Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I admit that this is one of the most important debates we will have as the issue affects how we do politics at a national level. I am also conscious that for a brief period between 2000 and 2002, I was a member of the Upper House. I was elected in the company of Mr. Jim Glennon after a by-election and at the behest of my party. It was made very clear to both of us that we were being elected to the Upper House to ensure we would go forward and try to get elected to Dáil Éireann. I am glad the Minister is here because he knows about this better than anybody in Fine Gael, as he was charged through his party in ensuring the Upper House was used in just that way by Fine Gael over the years. It was utilised as a launching pad for potential candidates who would be elected to the Dáil, and to a certain extent it was a relaunching pad for those who had been in the Dáil, lost their seats but wanted to return at some stage.

In that we must all put up our hands and admit that the system was effectively abused by political parties, although the aspirations and sentiments that surround the Seanad and are expressed in the Constitution are none the weaker by virtue of the fact that political parties sought to use and abuse the systems. Considering the Seanad over the years, we find there was much talk about reform and many reports were published but the reason reform was never implemented was because the Governments of the day never followed through in the way the Taoiseach - rightly or wrongly - has done with a particular set of proposals. I believe he is wrong on this occasion.

The contention is that the Seanad has not done what it was supposed to but that is incorrect. I look back at my brief period there with great respect and admiration for people like Maurice Manning, Joe O'Toole and the late Tom Fitzgerald, who through the Seanad availed of the opportunity to serve this Legislature and, through it, the public. There is an issue with the role of the Seanad, and those who favour reform - as I do - are trying to formulate areas of potential additional involvement. However, the primary responsibility of the Seanad in the Constitution is to examine legislation, which it has done. Deputies Tuffy and Ó Cuív, in the course of very thoughtful presentations in the last day or so, have set out just why that happened and how effective the Seanad was in the role.

The Taoiseach went to Glenties in 2009 and spoke at length while advocating the reform and retention of the Seanad. He was enthusiastic about the process in that respect. One wonders what would have happened if events were different in 2002, when the Taoiseach was in some difficulty in his own constituency and only managed to scrape home in that election, which was a bad result for Fine Gael. Would the Taoiseach have been very happy to find a roost for himself in Seanad Éireann had he failed to be elected to the Dáil?

What makes us all very uncomfortable is that there is no enthusiasm for this particular set of changes among Government parties. This has been clearly evident in the Labour Party and it has also been clear in many members of the Fine Gael Party. There is a recognition that this is something of a solo run by the Taoiseach. In a position where Fine Gael may have needed a boost in the polls in the run-up to the last election, the Taoiseach thrusted around to try to find something that would endear him to a very cynical electorate and the abolition of the Seanad was the issue he selected. It was bad judgment at the time and he is following through on it now because he argues it is a promise in the programme for Government. However, there are many other promises in the programme for Government which the Taoiseach has already admitted he will not be able to progress.

What we are expected to believe is that we will get rid of the Seanad - which most of us see as being a very important part of the democratic political process - and it will be replaced with a reformed Dáil. Reform has been very slow to come and reform of the Seanad has not happened because the Governments of the day have not followed through. The reform promised in the course of this Dáil session has not happened at anything close to the extent suggested. We are halfway through the term and the Government Chief Whip has declared that the level of co-operation with the reform process by Ministers is deplorable.

I attend the Whips' meeting on a weekly basis and we are party to the process of Dáil reform. I know the Whips from the various political parties could sit around the table and formulate a set of proposals to reform the Dáil.

At the end of the day, however, those proposals have to go back to Government, be accepted and implemented. At present there are two areas of worthwhile reform, namely, the Topical Issues Debate and the Friday sittings. These are worthwhile, good initiatives. However, during Topical Issues, we are seeing that Ministers are not coming into the House to address the issues that arise. Senior Ministers have failed to appear in the Dáil three times out of four, on average, to respond to the topical issues that are raised each day, with 40% of issues being dealt with by a Minister of State from a non-relevant Department reading from a script. This very good idea, which emanated from Government and was supported by all the political parties, is not working because Government Ministers are not co-operating with it.

