Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It boils down to little more than a stunt by the Government to give the impression to the public that it is doing something big in terms of reform when it is doing nothing. The Government is going backwards. Instead of opening things up, it is shutting them down. The Dáil will be no different. The only difference is the Seanad will not be there.

I hold no candle for the Seanad and neither does the public. Few care about the Seanad the way it is, and why should they? It is very ineffective. It does not do what it could, but what it offers - there is potential to reform it - is a real chance to change the political system and the way the Houses of the Oireachtas operate so that there can be a democratic functioning government and Parliament in this country.

Instead, what we have seen from the outset is the Government playing politics with it. The initial proposal to abolish the Seanad emanated from the week when the Tánaiste, then an Opposition Deputy, stated he had no confidence in the then Ceann Comhairle and in the process stealing thunder from the then Opposition leader, now the Taoiseach. It led to the resignation of the then Ceann Comhairle. In response, feeling the pressure, the Taoiseach introduced, at a party gathering that weekend to the shock of all his party members around him - not only his own Senators but his Dáil Deputies - the proposal that if he was elected he would abolish the Seanad. That is where it comes from.

In the last election, there was much talk of reform. It became a little more subtle than that. At the outset, the Taoiseach stated he would abolish the Seanad. What we see here is a crude Bill to abolish the Seanad with little else to accompany it.

Undoubtedly, there are serious issues in terms of the way the political system operates and we could change and address them. Often we talk about changing the electoral system but that is not something the public will buy or, indeed, wants. Last week's recommendation from the Constitutional Convention was to keep the system of election to the Dáil. Yet undoubtedly, the way the Dáil is elected puts real pressures on all of its Deputies to focus on matters which are not directly related to this Chamber, to legislation or to committee work. The focus of the majority of Members tends to be the constituency because it is constituents who elect them and that is what the public expects. It is our the electoral system gives us.

In these circumstances the existence of the Seanad offered an opportunity to really reform the electoral system. We did not have to change the way we elected Members to the Dáil. What we could have done is look at the weaknesses in the electoral system and try to reform and bring in place a separate House which would improve the situation and which would have a totally different way of electing Members.

The system that is there at present, where councillors and university graduates elect the Seanad, makes no sense to anyone. Few among the public have any regard for it. Equally, few among the public will resist the Government changing the way that the other House is elected and that offers a major opportunity to bring a very different dynamic to the Houses of the Oireachtas. The Government could have reduced the number of Deputies further and put in place a Seanad Chamber which brings in Members with a different type of focus to that which we in the Dáil would have. The Dáil should retain its primary power. The Dáil, ultimately, is directly elected by the people and should have the ultimate vote but what one could have in the other chamber is Senators who have a different approach and who are elected at national level. My party proposed a list system based on different panels which represent different strands in society. That was a type of opportunity available, and which the Government has not looked at.

Deputy Bannon spoke about a political football in reference to something else. The issues of reform and abolition of the Seanad have been used as little more than a political football by the Taoiseach and Government. The Taoiseach has a number of attributes. He is one of the shrewdest and politically canniest politicians in the Dáil and he has demonstrated that through his use of this issue. The Government brought forward the children's referendum and the referendum to bring in committees of inquiry.

Unlike with those referendums, this Bill is being introduced months before the referendum is to take place. With every other referendum, the Bill has been introduced five or six weeks before polling day and rushed through with little debate, but cutely and shrewdly, the Bill to provide for the abolition of the Seanad is to be thrown into the Dáil five or six months in advance of the referendum. It will be a bone for every politician to run after for the next few months so as not to concentrate on the real issues and difficulties being experienced by the people. What better way is there to get the media and Oireachtas Members focused on something that is not important than to say that one half of the Houses of the Oireachtas is to be abolished? That creates a scenario in which people will spend the next five or six months navel gazing.

We will witness Senators from various parties, and particularly Government parties, making noises about how they will not vote for this. That will suck up media attention and the media will gleefully make its reports. The public will find it great fun to watch Senators trying to save their political skin. This is a bit of a game and we will see it for the next five months. It is no accident that the Bill is being introduced five months in advance as it serves the Government's purpose well in creating a distraction and keeping the focus from other issues. As I indicated, this will have no impact in bringing about any real political reform in the way we do our business.

Although the Bill will facilitate abolishing the Seanad, we are seeing no effort from the Government to address the way in which the Dáil operates. There were many promises at the last election and since about bringing about a democratic revolution, but the most we have seen from that is the introduction of Topical Issues, with matters being moved from being heard last thing at night to earlier in the day. There are only four items per day, meaning four Deputies can raise a topic of interest and of relevance, or 12 topics per week. There are 166 Deputies in the House, and even taking away Ministers and Ministers of State, that means a Deputy would have one topic, on balance, every ten weeks. That is the extent of the opportunities available to Deputies to bring up issues of importance.

The other way of tackling a Minister on the floor of the Dáil is through Oral Questions, with a particular Minister coming to the floor once every six weeks for an hour and a quarter. There may be 100 questions to be answered orally and the Minister might get through ten of them. We should be able to have a Minister for two or three hours per week, giving Deputies from the Opposition and the Government backbenches the opportunity to raise relevant issues.

We have Friday sittings, or "farcical Friday", where once every four weeks we have an opportunity to deal with Private Members' business. The only reason this happens on a Friday is because it gives the Government an opportunity to state publicly that the House sits four days a week sometimes. The Dáil does not begin until 2 p.m. on Tuesday and it normally finishes at 5.45 p.m. on Thursday, with the proceedings beginning at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. We could start on Tuesday morning and go later on Tuesday night, leaving room for additional debates or questions. We could consider issues that would not lead to votes while at the same time holding the Government to account. None of this has been attempted, however, and instead there is tokenism in the form of including a Friday sitting. Using the time for Private Members' business is useful and we need more of these opportunities, but putting this sitting on a Friday smacks of tokenism that we have become used to seeing from the Government.

I and any one of our citizens would be very disappointed by this, and I predict this referendum will not pass. That is not because anybody outside these Houses has any regard for the Seanad as it stands, and I will not be telling them that they should have, but because this initiative represents a massive lost opportunity to bring about real change in the political system in this country. The Government is asking the public to be complicit in selling this as reform and a real big deal by voting as the Government wishes in the referendum. If it does so, the public will have to listen to the Government for the next two and half years reminding them of how it has changed things and how the public endorsed the effort to reform politics. The Government will be continuing a deception that it is doing something to change politics in the country. That is a fraud, and the public will see that throughout this campaign. When the public refuses to endorse this, we will have to turn around and try to address the real reform which the Government was mandated to introduce through the vote it received at the previous general election.

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