Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and welcome the opportunity to debate this important motion which was put forward by the Independent nominee group. I thank the group for providing us with the opportunity to debate these proposals at this early stage in the new term of the 24th Seanad. This opportunity is important because it gives us an opportunity to be radical, as Senator Cullinane said, in the way we reform our procedures to ensure the Seanad becomes more relevant and that our debates have more impact.

The contributions from Senators Zappone and Mac Conghail when proposing and seconding the motion were hugely thought provoking in putting the case for more deliberative democracy and for opening up the Seanad. Other speakers have also put forward diverse views on how this could be done. Senator Landy, for example, my Labour Party colleague, has spoken about the need for greater links with local government in the Seanad and has taken a comparative view of the role of local government. Senator Harte also made an important contribution and put forward the notion of the Seanad sitting outside of Dublin at different times.

The issues raised by the motion can be addressed in a number of ways to make the Seanad more relevant and to open it up. The idea of inviting outside speakers to the Seanad is one that should be explored. We should look at allowing people with a significant contribution to make to the deliberations of the House to do so through that mechanism. The idea of using the Seanad as a forum for furthering and deepening respectful North-South dialogue is an idea that has arisen in many of the reports produced on Seanad reform and should be considered. Direct engagement with citizens and residents can be done in various ways. The use of a petitions committee was suggested and the Labour Party is keen to vitalise that proposal. As a Senator, Deputy Joanna Tuffy, initiated the Seanad petitions committee in 2006 but it has never been used. It is an important mechanism we could use to engage with citizens outside of the House and to make our business directly relevant.

There is precedent for the idea of sitting outside of Leinster House. The Seanad may not have done it before, but the Dáil sat in the Mansion House on the 90th anniversary of the first Dáil and it may have done the same in 1966. The joint committee on the Constitution has certainly sat at different venues outside of Leinster House, at Trinity College and UCC in the last session. Those sessions were successful at bringing in new people to hear what the committee was doing. If this can be done at minimal cost or in a cost neutral way, we should do it because it is a way of addressing the clear disconnection that exists between the public and political representatives. Those of us who canvassed in the most recent election found that after the economy, the next most important issue was political reform.

The reform of the Seanad is a topic that has been raised by several speakers and it has also been addressed by the Minister of State. I am grateful he said the Government is committed to making this an effective and efficient Seanad. The appointment of the Taoiseach's nominees from such a diverse and generally non-party political background has demonstrated that intent by the Government, which is welcome. The announcement that there will be a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad should not be taken in isolation. It would be a mistake to look only at abolishing the Seanad without considering parallel reforms to the rest of the political system. There is a concern that the proposed abolition of one House is mere window dressing that does not look at how we ensure the useful functions it serves can be incorporated into the other House. If we are to move to a unicameral system, we must ensure the heightened level of scrutiny that is afforded by two Houses can be achieved through the Dáil. I and many others have given much thought to this.

The Seanad forms a particularly vital function in several areas, such as scrutiny of legislation and Government policy. One area this is demonstrated is through the strong procedures we have for debates on Committee Stage of legislation. The figures produced by the Oireachtas in 2008 show that in that year 1,199 amendments to all Stages of Bills were made in the Seanad. Over the decade, from 1998 to 2008, some 30% of all Bills initiated in the Houses of the Oireachtas were initiated in the Seanad. There is no doubt the Seanad has had a very significant role in the area of legislative scrutiny and there are quite a number of examples of critical amendments made to Bills that would otherwise have been very flawed had issues not been spotted in the Seanad. Senator Cullinane mentioned the issue of age. Discrimination on grounds of age would have been left out of some of the equality legislation in the early 1990s until its omission was spotted by the Seanad which ensured age discrimination was included as one of the grounds. We could point to a number of ways in which heightened scrutiny is afforded through this House. If we are to consider abolishing the Seanad, we must look at how we afford that level of heightened scrutiny in the Dáil.

Another valuable feature the Seanad has brought to political debate is the fact that it has provided a forum for voices that are not being heard in the Dáil and for those who represent constituencies different from the geographic constituencies directly represented in the Dáil. Examples of these are the Taoiseach's nominees and the university Senators. Generally, Senators have tended to bring a more national focus to bear in debate. If we are to move to a unicameral system, we must investigate whether there is some way of reforming the Dáil to ensure we can have a group of persons elected from a national list or have people in the Dáil who have a more national focus to bring to bear on legislation.

The idea of a constitutional convention which could tease out issues around the future of the Seanad and the parallel political reforms that must be made is important. It is an idea in the programme for Government that has excited many people. They are excited by the idea of wholesale constitutional and political reform and by the proposal to have a tight timeframe for a convention that would examine that. I look forward to the setting up of the constitutional convention and to the debate around reform of the political process, of which the future of the Seanad is just one part. This debate gives us an opportunity to reform our own procedures, pending the outcome of that national debate, to ensure we become more relevant and more engaged in public debate.