Seanad debates

Thursday, 27 June 2013

An Bille um an Dara Leasú is Tríocha ar an mBunreacht (Deireadh a Chur le Seanad Éireann) 2013: An Dara Céim (Atógáil) - Thirty-second Amendment of the Constitution (Abolition of Seanad Éireann) Bill 2013: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

11:30 am

Photo of Paschal MooneyPaschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. One of the more salutary experiences of the debate is that there is as much opposition on the Government side as on this side. It is one of the more extraordinary aspects of the debate which would seem to focus on the Taoiseach alone as being on a solo run. The man who is leading the Government and to whom I would give that respect to the high office that he holds, seems to think he can treat the Constitution in a cavalier manner throwing out ideas like snuff at a wake, except in this instance it was over prawn cocktails at a Fine Gael dinner that he made the decision in a rush of blood to the head, without any consultation with anybody.

When one looks for the background to that particular decision one can find no context. The only context one can find is that for some months prior to that, the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party and the party in the country had been discussing reform proposals. The Taoiseach attended one of the summer schools some months prior to his extraordinary announcement to say that he was fully in favour of reform. I would like to know what happened in the interim. Unlike Anglo Irish Bank, we do not have any recorded conversations between the then Leader of the Opposition and his party cohorts as to what changed his mind. To me, it is a Damascus-type conversion, only it must have happened on the road to Mayo rather than the road to Damascus.

I am glad Senator Pat O'Neill referred to the cost of the Seanad. I want to say this to the media because I know they listen to us although they may not always report us. While they are not physically present in the Chamber, they have monitors in their rooms the same as us and they follow the debate. Yet again, a journalist in today's Irish Independent, whose name I will not mention out of deference to him, referred to a figure of €20 million as being the cost of the Seanad. He paralleled that in the context of a story he was writing about the winner of the €94 million in the lottery. I say to that journalist and any other journalist who is listening, that the Seanad does not cost €20 million but, as Senator Pat O'Neill said, €8 million. Any suggestion that there would be savings of any significance in respect of the abolition of this House is spurious and it is time he stopped reporting on the cost of this House because it has no bearing on this debate. To suggest to the people that a financial saving of €8 million can be made out of the €55 billion which the Minster of State regularly tells the people on the national airwaves that it costs to run the country, makes it an even more spurious argument.

In case we are saying this because we want to say it, I have a copy of the most reliable figures provided by the Secretary General of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Mr. Kieran Coughlan, on 12 January 2012. He informed the Committee of Public Accounts that direct savings of €9.2 million, which covers Senators' salaries, allowances and staff salaries, would be made immediately if the Seanad was abolished. He went on to say that any of the other costs would be absorbed into the wider Houses of the Oireachtas. He was questioned on this point by a former Member of this House, Deputy Shane Ross, who said that one of the arguments in favour of the abolition of the Upper House is that it is very expensive to run. In his reply Mr. Kieran Coughlan said there had been quite a variable in the figures when they originally appeared. He said that the indirect costs relate to the apportionment of the support costs for the Seanad. The Houses of the Oireachtas operates on a joint staff basis and it is necessary to apportion some of the existing staff into that. That is what gives rise to the figure that emerges at €20 million.

When I was growing up, for me one of the most treasonable acts that was ever perpetrated on the Irish people was the infamous Act of Union. I have a copy of the speech made by one of the most distinguished of our Irish ancestors in the political context, Henry Grattan, Esq. I never thought I would be standing in this House referring to a debate on the Act of Union on that most disgraceful political chicanery when the rotten boroughs came into their own, the speech of Henry Grattan on the subject of a legislative union with Great Britain and resolutions against same by the Roman Catholics of the city of Dublin, the Guild of Merchants, the Freemen and Freeholders of the City of Dublin, the celebrated speech delivered on that occasion by John Philpot Curran, Esq., and the resolutions of the County of Dublin. At that time there was widespread opposition to the abolition of the Irish Parliament in much the same way as there is growing widespread opposition among civic society to the abolition of this House. Let us make no mistake about it, we are seeing a rerun of history, the outcome of which will be much more beneficial to the Irish people than this dastardly Act was at the time. I will quote one point that he makes. At the beginning of his speech he talks about the Minister of the day, the Minister from Great Britain who presided over the abolition of the Irish Parliament. He said:

The Minister has come forward in two celebrated productions; he declares his intolerance of the Parliamentary Constitution of Ireland, that Constitution [.....] he now declares to be a miserable imperfection; concurring with the men whom he executed in thinking the Irish Parliament a grievance.
I could paraphrase that and remove the part about the executions and I could say that the Taoiseach sees this House as a grievance.

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