John Crown (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State. However, I stand by my comments. When I ran for the Seanad a year ago I stated that I would never run again for it as currently constituted. There is a very strong case to be made for either its abolition or reform. My three complaints about the Seanad are that it is undemocratic. It has introduced an electoral cast system into the country where some citizens have a vote while others do not, some are so far down the cast system that they would best be considered to be untouchables. Something I have learned since I have become a Member, I hope my colleagues do not take this personally, is that it is somewhat ineffectual. I am not saying that it never has an effect but certainly in terms of bang for the book, in terms of the opportunity of having the Chamber and all these people working here, it could be used far more effectively. My principal objection is that the original intent of the Chamber has been comprehensively subverted in the past 15 years.

The purpose of this Chamber was to bring an alternative set of life experiences and life skills into the corridors of Parliament and we have lost that. It was supposed to be a place where people who came from academia, labour, commerce and agriculture, industry and across the whole spectrum of society, could bring their life experiences to bear together with those of the full-time politicians in the Dáil and they would give us, perhaps, some more information that would help them when making their decisions with respect to governance and legislation. We all know that something very different has happened to it since and it has become an extension of the Dáil and the local government system, mainly used by the political parties as a means of advancing the careers of those on the way up and rewarding those who have been loyal servants. I am not saying that people have not given good service here as a result of it but that is not the original intent of the de Valera Constitution. While some of that subversion has taken place from without the House, with great respect some of it has taken place from within the House. When people continually act as if they are local representatives for some fantasy football version of Dáil Éireann here, it actually undermines the authority of allowing this Chamber to continue in the future. When people who look at it in a dispassionate fashion from the outside ask what it does, it makes us very vulnerable to the accusation that it is a somewhat cynical, party politically inspired Chamber which has, as its real intent, something other than that which was planned for it in the beginning.

One can make really fine arguments for having a two-tiered, bicameral, dual-chambered national parliament. There are all kinds of arguments that can be advanced in terms of checks and balances and of the original intent of the de Valera Constitution and in terms of providing time for deliberation on big matters. One can make many fine arguments for having a single-tier parliament as well. This is the truth. Anybody looking at it critically from the outside would say there are arguments on both sides. This is a small country which is geo-ethnically largely homogeneous. I acknowledge that we have a rich tapestry of ethnic groups within the country but we do not have large ethnically-defined political parties. This is not pre-1999 Yugoslavia. This is a very different country. We do not have that. We do not have one of the big reasons people need a second chamber.

One of the reasons we had a second Chamber in the 1920s was that those from the class that had regarded themselves as having an allegiance to Britain would not feel totally democratically disenfranchised by majoritarianism in a new State. That was a noble idea which was, perhaps, deemed anachronistic in the early 1930s and replaced.

One thing for which no argument can be advanced is not having a debate.