Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Apparently there was no debate. The Taoiseach came up with the idea, it was imposed on the party and it is running with it because the boss said it had to. It does not sound like democracy to me and it is not how we would do democracy in our party. It shows how democratic the Taoiseach is and leads people to become very wary of the real agenda behind the abolition of the Seanad.

There is a genuine fear that local government will be much weakened with a lot less democratic representation at town and county council level. We have a Government which has a massive majority and a Cabinet which is ruled by four males in the Economic Management Council. People see that losing another layer of democracy where there is a certain level of debate is a retrograde step.

We should not shrink the democratic space in that sense.

We have also heard many arguments about required Dáil reform but we have not seen any concrete proposals on the issue. From my limited experience over two and a half years in these Houses, I know that putting forward the argument that the committees will be able to take up slack by the abolition of the Seanad is a total red herring. A number of committees on which I have sat are relatively dysfunctional, and attendance at a few committee meetings has been quite scant, as there is a regime of people clocking in but leaving without making any positive input into the work of the committee. Arguing that the work of Dáil committees will solve the problem is certainly a red herring. As Senator Landy mentioned, where are the detailed costings of the savings to be made by the abolition of the Seanad, as we have not seen them? If what we hear from Senator Landy is correct and if the approximately €4 million is to be subsumed into the work of committees, there will be no saving coming from the democratic deficit.

It is interesting to look around the Chamber when all 60 Senators are here and consider the type of representation we have. There is an imbalance between male and female representatives and where are the representatives of ethnic minorities? From what I can see, everybody here is white Caucasian and there are no members of the Traveller community. There is a bias towards the upper and middle classes, and all this means the House is not representative of our citizens. There are no representatives of the diaspora and immigrants, although we do our best to represent their issues. I am open to correction on that.

There is a politically centralised system and the Government is very much in control. The problem is not the way the Seanad works but the way in which Ministers and the Government treat the House. Ministers come in but they may as well be wearing ear plugs as they sit and smile at us, as the Taoiseach did yesterday, but nothing gets to them. Our contributions go in one ear and out the other. If the political establishment really wants to engage with the Seanad, much work could be done and good work is already done in the proposing of amendments. Such input is generally not taken on board.

The Seanad's structure is also undemocratic, which is illustrated by the fact that Sinn Féin representatives have been completely left out of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, which makes decisions on how the House runs. We have seen the guillotining of Bills and a refusal to accept amendments. All of this means the Government is not serious about reform of the Dáil and Seanad, and the entire picture must be taken together. We need a reformed political system, with a reformed Seanad part of the overall picture.

There is a disconnect between the Dáil and the Government. Even when we debate issues and legislation coming to the House, we can see Members from Government parties opposing what is proposed but voting in favour of it because of the Whip system. Senator John Kelly, for example, has done much good work with the wind energy Bill, along with Deputy Penrose in the other House, but a Labour Party Minister is refusing to move on the legislation, despite it having passed Second Stage in this House. Enda is the boss and the Cabinet is in control. There are four boys in charge of the club and they are running the show, so nobody else needs to make an input because whatever they say goes. While these people are in power, they will look to keep it. That is not democracy and it is not healthy, so reform is required in that sense. The Minister should return to the Taoiseach and rethink the issue. It should be sent to the Constitutional Convention so we can have a much broader debate and include the reform agenda in that.