Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Introducing the Bill, the Taoiseach stated that we had too many politicians in Ireland. To address this, he proposes to cut the number of politicians by one third - more than 700 Deputies, councillors and Senators. One of the five countries with similar populations to which he compared us was Finland. Finland has an elected politician for every 550 people whereas Ireland has one elected politician for every 2,476 people. In both cases, I am counting the total number of local and national politicians. After the Taoiseach's cuts, Ireland will have one elected politician for every 4,144 people and rising, given the fact that our population is increasing year on year. Ireland will have one eighth of the elected politicians of Finland. It is a nonsense to suggest that Ireland has too many politicians compared with countries such as Finland.

Norway was another of the five countries mentioned by the Taoiseach. It has 169 MPs for a population that is slightly larger than ours and has 12,000 councillors, more than 400 local councils and county councils - in reality, regional assemblies - for its 19 regions. Norway has more than ten times Ireland's number of elected politicians.

I could make similar points about the other countries that the Taoiseach mentioned - Denmark, Slovakia and Croatia. These and other countries have levels of representation at local and regional level that Ireland does not, both in terms of the number of representatives and self-governing powers. Ireland is a most centralised democracy, yet the Taoiseach is proposing with his cuts at local and national level to move even more power to the centre. With so few elected politicians in Ireland, they will be stretched to the limit in their duties to connect with voters. This will make our political system less representative and less efficient, not more.

Ireland is erroneously compared with large countries when some commentators argue that Ireland has too many politicians. This assertion is equally false. For example, the UK, France, Germany and Italy have levels of government that Ireland does not and could not have, including directly elected regional assemblies and provincial parliaments, as in the case of Italy. Neither is Ireland over-represented at national level regardless of whether we are compared with countries that have two houses of parliament or one.

At the Constitutional Convention this month, it was pointed out by political scientist Professor David Farrell that, following empirical studies comparing countries with similar population sizes, Ireland was just about right. A widely accepted formula in political science places the optimum size of a lower house as the cube root of its population. According to the 2011 census, the cube root of Ireland's population is 166. We have exactly the rightly number of Deputies. This formula has been empirically tested.

Interestingly, the convention was polled on whether the number of Deputies should be changed. The majority of its members - citizens and Oireachtas Members - believed that it should not be changed. In the event that it was changed, 48% favoured having a number of Deputies greater than 159. They wanted to keep within the existing constitutional range.

The cuts to Deputy numbers will move us in the wrong direction, as will the proposed abolition of the Seanad and the cuts to councils. After the next election, we will have one Deputy for every 29,000 plus people compared with Finland's one for every 27,180. We have the same number of Deputies as we had when we had 1.2 million fewer people. On the other hand, the number of unelected advisers, spin doctors and speech writers has grown exponentially since then. Power has not only been moved to the centre and into the hands of the Executive thanks to this Government's so-called reforms, but it has also been put further into the hands of unelected advisers and spin doctors, many of whom earn more than twice a Senator's salary with no accountability whatsoever.

It is populist nonsense for the Taoiseach to claim that Ireland has too many politicians. He is anti-politics and anti-democratic when making that assertion and is contributing to the ongoing denigration of politics, which is good for none of us and is not good at all for our democracy.

The Taoiseach also stated that of the ten reports on Seanad reform published since 1938, none had been implemented. This is untrue. I do not know where he is getting his figures. The 2004 Seanad reform report, with which the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, is familiar, given his involvement in drawing it up, referred to 11 other reports since 1928. The 2004 report would have made 12 in total.

The assertion that the reports have not been implemented is not borne out by the facts. I refer the House to a letter published in The Irish Times recently. It reminded me of this debate. Mr. Joe Stynes wrote:

The figure 12 is derived from the 2004 report ... which lists 11 previous reports and itself forms the twelfth. Of the 11 earlier reports, those of 1928, 1936, 1947, and 1953 were in fact largely implemented, while those of 1937 and 1959 made almost no recommendations because the committee members disagreed ... The 1967 and 1996 reports were reviews of the entire Constitution [and also made recommendations on the Dáil that were not implemented] ... The only report which is both specific to the Seanad and unimplemented was the Seanad's own 2004 report.