The other issue is that of sitting days. I acknowledge that the number of sitting days has increased. Indeed, sitting days increased under the last Government and the current Government has continued to work to significantly increase the number of sitting days. However, I made a point during Leader's Questions earlier in the week that merits repeating. My point relates to the number of sittings that we have and the times to which those sittings extend. We meet at 10 a.m. or 10.30 a.m. and continue, increasingly, until 10 p.m. or midnight. That is creating a situation where this Dáil is not an attractive place to be for someone who, for example, is interested in rearing a family, whether male or female. How on earth could one suggest that the sort of hours that are kept here are anything approaching family friendly hours?

How does one reconcile the type of reform we talk about with the work of the convention on the Constitution, for example? We know, as others have said, that the convention was not allowed to look at the question of Seanad abolition. Obviously, the Government did not trust the convention to come up with the right set of answers on that question. How do we hope to attract young people into this profession, which the convention has indicated is desirable and which we, as practising politicians, know to be so? How do we get the huge number of additional women that we need to be involved in politics if we are going to pursue the sort of approaches we are currently pursuing in terms of Dáil reform? I put it to the House that one would want to be slightly mad to become involved in a system where the working hours are so far removed from any concept of what is family friendly.

The Friday sittings, which are part of the reform, are designated for consideration of Private Member's Bills. Again, this is a very good idea on the face of it. We have probably seen the production of more Private Member's Bills in the course of this Dáil than ever before. That is a very positive development and I salute the Government and the Chief Whip for bringing forward that proposal. However, after two and a half years, not one of the Bills that have been identified at a Friday sitting, even from among those that have ultimately got Government support, has been actually written into law. The question arises as to whether there is any intention on the part of the Government at any stage to write any of these Private Member's Bills into law.

We have seen more use of the guillotine in the course of this Dáil, despite the assurances we were given. In June 2011, the Chief Whip, Deputy Paul Kehoe, said the following:

The extensive over-use of the guillotine to ram through non-emergency legislation, as in the last Dáil, will be cut back so legislation can be debated in full. The over-use of the guillotine in the last Dáil was one of the great frustrations for Deputies of all parties because they were denied the opportunity to have their voices heard on vital issues passing through this House.

However, despite this promise on the use of guillotines, 52 out of 90 Bills were guillotined. That represents 57% of all Bills passed. What we are seeing here is the ramming through of legislation. If we get rid of the Seanad, it will give this Government another opportunity to make use of its massive majority and its grip on power to push forward its own agenda, without scrutiny or questioning. That is the real difficulty here. Add to this the loss of representation at local level and it represents a direct assault on how we govern ourselves. It represents a concentration of power in the hands of even fewer people. Is this the type of democracy we want?

The Seanad is at the heart of our Constitution and the proposed 23rd amendment will require 75 direct deletions from the document that is the basis of our democracy. This is by far the most radical amendment in our country's history and has come about without any advance consultation. Abolition will close down debate and therefore reject legitimate challenge. It effectively stops an important aspect in our parliamentary system of checks and balances. When we look at what has happened in this country in recent years, we see that regulators and others charged with the task of checking and balancing did not do their job. It seems to me to be particularly appalling that at a time when checks and balances are more important than ever before, we are moving now to take out of the legislative process one of the most important checks and balances that exists. We are told that reform of the Dáil will compensate for that but the reform we have seen to date has been minimal in the extreme. We are told that one of the alternatives that we might have is an expert committee, to be appointed by the Taoiseach, to help him and help the Government to peruse legislation. I doubt that the general public will have great confidence in that particular approach.

The mere existence of a second House allows for voices that would not normally be heard or listened to. It prevents our elected politicians from fast-tracking inadequate legislation that is sometimes not fit for purpose or, indeed, desirable. The point I am making is best summed up by a direct quote from Philip Pettit, professor of politics at Princeton University, who is Irish by background and training. He wrote recently in The Irish Times as follows:

Closing down an important base for dissident voices, in particular voices that are not bound to party platforms, is a recipe for frustration and alienation among those out of the mainstream. And it promises to homogenise public debate, shutting down sources of diversity that can enliven exchange and give a voice to alternative, often liberating, perspectives.

Furthermore, the Constitutional Convention, set up by the Government to examine, in detail, how we govern ourselves will not, as I said earlier, discuss the Seanad at all, which is a laughable situation.

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