Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Almost five years of promises of electoral reforms and new ways of doing things - we remember the "democratic revolution" - I am underwhelmed by the contents of the Bill, even if they are hard to argue with. A measure allowing people to post electoral items for free is almost the sum total of what is in this legislation. While I am happy to support it, this opportunity should have been used to address the need for Seanad reform. My party, like other parties, has made comprehensive proposals for the reform of the Seanad. The Constitutional Convention also pointed to the need for work to be done in this regard.

This Bill proposes to give free post envelope facilities to Seanad candidates. This will differ from the new provision for Dáil candidates, who from now on will be allowed to send just one free post item to each household, rather than one such item to each registered individual. I can see no problem with making such provision. It is likely that a person who registered to vote in a Seanad election will be the only person living at his or her address who is entitled to vote in that election. I support the provision that will give the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, status as a nominating body in Seanad elections. I know this is an updating exercise. The third provision simply regularises the situation regarding applications to be placed on the supplementary register.

Earlier this year, I raised with the Minister the need to recognise the AILG and the Local Authority Members Association, LAMA. I note the presence in the Gallery of members of the AILG, which was formed following the amalgamation of the General Council of County Councils and the Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland, two important bodies that did a great deal of work over the years. I would like the Government, in the short amount of time it has left, to give due recognition to LAMA and the AILG, in addition to identifying them as Seanad nominating bodies. Local government has to be taken out of the twilight zone. It must be given its place. In addition to deeming the AILG and LAMA to be nominating bodies for the Seanad, which is important in itself but is no more than a token exercise, the Government needs to treat those two important bodies properly as representatives of local government and local councils. I hope that will be done by this Government, in the remaining months of its term in office, and by those who occupy the Government benches in the future.

I would like to mention some issues relating to the overall reform of the Seanad. Since the defeat of the referendum on the abolition of the Seanad, a number of proposals have been made that would radically reform the way it operates at present. Unfortunately, the Government appears to have moved from wanting to get rid of the Seanad, in what had to be described as a "power grab", to being prepared to leave it exactly as it is. We wanted to completely reform it, but the Government wanted to banish it forever. Now it wants to make the minimum number of changes required. Our party would reform the Seanad by increasing the representation of women in the House and by broadening the franchise to provide for the representation of Irish citizens living in the northern Six Counties of our country and the Irish diaspora. I have heard a great deal of talk about how difficult it would be to organise that. I remind the House that people of all nationalities who are living in Ireland - from eastern Europe and from different parts of the world - can vote in those countries' elections by going to their embassies or using other means of voting. I am sure it is not beyond our wherewithal to organise a system that would allow the Irish diaspora to vote.

Fundamentally, we would like to see the second Chamber elected in direct elections involving all registered electors. This happens in other countries with some success, but it does not happen here. We nominally call this place a republic, but one cannot have a republic if one takes the word "public" out of the word "republic". The public comprises the people on the streets who put us in here to represent them. It should be the very same in the case of the Seanad, which is supposed to be the Upper House. It is farcical that we have something akin to a version of the British House of Lords. The Seanad may have started out with good intentions of representing various sectors and interests. I accept that it was devised with that intention by previous Governments and generations of politicians. We all know it has gone a long way from that, however.

We would abolish the existing right of the Taoiseach to nominate 11 Members of the Seanad because it has to be the worst aspect of how each Seanad is constituted. It cannot be stood over. It is within the jurisdiction of the Government to change it. Even at this late stage, the Government could introduce an electoral Bill to abolish the gift that is handed to each Government to give it an automatic majority. Ireland must be one of the few countries in the world that gerrymanders the system in a way that ensures the party occupying the Government benches in the lower house of parliament has an automatic call on a given number of seats in the upper house, thereby guaranteeing it a majority in that house. I suggest that the current system poses a significant problem for the legitimacy of the Seanad.

It has been proposed that the franchise should be broadened to include graduates of third level institutions other than those currently entitled to vote. That is fine and dandy, but we do not believe it goes far enough. There have also been proposals to include representatives of the broader community, including people involved in sport and the arts, representatives of emigrant groups, people from the North, disabled people and so on. That is all worthy and could be accommodated through a panel that would be elected through universal franchise. We would go that step further with it.

