Citizens need voice between elections

'This is a talking shop," says Ryan Meade, programme leader with the People's Conversation. He's unapologetic about this. The idea is that providing those opportunities to talk "will lead to a better quality of action. We're not prejudging what type of action these people might take, but we want to set a positive agenda, a vision people can get behind and promote."

Launched at the Mansion House in Dublin in October by the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, this “talking shop” aspires to answer the following questions: What does it mean to be a citizen of the Republic? Do Irish people have a strong sense of their rights and responsibilities as citizens? What do citizens expect of the State, and what is expected of citizens? How can citizens and communities play a greater role in shaping their future?

The People’s Conversation receives funding from a Scottish charity, the Carnegie Trust, and is an offshoot of the Wheel, an organisation that represents 1,000 NGOs and charities across Ireland. The Wheel is the perfect base for such activity, says Meade, because it represents the voluntary and charity sector, and “two million people in this country are involved in voluntary activity”.

The People’s Conversation will initially involve 12 organisations, from Basic Income Ireland to the reform-oriented organisation 2nd Republic. Each will host three conversations about the role of the State and the role of the citizen, at the end of which, in the run-up to the general election, their ideas will be compiled into a document, “a new vision for active citizenship and empowered citizenship”.

The People’s Conversation gives each of these groups a small grant to meet expenses, but it’s also hoping that other groups will convene and organise independently, “and then we’ll feed [their ideas] into the wider process.”

Meade believes that now is the perfect time for such soul-searching. “It’s 100 years since independence,” he says. “At that time people had an idea of what they understood to be a republic and the role of the citizen in that. After 100 years, and everything that’s happened in that time, that vision has changed, and maybe we don’t have as clear an idea of the role of the citizen.”

Active citizenship

The idea of “active citizenship” has been around for a while. In 2006 Bertie Ahern’s government put its strength behind an active citizenship task force, but it quickly fizzled out. Meade says that some people involved with the task force feel they got the focus wrong. “They put a lot of emphasis on what citizens should do to be active rather than on what structures should be in place and what the State’s responsibility is to foster active citizenship.”

Meade believes that, after years of recession, people are hungry for discussions like this. The day before, he facilitated a “conversation” with the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed. “They focus on issues affecting people who are unemployed, but at their meetings a lot of broader stuff was coming up about citizenship and society in general.”

And this widening of the discussion isn’t restricted to the People’s Conversation. He notes that many other NGOs – he lists three: the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Dóchas and the National Women’s Council – are having similar conversations. “And there’s an ongoing dialogue with the President and his office,” Meade says. “When he launched the second phase of his Ethics Initiative, back in September, he mentioned us as one of the projects feeding into it. Someone from his office came and attended the meeting yesterday to observe.”

A typical “people’s conversation” ideally involves 12 to 18 people and lasts for three hours. “There are no speeches, no papers, just talking and listening to each other,” he says. “You know it’s working when people stay for the whole three hours and people still have stuff to say at the end of it.”

Some discussions have been very heated, “particularly if they’re exercised about water or something else,” says Meade. “I’m usually happier if there’s difference in opinions, because the last thing you want is an exercise in groupthink, but the format we’re aiming for is very respectful.”

Themes are already starting to emerge. “A big thing that comes up in most groups is a disaffection or disenchantment with politics . . . It comes up as a them-and-us thing,” the idea that “politicians are no longer connected with ordinary people, and sometimes it comes up as ‘the structures are all wrong.’ ”

Meade says there needs to be “some way of bringing politicians and people closer together rather than having one section of society buying into politics and another buying out of it”.

Direct democracy

Direct democracy is also a theme, “the idea that citizens need to find a voice between elections, not just cast a vote and come back five years later. There’s a strong feeling that that’s no longer sufficient.” And basic rights, “a basic floor of expectations that citizens can have”. And all sorts of other things are discussed, he says, from the notion of compulsory voting to the role of education in fostering active citizenship.

Are these types of discussions not already happening organically and unprompted on the barricades of the water protests? “This comes up a lot, and a number of people in the conversation groups are involved in the protests, while others are distancing themselves,” Meade says.

“There is a lot of discussion about the role of protest in our society. One person said, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if we had 100,000 people out in the street calling for something to happen rather than calling for something not to happen? Could we harness that activity around a positive agenda?’”

Meade ultimately believes that “the better the quality of the conversation the better the quality of the action”.

Have they reached out to protest movements? “We haven’t reached out directly,” he says. “We set out our programme before [the protests were] a factor. But a group in Cork convened by the Carers Association were ready to man the barricades . . . We would have a slight nervousness about hitching ourselves to a particular issue.”

But he adds, “I say to the people in the groups, ‘Don’t feel you’re being corralled into anything.’ If what is said here makes you go out on the protest then it will have been worthwhile. Our process of distilling [these discussions] into a document is just one strand of the whole thing.”

He and his colleagues are similarly wary of input from politicians, although individual politicians have expressed support. He fears that having them present might distort the conversation. He also notes that people have become wary of leadership in general. Nobody at the meetings “is saying we need to look to this person or that person for leadership”, he says.

“I think people feel the stakes are higher in getting their own voices heard, whereas previously people might have felt there were leaders out there they could look to. So there’s more urgency about finding ways to have a voice between elections and not just count on the people they’ve elected.” peoplesconversation.ie