliamentary democracy, parliamentary engagement and the facilities that allow us to do the job. From tonight, the public will know. No doubt the media will carry this story in the coming days. I hope they too engage and write to TDs, Senators and Ministers to ask what is going on. My appeal is to the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works that owns the building, the Minister for heritage, and Dublin City Council planning enforcement. I hope they will wake up, investigate and ask the hard questions. Let us not give up.
This is the beginning of a campaign that will not cease and should not stop until the furniture is put back in that room, we are guaranteed the services we are used to and we can get on with doing the work we are elected to do, which is to defend democracy and bring new laws into this land but on the basis that we are well informed and have the background information necessary to do the work.
I thank and congratulate Senator Michael McDowell for bringing forward this issue. It is his vigilance that has brought it to our attention, and it is typical of him that he would be concerned about such an issue. We are grateful to him for this. He has done an important service tonight. This cannot go under the radar.
I happen to have the privilege of working alongside in this House Mary O'Connor, who comes from one of the most illustrious literary families in this country, as you would know, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, being from Kerry. She is from the famous Keane family of Kerry. She said to me earlier today: "Surely you are going up to speak in the Chamber about taking away the library." She said it would be a shocking thing that in a house of parliament, a national parliament, we would be without a library on the campus. She said it would be unthinkable. That is a view from somebody on the staff there. I would say it is a widely shared view among the staff. It is an interesting thing to bring to bear on the debate and it comes from somebody who has the credentials to speak on matters like this.
Aesthetically, the room, as it was, was beautiful. It was a beautifully done room, beautifully decorated, very relaxing and very pleasant. It was one of the nicest rooms in the buildings and in any building I know. What is proposed is shocking. Senator McDowell described it better than I can, but it has been essentially desecrated, at the risk of bringing in religious terminology. It has been made into a shambles of a setup, compared with what it was. It was a very beautiful room. We have a picture of the room in its original condition. It is just so beautiful and should not, as a protected structure and otherwise, be touched.
Personally, I really enjoyed using the library and research facility. I found the library staff extraordinarily pleasant to visit and extraordinarily helpful. You could go into the room and chat and they would help you. I would then often follow that up with a phone call. They would prepare pieces for important issues, do research, etc., and were all highly professional and qualified. They are not going away, in a sense, but if they are off campus, off centre, not in the building, that personal access that used to be will diminish, and that is a great pity. As Senator Chambers said, it is an unthinkable concept that one would have a national parliament without a reading room, research facilities or such staff available.
Senator McDowell made a very good point in his excellent presentation of the issue because he has clearly thought it through and researched it. He drew our attention to the horrendous cost. I think he said it was something in the region of €570,000. I am not sure of the figures but they are on the record. Apart from the cost, however, Senator McDowell makes the practical point that we could use this Chamber when it would not be in normal use for committees or whatever else. In fact, it has been used and is used occasionally for other reasons. There is nothing to prevent that. There is nothing to prevent using a number of other buildings around the place and showing a bit of practicality and adaptation to facilitate that.
I have great regard for the great depth of thought of my colleague, Senator Kyne, but I am not totally in agreement with him. While it is a lovely concept and we enjoy the idea of the late-night theatre, there may be a basis and there is a case for having a family-friendly Parliament, but having a family-friendly Parliament does not dictate removing the reading room downstairs. We should do something about the hours. Things can be done about that. As the proposer of the motion said earlier, we can look at the Mondays and the Fridays and look at earlier starts. There are many options there. We could look at the use of a number of rooms etc. All those options are there to achieve the family-friendly dimension. There is a case for that as we are to have wider gender equality and a more inclusive Parliament. I get the point made by Senator Kyne that there is something lovely in the theatre of late-night sittings and the cut and thrust that goes with all that, and occasionally that takes place, but I do think we have to look at the family-friendly parliament concept and advance it. It is not implicit in that, however, that the room would be removed.
There is something almost slightly barbaric about this. Not to fully compare it to this, but it is like when the hordes came to destroy ancient Greece and Rome. It is wrong to remove things that are aesthetically beautiful and it would be wrong to remove this facility. I have not discussed this with any of the people who advanced the concept, but I assume that one of the arguments is that the room does not get used that much. That is not, however, a reason not to have it. We should encourage more use of it and try to have Standing Orders and a procedural situation here that would dictate people researching more and using it more. If there is deficit or a lack of use, the solution to that is not the room's removal; it is to increase its use. I did not get to use it that often - none of us gets to do these things as often as we would like - but the number of times I did, I used to find it really relaxing to go in and sit there and just unwind. It is a very therapeutic exercise in its own right, if it is only to look at a newspaper or whatever. Then, as Senator Boyhan said, we have access to the professional people in there. Senator McDowell made a point earlier about the regional press. It is important we would have the regional press readily available to all of us. It is important that the local newspapers of Cavan and Kerry, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, and such places are right here and that people can, in discussing any legislation, see its impacts locally and see what is important to people at the local level.
