Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I cannot but agree, and wholeheartedly at that, with what Senator Alex White had to say earlier when he pointed to the inappropriateness of having a debate about the guarantee this evening and a debate about the state of things generally, including matters relating to Anglo Irish Bank, tomorrow. That is the kind of incongruity that will contribute to the continuing disquiet about the way in which our political process works. We are at the start of our legislative year, and we will need something more than slagging matches across the Chamber if we want the public to re-engage with the political process.

I note that it is now almost a year since the motion "That Seanad Éireann deplores the delay in implementing the recommendations of the Report on Seanad Reform and demands of Government that it do so immediately." was placed on the Order Paper. We have had two debates with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government about Seanad reform. What was interesting was that the first debate - the one furthest back in time - was the one in which the Minister was most confident in his promise to introduce Seanad reform. We were told that a wider pool of university graduates would take part in the next election to the Seanad. In the second debate, which took place more recently, the Minister had pulled in his horns considerably in that regard. It would be good to find out from the Minister what is to happen regarding Seanad reform and regarding the extension of the franchise, in the context of the university seats, to graduates of other universities and third-level institutes. It seems there is no good reason to delay the necessary reform.

It is all the more incumbent on the political class to conduct a debate on the working of our institutions precisely because there is such disenchantment about how Government and the legislature have operated in recent years. The debate could start with a useful and necessary debate on Seanad reform, but I hope we will also have a debate soon on the relationship between the Government and the legislature. When we blame the Government for the lack of stewardship in the past and a failure to establish good systems of regulation, we must acknowledge that one of the reasons the Government failed so dramatically was that it was under no pressure from its rank and file in the Oireachtas. We have a system that is quite authoritarian. In Britain, it is much more common for the Government to lose votes in the House of Commons and for the House of Lords to hold up legislation it is unhappy with. Someone once said about the House of Lords that one could not justify the way it is elected, but sometimes it seems to do the job. Hell would freeze over before anything so dramatic would happen here, with the Government losing a vote because a majority of elected representatives felt a measure was inappropriate.