John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if he will be sacked but he admitted that it was an absurd figure. The vote for those who might be interested in such things went 75 to nil against abolition. I am sorry that we cannot have the referendum among the Irish diaspora. They were very taken by the point that this was the only forum in which members of the Irish diaspora, who had been forced through circumstances not of their own choice in many cases to emigrate, had some little say in the halls of Parliament.

Let me make one or two brief points as I am troubled by these matters. I would like the Leader to use the offices of his parliamentary party to ask the Taoiseach and the director and co-director of the referendum campaign, Deputies Bruton and Doherty, to formally retract something which at least one of them admitted is fundamentally inaccurate, namely, the €20 million makey-up figure which is now emblazoned on tens of thousands of posters around the country. Not only is it inaccurate but it contains within it an incredible bit of subversion of democracy. They admit that the direct costs are about €6 million and part of the makey-up costs are the costs of processing citizens' questions. Will citizens stop asking questions of Government, the Civil Service and the bureaucracy if Seanad Éireann ceases to exist? Is it a good thing that an avenue for people to ask questions of those who should be answerable and accountable to them will disappear? I am not so sure that it is.

I would also ask that the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, clarify something he has said three times, once in an Oireachtas committee, once on RTE and once to me personally, namely, that the money that will be saved - it probably is a pretty neat fit for the €6 million figure, not the €20 million figure - is not going to be spent taking children off waiting lists for Crumlin hospital or on employing extra special needs assistants, but will be redeployed within the Leinster House bureaucracy to fund the activities of the new committees.

Parenthetically, instead of the imperfect quasi-democracy that gives us our Senators, these committees will consist of a cohort of people who are entirely appointed by the Taoiseach. This is the same Taoiseach whose bona fides for appointing experts to committees are evident from the fact that he ejected the Dáil's only senior banking and financial consultant, Deputy Mathews, from a committee on which the Deputy's expertise might have been relevant because he disagreed with the Taoiseach on abortion. The Taoiseach also kicked the only Member who has conducted doctoral studies on food safety and food science off the health committee, which has primary responsibility for food safety, because he disagreed with the Taoiseach on whether the Roscommon emergency department should be kept open. It is important that we get clarity from the Leader's party, which has paid for referendum posters that contain a fat inaccuracy.

In passing, I wish to comment on our colleagues from Sinn Féin who are not present today. They have criticised the Seanad as being elitist.