All in all, I strongly support the motion on a personal level, but it is also the view of my group, well articulated by our main spokesman on the issue here, Senator Kyne, that we support strongly the motion proposed by Senator McDowell. I support the arguments he made and the subsequent arguments of Senators Boyhan and Kyne. Essentially, what we are saying is that an aesthetically beautiful room and protected structure, as a physical entity, should not be interfered with but should be left intact. Then the living reality within it of people going in to relax and read is very important and very valuable. The third thing is the professional access, that is, the access to researchers and librarians within it. It is hardly the best signal to send out about our Parliament that we would be removing reading rooms. It might feed into some people's pretty cynical narrative about the place, and we do not want to do that.
I commend the work Senator McDowell has done on this issue. As a newcomer to these Houses, I was shocked to learn that the library in its current form was to be dispensed with. I have always had access to a library as an academic. What is a library?
A library is the most powerful engine for arriving at the truth, with data, evidence, facts and nuance. As parliamentarians, we are synthesisers of culture, the economy and public policy. To do that without an evidence base is to operate blindly. In the history of the Republic, we have had periods of intellectual and ethical failure, the most recent being during the years of the Celtic tiger and the subsequent catastrophic crash, the impact and reverberations from which are still being experienced and endured by our people. As a consequence, according to the Edelman trust barometer, politicians and journalists are the least trusted professionals in Irish society. In order to restore and build on that trust, we have to come forward with evidence-based policies and legislation. Where does one find that evidence? In the library.
I will also speak to what Senators McDowell and Boyhan said about the library staff. Librarians are not the cataloguers of information. They are senior civil servants and public servants with postgraduate qualifications who are experts in the gatekeeping and management of information. This House is obsessed with misinformation, disinformation and the threats and challenges posed by artificial intelligence. Here we have a cohort of professionals in the Houses whose expertise resides in that area of methodological and systematic approaches to telling what is misinformation or disinformation and having evidence-based, factual approaches to what we do.
What happens in the libraries is often subversive. I have had my own experience as a researcher, exploring what constitutes best practice, for example, in the international military with regard to the deployment of female personnel and benchmarking that against our own armed forces. We find that the library allows us to make a contribution to knowledge that transforms that organisation for the better.
Senator McDowell talked about the taking up of the floorboards. That is an act of wanton vandalism, but to remove the library as a resource for parliamentarians is an act of sabotage. It is an act of collective self-harm if we, as TDs and Senators, allow this to take place by being passive and, by omission, allowing it to proceed. It should not happen. It should be stopped. We would be the only national assembly in Europe, as Senator McDowell pointed out, that would not have a library service. That would make us a laughing stock of Europe and the world. I did a brief search using the library resources and found that in every national parliament beyond Europe, in Istanbul, Ankara, Australia and Washington, these are the primary national library services of those states and republics. If we were to allow ours to just be disbanded, it would not only be an act of collective self-harm, but it would also be extremely disrespectful to our colleagues who work there and are part of the fabric of this community.
I support Senator McDowell's motion. I thank him for the work he has done on this. I reiterate how shocked I was to learn that this invaluable, critical support was to be taken away. We are entering a challenging period with regard to misinformation and disinformation. It is vital, to avoid the ethical and intellectual failures of the past, that everything we do is evidence-based. One will only find that with the Socratic method and Aristotelian method, through dialogue with our library staff. If they are off-site or if some penny-pinching, cost-cutting mandarin puts them into an online format, that vital, human engagement will not take place. We cannot rely on algorithms and search engines to provide the existential moral agency that we require as a Parliament. I fully endorse the motion. This is a pressing issue, and not just for us in this House, because the decisions we make here are of critical importance to this Republic. It is in everybody's interests that we resist and fully restore the reading room and Library and Research Service to these Houses.
The arguments against are non-existent, so I will not delay the House any further. I thank all the Members who have spoken in support of the motion for their kind words for the proposers of this motion. People say that the direction of travel is one way. One Member of the other House who spoke to me this evening said it was a fait accompli and there was no stopping it. Then I inquired and found out that no competent body has made this decision. The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has not made this decision. The committee to which this presentation, which is so incriminating, was made, has not made a decision on it. Add to that the simple arithmetic that my good parliamentary assistant, Samantha Long, asked every Member of the Oireachtas where they stood on this issue, and the great majority said they were against this step. In those circumstances, it is time not merely to cry halt but to tell the people who have misjudged the sense of the Members of each House of the Oireachtas that they must reverse what they have done and that this House should be treated with some elementary respect. Its Members should not find themselves deprived of an in-house, face-to-face library and Library and Research Service, for all the reasons that have been mentioned, due to the decision of a tiny few unaccountable people.
When is it proposed to sit again?
Tomorrow at 10.30 a.m.
