Ask the Audience

''You put it to the people. The new government should put to a referendum the question of making any further payments from the citizens to the bank creditors. This would give the new government a clear democratic mandate with which to negotiate. There is no democrat in Europe who would oppose the will of the people and it would get straight to the point where the political economy bulldozes the financial economy. It would also give the Government huge authority on the biggest issue facing us all''.-David McWilliams

It seems so simple yet it has been the elephant in the room throughout this current election campaign. Almost every single broadcaster, journalist and politcal presenter has asked the same question but rarely has it been engaged with in such a straightforward manner as David McWilliams has in the week just past. ''Why should the Irish people pay for debts that they have not incurred?'' Typically it has been Vincent Browne that has consistently posed that question, in a number of different ways, to those who are the perspective new administrators of the republic. And largely it has been the same stock answers from all. ''The wheels are in motion, the previous administrations has signed up to an IMF/EU bail out and everyone must take the pain that that commitment will bring although we will do our best to soften the blow''.

Yet McWilliam's suggestion is the most blindingly obvious. Lets ask the people and thus enfranchise the people in a process which they have had no say in. Voting in a new political elite, who have no clue how to solve the fiscal nightmare facing the country, solves nothing. It sides steps the biggest issue facing the country. McWilliam's idea is to face the issue head on and get the people to invoke the crisis measure article 27 of the Irish constitution and allow the people a say in their future that IS NOT going to be given by ticking the box for Deputy Paddy Bogger TD in Westmeath south central who is promising to ''get jobs back to this region, so I am''. Article 27 allows this provision for consulting the people in times where a crisis of such magnitude requires it.

''Yes, article 27 of the Constitution governs the circumstances where a decision which is of “such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained”. Article 27 has never been used for this purpose but there is provision in the Constitution for a referendum on something which is simply so important that the people should be able to vote on it.''

The party that offers this alternative, in the most steadfast terms, should be given the mandate to exceute it. Surely in this moment of reckoning for the country the Irish people deserve to have a real voice in the future of their country. So much damage has been done in their name, and without their consent, that anything less than McWilliam's proposed ''popular plebiscite'' is nothing more than further treachery.

(read David McWillia's proposal at http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2011/02/16/before-we-sell-the-country-we-should-ask-the-people )