John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to construct an argument as to why section 1 should be rejected. We are making the case that the Bill commences with references to the abolition of one of the Houses of the national Parliament, before the matter has been put to a referendum. I think arguments in defence of that House are valid arguments to make. This is not part of my main speech, but I am on record as having said that the House, as currently constituted is an affront to democracy. It is very difficult for me to make a case rejecting the abolition without saying this is not some crazy turkey voting against Christmas but is part of a more plausible strategy for Oireachtas reform. We will not go there now.

Some of the implications or downstream effects, as we would say in biology, of a rapid unthoughtful insufficiently prepared abolition of the Seanad is that if the Seanad were to cease in a country which has traditionally poorly developed local government structures we would have a colossal lacunae in terms of public governance. If it was decided that we were having a fundamental reform of the structures of governance with stronger local government, one could make an argument that if the power was devolved to regionally-based local governance, we would not need a second scrutinising Chamber because in truth much of what would happen would be scrutinising the activities of the local authorities anyway. With great respect, there is no significant evidence of that kind of fundamental reform happening, reform that would delegate both authority and responsibility to the local governance. We have seen a number of cosmetic changes in terms of numbers and structures but in terms of actually changing what they do, we have not seen much.

Again, I hope I am not expressing disrespect for those who have expressed this opinion but I do not believe our Taoiseach is some kind of incipient autocrat, a despot in waiting who is trying to systematically dismantle many of the organs of democracy in the country in an attempt to stage some kind of an oligarchic power grab. I do not believe that at all. The effect of taking away organs of democracy before other ones are developed is that there will be a de-democratisation of many aspects of public governance in this country. It is bit like the old argument to ban cars from coming into the city, but why not build the public transport first. We are saying that we will get rid of one problem but we will not actually set up the structures that will deal with.

The other issue that desperately needs to be dealt with is our committee system. I sit on a committee and I am sure as I was as variable an attentive attender as the average parliamentarian but because of the way things are structured they are somewhat low impact. If we were to have a fundamentally reformed system of central government and Parliament we would have to have in place a really good scrutinising committee system, a system which is accountable and comprised of elected officials. Instead we are being told we will lose the quasi-democratic second Chamber. In truth it is fashionable to decry its lack of democracy, and I have been a principal decrier but the vast majority of Members in the Seanad are voted by people who are themselves voted on the basis of popular franchise, one person one vote and an open voting system. Our local authority representatives are I believe a valid, if surrogate, electorate to select the Members of one of the Chambers of our Parliaments but instead what we are going to have is a reformatting of the current parliamentarily weak committee system apparently with some kind of jury rigging add-on of unelected technocratic experts, who will be there to provide the technical scrutinising function which at present is conducted by Seanad Éireann. We will lose the veneer of the surrogate democracy we have in the Seanad and replace it with something that is wholly technocratic.

With no disrespect to the Taoiseach, whom I mentioned to one of the many previous Ministers who was present when I was speaking today, I believe is one of the better persons to have served as Taoiseach and the best Taoiseach we have had for some time. He has brought great honour to the office and I believe his instincts are democratic but in this case, I believe he is making a mistake. In addition, his proposed model of Taoiseach and Government-appointed technocrats as the substitutes for the Seanad scrutiny function is flawed. It is basically self-governance. It is the same type of model that was felt to have failed in terms of the old structures of the Medical Council, which many believe currently fails in the other professional organisations. This idea of self-policing and self-regulation is not a system that is in vogue right now. There is a move away from that system in all types of areas of public governance. For that reason I think the Taoiseach is making an error on this.

Has that scrutinising function been successful? Others who are more serious students of parliamentary history than I am can quote the numbers. I have heard of the hundreds of amendments that were proposed, many of which were accepted and which strengthened legislation that arrived in this House. In addition to that, we are not just scrutineers, we are initiators.

People looking at the process of Parliament from the outside will ask whether a lot of what goes on will affect them. Some of what has occurred in this House will affect people. The human rights advocacy for gay people and other monitories in our society, which has long been espoused by Senator David Norris, is critically important. This one-man dynamo of legislation, Senator Feargal Quinn, who is not here this evening, has brought his considerable professional and life experience to bear in very practical ways in a number of critically important pieces of legislation which, to be honest, people thinking of the big picture might forget - for example, having a label which tells one from where one's food actually came. If it states: "Made in Ireland", is it just packaged in an Irish sausage casing but has come from somewhere else? This is important.

If Senator Feargal Quinn's defibrillator legislation is passed, people will be alive at the next general election who would not be alive if that legislation had not been initiated in and enacted by this House, and I speak with some authority on this. I know many patients whose lives were saved by defibrillators and many people whose lives were saved by rapid extra hospital resuscitation. It is important to acknowledge that.