This factual position is borne out by a book about the Seanad written by its former Clerk, Mr. John McGowan Smith. He went through the details of a number of the implemented reports. Amendments were made to Articles 31 to 33, inclusive, of the pre-1937 Constitution in 1928 following a report of a committee of both Houses, including recommendations on the Senate. Powers to delay legislation were introduced at that time.

In 1937 the new Seanad was introduced. There was a report by the joint committee on the Seanad panel elections in 1947 and its recommendations were put into effect in the Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Act 1947, with further modifications made in the Acts of 1954 and 1972. These form the basis of the electoral system to the Seanad. Those were two key assertions made by the Taoiseach, both incorrect.

The Taoiseach continued, "No Parliament would abolish a House of Parliament simply to reduce the number of politicians", and stated he was in favour of abolition because the Seanad "has not worked". He made no back-up to this assertion; there was no in-depth analysis. Unlike the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, who has put some thought into the matter, the Taoiseach offered no analysis as to the benefits or otherwise of bicameralism versus unicamerlism. He does not appear to have any grasp of the purpose of the Seanad in our democracy and has been very flippant about it. I have the impression he is very caught up in a presidential style of leadership which is destroying our Parliament in terms of its accountability. The media laps this up to the detriment of all the other Members of this House and of the Seanad.

The Taoiseach does not even grasp the purpose of the Seanad - where the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, served with me - namely, to slow down the passage of legislation and ensure that the more controversial aspects of legislation have time to come into the public domain. That is very important. The mere existence of the Seanad is a deterrent to Governments wishing to introduce draconian legislation. Deputy Boyd Barrett described the Offences against the State (Amendment) Bill, which we have just discussed, as "draconian" but if we did not have a Seanad it might be a lot more draconian. That Bill must be next debated in the Seanad, which means it will be discussed in both Houses and has more chance to be in the public domain. This acts as a deterrent against the Government overstepping the mark and giving too many powers to the State against the citizen.

The other purpose of the Seanad is to improve legislation and allow time for spotting flaws. Legislation has been introduced by Senators over the years - I can give some examples of good legislation passed. In 1973 Mary Robinson introduced the first Bill to make contraceptives available, a very brave move at the time. She got a lot of abuse and flak, including hate mail, for doing this. Mary Henry is another example. Her Private Members' Bill in respect of child sex tourism was incorporated into the Government's Sexual Offences (Jurisdiction) Act 1996. Many amendments made by Senators to legislation introduced by Government have been accepted throughout the years. I refer to my experience as a Senator, when I was a spokesperson on justice. I put amendments that mattered to legislation and these were accepted by Government. The Taoiseach does not seem to grasp that the nitty-gritty of working through legislation, not merely making soundbites or positioning oneself, is what actually matters. It might not be glamorous. Many Senators, both famous and less famous, have been effective in their role. I refer again to my own experience. The immigration legislation I dealt with in the Seanad, thanks to amendments put by me and my party, improved citizens' rights vis-à-visthe legislation so that they would have due process in the courts. That is just one example.

Bills have been rejected in the Seanad. As late as 2001, a Bill on the publication of opinion polls was stopped there. In 1959 a Bill to put a referendum to the people to abolish proportional representation through the single transferable vote, or PR-STV, and bring in single-seat, first-past-the-post constituencies was rejected by the Seanad. Its initial delay in that House has been said to have contributed to the fact the public had more time and thereby decided to reject the Government's proposal to abolish PR-STV. We can thank the Seanad for that to this day.

The Seanad has obviously contributed to the peace process. Gordon Wilson made a key speech in the Seanad about inviting the IRA to talk to him in the aftermath of three deaths that had just taken place in the Northern conflict.

We take for granted our democracy and our institutions at our peril. This matter should not be the subject of an after-dinner speech by a Taoiseach who needs a headline to grab in the run-up to a monthly opinion poll by a newspaper. It is much more important than that. We have a stable democracy. We have never had a fascist party come to power. We have had a peace process to which many people in both Houses have contributed. It is very important that we remember that.

I hope that when the electorate votes on this they look at this in the round. The Taoiseach has made brave decisions throughout his career, as do most politicians. However, brave men and women have served in the Seanad over the years. When the Senate, as it was then called, was first established it helped to bring the State out of the Civil War. People put their lives at risk to do that. I hope it is to the spirit of those people the electorate will look, not to the soundbites and the flippant way in which the abolition of the Seanad has been proposed by the Taoiseach.

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