Seanad debates

Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Radical Seanad Reform Through Legislative Change: Statements

 

4:25 pm

Photo of John CrownJohn Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The prematurity is predicated on the assumption that we are having a debate because of an imminent referendum that could lead to its abolition. That is the wrong way to look at it. The debate is not premature but post-mature and overdue. We have had a ten-month pregnancy. The discussion should have taken place on many occasions and now that it is, we are left vulnerable to the accusation of discussing reform when it is too late and know that we are on the way out. It is a reform that would be somewhat akin to somebody in the criminal justice system examining his soul and heart and then deciding to reform his evil ways and promising to be better in the future. That is after he had been tried, convicted, found guilty, sentenced to death, had his last meal and was walking to the execution chamber. Contrition is a bit late at that stage. We need to reform the whole process of government.

Earlier it was said that neither the Seanad nor the Dáil is responsible for the mess that we are in but I disagree. We are citizens who must now live with the consequences of the greatest failure of democracy and administrative political oversight in the history of the State. The bankers and builders behaved wrongly and unethically but rationally. A system was in place whereby bankers and builders could make short-term profits by exploiting an irregularity environment that allowed them to do it and they did what made sense to them at the time. The real failure was in the process of government. We had regulators who were supposed to be expert enough to ensure that we had the right rules and regulations in place. We should have had politicians in place who were expert enough to provide the democratic oversight over the way the society and its economy was being run.

While the Seanad was asleep at the tiller the approximate cause for the failure of the country was the Government and the Dáil. I am not being party specific in my accusation. If there had been a change in party personnel it may well have happened just as badly. Why? We had an inexpert Government with technically inexpert Ministers who were locked in a perpetually dysfunctional relationship with permanent bureaucratic civil servants. It was too easy for people to run rings around them. We had a Dáil that was composed of fine people and good public representatives who were primarily focused on issues that related to their constituencies. I am afraid, and I will not use any of the clichés that have been trotted out, that all too often the Seanad seemed to be like a fantasy football equivalent of Dáil Éireann where Senators talked about imaginary constituencies and fantasy Dáil encounters.

We need to reform the entire process of government. We need a system that allows us to have highly technical, competent and democratically answerable people in the great ministries of State. I have made the following example before and I shall make it again. When President Obama realised that one of the great existential issues facing our species is energy policy he appointed a Nobel prize winning physicist as his Secretary of Energy. We cannot do that. The pool that we have to draw from is of people whose principal skillset has been negotiating a constituency organisation and getting near the top of the ballot paper in their local constituency in the Dáil election.

We have had a Seanad that could have behaved not better but differently. I would love us to see fundamental constitutional reform in this country. I would love us to have an Executive where a Taoiseach could appoint the best people to his or her ministries. I would love us to have a powerful Lower House focused on national and not parochial issues. I would also love us to have a second House or Seanad that provided a regional link between people and the central processes of government but one completely and exclusively based on democratic franchise.

This is all a fantasy because it is not what we are going to get. One of two things will happen. We will have a referendum to abolish the Seanad or we will not. The only matter that will determine that - with no disrespect to the Taoiseach - is a political calculation where an amount of political capital will or will not be carefully spent in the years running up to the next general election by having a referendum which may or may not be won. I truly believe that. If we have the referendum it will not be a "preferendum". It will not be a referendum based on the refined document thoughtfully put together by the kind of coalition which could never have occurred in Dáil Éireann but in this House. We will have a "Yes" or "No" to abolish the Seanad type of referendum. That is not the fantasy but the reality. Sadly, if we are confronted with that choice, and no other choice, I will find myself hard pressed to defend the retention of the current Seanad. I mean no disrespect to the honest efforts of many Senators who come here and behave well in the national interest. As currently constituted a "Yes" or "No" referendum is hard to defend.

I shall finish on one last point on cost that was alluded to. When the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, sat in the House he told us that one of the reasons for abolishing the Seanad was to free up money for the committee system in Leinster House. It was not to free up money for cancer drugs, special needs assistants, teachers, nurses or gardaí. It was just going to move money from one administrative slot to another and that does not constitute a cost saving.

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