Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Under the Constitution, the national Parliament consists of the President, the directly elected Dáil and an indirectly elected nominated Seanad. The Dáil is the paramount body on proposals for legislation, public expenditure and taxation. The Seanad has specific delaying and deliberative functions.

In terms of their respective roles, the Dáil is stated, in Article 15.1 of the Constitution, to be the House of Representatives. While the sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is vested in the Oireachtas as a whole, the Dáil has two additional important constitutional functions which are not shared with the Seanad. The function of holding the Government accountable is vested in the Dáil by the Constitution and it is the body the Government is made responsible to, under Article 28.4. The second constitutional function for the Dáil alone is the control of supply and scrutiny of public expenditure. The Seanad, by contrast, is substantially a legislative chamber, albeit with a constitutional function when it comes to the impeachment of judges and the President.

The national assembly, which met in the Mansion House in January 1919, had just one chamber, Dáil Éireann. Three years later, the 1922 Constitution created a Seanad to sit beside the Dáil. Both the Seanad and its nomination procedure were intended to ensure representation at parliamentary level from the southern unionist minority in the newly created Free State.

Although it was abolished in 1936, the 1937 Constitution reinstated the Seanad. The framer of the Constitution, Éamon de Valera, provided for membership from three sources. First, there were representative panels from which candidates were nominated. For the panel election, the electorate is very limited, consisting of TDs who are incoming, outgoing Seanadóirí and members of county councils and borough councils. Second, there are six Members elected by graduates of some universities and, finally, 11 nominees of the Taoiseach.

In the referendum in 2013, the people rejected a proposal to abolish Seanad Éireann by a narrow margin: 51.7% against and 48.3% in favour. The main argument deployed in that campaign against abolition was that a "No" vote would create a mandate for reform of the second chamber. Some Members of the then Seanad published a 30-page blueprint for Seanad reform, entitled "Open It, Don't Close It". In short, there was much discussion about how a more effective second chamber might be created in our bicameral system. Of course, like many reform momentums, the enthusiasm for change fizzled out soon thereafter.

The next Seanad that will be elected in the next couple of months will look and act very much like today's Seanad and the Seanad that has existed for decades. I believe that there is an important role to be played by the Seanad. I believe that it is a role that can be much stronger and more meaningful than the role provided for in the 1937 Constitution.

I want to put on the record the excellent and nationally important work done by many exemplary Senators down the years, both in their insightful and impactive review of legislation that was passed by the Dáil and also in initiating many landmark proposals themselves.

The central question is, however, why have two chambers of parliament. There are generally three reasons put forward for that. The first is to consolidate a federal structure, such as the United States or the Federal Republic of Germany. Obviously, that does not apply here. The second is to have a check on the popular principle embodied in a popularly elected house. If one reflects, that particular modality was ably demonstrated by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom hindering the Boris Johnson proposals post Brexit, including his proposal to prorogue parliament itself. The third argument that was put forward for an upper house is a political philosophical one that justifies bicameralism because of a need to represent citizens as a civic society socialised by the smaller constituent communities which citizens form to which that citizen belongs. On this argument, the majoritarian principle of an elected unicameral system is undemocratic in a pluralist society because minorities are under represented or not represented at all. Each reason assumes a different institution make-up for each house, not a duplication of the first house by a second house, and I would argue for a much more radical reform than the tweaking that is proposed in the Bill that the Minister of State has brought to this House today.

The distinguished political scientist, Michael Laver, summarised the shortcomings of our current Seanad as "arising from the fact that it is dominated by the Government, lives in the shadow of the Dáil and the rules for choosing its Members are bizarre and anachronistic." The vocational panels used to nominate the majority of candidates for election are certainly out of sync with modern Ireland. As far back as 2002, the then All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, in its seventh report, stated:

We share the view that the vocational element of the present arrangements [are] ... in practice ... meaningless. Moreover, we would not support any attempt to revive it in a modernised form. Interest groups already have ample opportunity to make their views known in other fora and in direct dialogue with the government. Furthermore, the virtual impossibility of defining fair and objective criteria for the selection, and the relative weighting, of those groups and organisations which might be entitled to nominate representatives to an elected second chamber, is apparent.

That was 22 years ago and nothing has happened since. It is still as anachronistic as was suggested then.

Can Seanad Éireann have a larger and more modern and appropriate role in Ireland in 2025 and beyond? I believe that it can but it will require much more fundamental change than is proposed in this Bill and I believe the Government and the Minister know that full well. The Labour Group in Seanad Éireann has asked that a constitutional convention be established to consider fundamental change. It is now clear that will fall to the next Oireachtas and the next Government to pursue or, if history is any guide, more likely, to ignore.

Political reform should always be on our agenda and seldom is. I spoke last week at a conference on the tenth anniversary of the Bill that I introduced in 2014, the reform of the FOI Act. That was part of a suite of measures, FOI reform, whistleblowing legislation, ethics legislation, regulation of lobbying, etc. Reform seems to have vanished from the political agenda since and that is a fundamental mistake.

The will to substantially change the status quois difficult to muster. I know that. The forces against change from those who are already benefiting from the status quois very strong indeed but, in truth, the Minister of State cannot come into this Chamber and honestly say that one category of our citizens who happen to have a degree are entitled to have better representation in the national legislature than other citizens who happen not to have a degree. How could that be in any way democratic or acceptable? As I say, the original justification in the 1930s of de Valera, and if one reads de Valera's speeches at the time he made it clear he was against a second chamber altogether, was that he wanted a second chamber with university representation from Trinity College because otherwise, he thought, there might be no unionist voice in the fledgling parliament of the new State. Let us not be anchored in the 21st century in that thinking. Hopefully, the measure for which the Minister of State will undoubtedly muster a majority to get through the Dáil and Seanad will be eclipsed in the next Dáil and Seanad by much more far-reaching reform proposals but, in truth, I have my doubts.

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