In reality, while including those groups would make the Seanad more representative than it is at present, it would still only provide a token representation and do nothing to address the fundamentally undemocratic nature of Seanad Éireann as it is constituted. That is the key issue. The Government, in response to the rejection of the referendum proposal to abolish the Seanad, gave all third level graduates a vote in future Seanad elections. While that is welcome as a small improvement on the current situation, Sinn Féin cannot accept it as a meaningful attempt to reform the Seanad, nor is it a genuine attempt to address the Government's commitment in the wake of the rejection of the referendum to radically democratise the Seanad. I heard several Ministers in the aftermath of the referendum saying that big changes would be introduced and that the Government was committed to reforming the Upper House to make it more accountable and representative. That was all a puff of smoke; we have seen none of it. Another proposal considered by the committee set up by the Taoiseach after the referendum was to give voting rights to emigrants. That was approved in principle but it was claimed that nothing could be done to bring it into effect before the next election. What about the election after next? Will something be done before then?

The only meaningful way to create a truly democratic, republican second Chamber would be to extend the vote to everyone entitled to vote in Dáil elections, citizens of Northern Ireland and the Irish living abroad. Unless we do that, we are simply engaging in window dressing. As it is currently constituted, the Seanad simply replicates the Dáil, the sitting Government and the Government's majority. It provides a means to reward political cronies and compensate failed general election candidates or would-be candidates. That is the reality of retaining the Government's nominees in the Seanad. That is the big black mark writ large across that Chamber. It is one of the fundamental elements which the Government has in its gift to change now.

The Sinn Féin delegates to the Constitutional Convention called on the Government and the Oireachtas to empower a second Constitutional Convention with a broader mandate to consider issues related to the strengthening of constitutional protection of human rights and outstanding political and institutional reforms, including reform of the Seanad. We believe that rather than the current Government, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin or any other party or, indeed, a Government appointed committee coming up with proposals to tinker around with the Seanad as it is currently constituted, the issue should be passed over to the Constitutional Convention to deliberate on and to come up with genuinely democratic proposals and solutions. We have heard much praise for the Constitutional Convention in this House. That body should be reconvened and we should trust it to do this job.

While there is nothing to prevent any political grouping from submitting ideas and having them debated here, we believe that a broader discussion involving societal and community representation is required. The Taoiseach, despite his contention during the referendum campaign that the Seanad is elitist and requires radical reform, has blocked any suggestion whatsoever of the Constitutional Convention being reconvened to consider this matter. The convention published its report last year and one of its key proposals was that it be reconvened to consider Seanad reform. However, the Taoiseach rejected that proposal. Despite the Taoiseach's description of the Seanad as elitist, nothing has been done by this Government to alter that reality.

The only post-referendum reform introduced to date is the extension of the franchise to a relatively small section of the electorate through the university panel. That is minor reform. While any extension of the franchise is welcome, it is farcical to have a second Chamber that does not have the legitimacy of its members being elected through universal franchise. It is a pity that this legislation does not address at least some of those core issues. I understand that time does not allow us to do everything at once but the situation with regard to the Taoiseach's 11 nominees is within the gift of the Government to change now. That could be done very quickly. The 11 nominees' seats could be filled from two new panels. The Government could create new panels, one for voters in the North and the diaspora and one for some disadvantaged group in society such as the disabled.

There are several other issues relating to the electoral process which must be addressed. There are continuing problems with the electoral register and Sinn Féin has put forward proposals in this regard. There is also a proposal to establish an electoral commission because we need a single body to deal with the organisation and oversight of elections. The Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht has been considering this issue for several months. I and others on that committee as well as other sectoral groups and interested individuals have submitted proposals to the consultation process. This led to a document on which there is considerable agreement across all parties. However, the process is unlikely to be completed in time for legislation to be drafted, debated and passed in order that such a commission could be in place prior to the next general election. That means that the very reasonable and practical proposals relating to voter registration and other issues will not be implemented and that problems with the electoral register will continue into next year, which is regrettable.

While supporting this Bill, I would point out that we also need legislation to change Seanad Éireann radically which was promised in the aftermath of the referendum by those on the Government benches. That said, many Labour Party Deputies were very quiet on the issue. The Government's position was quite mixed really. While I recognise that we cannot do it all in a short period, by the time of the next election the Government will have had almost two years to institute some meaningful reforms that would give the Seanad more legitimacy, make it more republican, fairer and remove some of the elitism inherent in it, about which the Taoiseach spoke so eloquently. Had the Government introduced some meaningful reforms, it could have removed a sizeable element of the elitist nature of our second Chamber. The Government should have taken one or two sizeable steps rather than the very small tiptoe it took.

See this speech in context