In a small way, the Bill which Senators Mark Daly, Jillian van Turnhout and I have advanced to ban smoking in cars with children has already had an impact, even though I regret to say, parenthetically, it is lost some place in the bureaucracy. If Seanad Éireann is abolished, as recommended in section 1 of the Thirty-second Amendment of the Constitution (Abolition of Seanad Éireann) Bill 2013 which we are debating, any impetus which we would have to see that Bill come to fruition would disappear because I think it is low down in terms of legislative priorities.

Parenthetically, I should also add that I am a great admirer of the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, and I strongly support his efforts to fundamentally reform our health system. I am particularly happy that we have a man of his strength and courage who is now starting the flex the muscles against the tobacco industry, a battle to which, in truth, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Justice and Equality dealt a blow when they rather inappropriately met the tobacco industry a while ago.

In the current Dáil structure, despite having a good Minister like the Minister for Health, one piece of legislation has gone through in the smoking control area but that Bill makes it easier for the tobacco companies. The Minister advanced that Bill through gritted teeth and in the face of great personal opposition because he was forced and mandated to do so by diktats which came from the European Court of Justice and the EU competition authorities. The reality, as of July 2013, is that this Government which set itself out as a campaigning Government to tighten the noose on tobacco legislation following on the leadership Deputy Micheál Martin showed in a previous Government, has not succeeded in doing that. The one Bill which is going through and which would tighten the noose is our smoking in cars Bill which would be lost if the Seanad did not exist.

Has the mere fact the Seanad started a debate on that issue succeeded in putting it on the public interest agenda? I think it has. We outlined in this House and in various media the extraordinary level of harm which could accrue to children if incarcerated in a car with a smoking adult, something which people were not aware of. I think it has already caused a behavioural change. I always said the purpose of that Bill was not to fill prisons but primarily educational and I believe it probably has had that educational role.

Similarly, as an epiphenomenon related to Senator Feargal Quinn's wonderful defibrillator Bill, the debate about whether we should charge VAT on defibrillators has been reignited. I believe we had a role in accelerating the process of the legislation on the regulation of sunbeds. There were 400 cases of malignant melanoma in 2008 and 995 cases in 2010. Sadly, one pretty much assumes that the proportion of those which are fatal is approximately one quarter of cases. If that proportion stays constant, the absolute number of patients who will find themselves battling potentially fatal melanoma will have gone up. Again, taking the VAT off sunblock products and regulating the sunbed industry was suggested in this House, as was increasing the number of dermatologists. I do not mean to blow my own trumpet here but one message which I have got onto the public agenda because of my debates here and at the committee is the extraordinary shortage of specialists per head of population. It is just bizarre and bears no resemblance to any other country in the OECD, with the exception of the UK which is the second worst. If one has a spot on one's skin which might be melanoma - maybe one is one of the 950 people who get it - one could be waiting months for an appointment here. This issue was brought up in this House and has the effect of changing the public agenda.

Some other things could be lost if we go ahead and approve this Bill, including the contribution which has been made historically by other great Senators. The reasons for the success of peace in troubled Northern Ireland are complex. It is a success which, understandably, has many fathers but I have no doubt that some of the more directly responsible fathers were the bridge builders, some of whom sat in this House.

I am not demeaning the role of any of the others who were involved at the front line of the conflict and who adopted the path of peace, for which I salute them. However, there were others who were in this House and who were never particularly involved in the war in the first place but who, at a time when it was not particularly fashionable, were trying to preach the gospel of reconciliation and compromise. One incredibly wonderful man in this regard was the late Senator Gordon Wilson. My family knew his family in north Leitrim for many generations and I had the privilege of associating with some of his children when I was younger. What a phenomenal contribution he made and what a phenomenal message it was when he was appointed as the bereaved father of a Northern Ireland Protestant girl, a beautiful young nurse, who lost her life in a terrible episode in Northern Ireland. She had not even been put in her coffin when he pleaded for reconciliation and no revenge but he then incurred the wrath of his own community by accepting a seat in the Seanad. His record of reconciliation is one to which we can only aspire to. The list is endless.

The criticism is often made that Seanad Éireann is the incubator or retirement home for people at either ends of their careers, and I am sorry to use the cliche because everybody hears it and it upsets Members with Dáil ambitions. Incubators are sometimes a good thing. We have a lot of healthy babies which needed to be incubated. The reality is that many fine and very worthwhile political careers in the Dáil, in government and in the Taoiseach's office were launched by people who wet their feet and cut their teeth in this House. Maybe some part of it is a prep school, a finishing school or an educational process.