Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

He or she might even turn up here for more than an odd hour a year. The Taoiseach is an employee of the people and nobody will accept a person's judgment which is based on one hour's visit per year. It would be unacceptable for the closure of a hospital, school or business. That is what the Government is asking us to do. It is shamelessly neglecting the good work done by the House, the work on all of the Bills and amendments and the views of the people who are not represented in the Dáil.

Please remember that this House exists because of a meeting between Arthur Griffith and the provost of Trinity College, Andrew Jameson, and Lord Middleton during the Treaty negotiations, a topic covered in Donal O'Sullivan's book The Irish Free State and Its Senate. We are trying to continue that tradition which has served this country well. I gave the quotes to the Minister of State when he attended here on another day. It has served the country well to represent those viewpoints. In particular, one ought to think about what is happening in Northern Ireland because the Good Friday Agreement is not being observed by people who feel that the Seanad has become a cold house for minority viewpoints and minority people whom Arthur Griffith sought to protect, and that this House has always protected. We should join up the dots to discover what is happening.

It has been stated - but the argument has been turned around - that the abolition of the House is necessary because we want to reform the Dáil. That is absolute nonsense. No proposal to reform the Dáil has ever come before this House. In fact, we probably would approve same. I commend the proposal made by the former Taoiseach, Mr. John Bruton, that the Ceann Comhairle should be selected by a secret ballot in the other House. There are no proposals here so the Government cannot say that it cannot reform the Dáil because the Seanad has not been abolished.

May I give a picture that reflects the reality in this country? Stephen Collins, in his newspaper article published in The Irish Times last Saturday, stated:

During the lull in debate during the week one Minister - with long experience in office - mused about the unwillingness of successive governments to reform the operation of the Dáil to give TDs a meaningful say in the construction of legislation.

The following is important. The article continues:

His thesis was that the problem stems from the higher echelons of the civil service who control the legislative process. "Legislation may be instigated by Ministers but the detail only emerges after consideration by civil servants, the Attorney General's office and parliamentary draftsmen. Once that process is complete and the Government signs off on a Bill nobody wants TDs messing around with its provisions," he said. That effectively makes TDs redundant.

We have fought against that in this House by bringing forward Bills and tabling hundreds of amendments, as Senator Quinn has shown. I fear, when I see Ministers come in here, that they are controlled by their advisers sitting behind them. As journalist Stephen Collins has said, that reflects the reality.