Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I second this amendment. The Clerk of the Seanad is also the returning officer for the elections to the panels of the House. According to its functions, the commission shall provide for the running of the Houses of the Oireachtas. As of now, under this provision, when there is an election to the Seanad, the Clerk of the Seanad will have to apply to the commission to be allowed to use space in this House to conduct a constitutional function – the carrying on of elections to Seanad Éireann. The Clerk of the Seanad will not have a right to be a part of the body that will decide how the facilities of the House will be used during a Seanad election. That is constitutionally and institutionally wrong. It is profoundly wrong that a constitutional officer, responsible for the conduct of an election under the Constitution – an officer of this House – will have to apply to a body as an external person for permission to conduct elections to the House.

Apart from all the other arguments, that is an extraordinary position that was either not anticipated by the drafters of this legislation or was anticipated and ignored. The former is the position frequently taken up by drafters of legislation who have, on many occasions, learned to their cost that Seanad Éireann is perfectly capable of dealing with complex legislation and identifying faults and failings in it. Perhaps, over time, they learn the wisdom not to take Seanad Éireann for granted.

That leaves the latter possibility – that the drafters of this legislation thought this through and decided it did not matter that one of the major roles of the Clerk of the Seanad would have to be conducted in a supplicant form by asking permission of a commission to use this House to conduct a matter provided for under the Constitution. How does that reflect properly on the constitutional reality of elections to the Seanad and the position of the Clerk of the Seanad in the conduct of those elections?