Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House. We sent him more material about our other project and sent some material to Brussels. We are reforming the banking system so we have a lot in common even if we differ fundamentally on this issue. I cannot understand why the Taoiseach wants to abolish this House. As I said previously, I think it is quite a splendid House and I am inspired every day. This morning, Senator Crown's comments about the difference between terminal and treatable cancer were wonderful. Unlike the Taoiseach, I learn here every day. The Taoiseach spent more time on a bicycle last weekend going around the Ring of Kerry than he has spent in the House in the entire past two years. Maybe that is an appropriate metaphor. If this Seanad is saved, the Fine Gael men in suits will say "on your bicycle" to the Taoiseach; he got plenty of training last weekend going around the Ring of Kerry.

In his description of his last day in the Seanad in his biography, one of my predecessors, William Bedell Stanford, paints a picture of what awaits everyone of us if this legislation is passed. He spoke of giving a brief valedictory speech on the last day of the session, receiving kind remarks from subsequent speakers and saying goodbye to friends and colleagues in Leinster House. He wrote of how he cleared out his mahogany locker in the ante chamber like a departing schoolboy, gave a last glance at the pictures of Yeats and Emmet and the carved mantel fireplace of the Irish regiment, went out to what he described as the strange jetty-like granite platform that had replaced the massive statue of Queen Victoria that had been explained to him as a place for anchoring the ship of State in a storm, passed what he described as the always genial and obliging ushers at the gate and turned onto Kildare Street to be a don again and not a Member of Parliament.

Everybody I have met here has been absolutely splendid and I pay tribute to all of the staff, including those who stay until midnight. This is a wonderful place. I believe that if the Taoiseach came here more often, he might appreciate the work done. However, he has chosen to stay away. He promised that when Ireland no longer held the Presidency, he would come but he has not kept that promise either.

Seeing as the Taoiseach does not keep in touch, let us look at some recent events. The Minister for Finance from that chair praised me for doing "the heavy lifting" on bank regulation, something on which the Minister of State and I have worked hard. The Minister for Education and Skills praised Senator Clune and I because we found more errors in the mathematics papers than the State Examinations Commission had apologised for. The Seanad intervened on behalf of 116,000 young people doing the leaving certificate examinations. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources was in the same chair last week and in agreement with me, asked for the first time in public why we reduced the rate of interest on little old ladies' savings in An Post simply to satisfy the banks. I told him that my view was that solvent organisations like An Post should be able to pay savers more interest as a reward for being well run unlike the banks which, of course, caused so many of us so much bother over the years. He said he agreed with me but lost out at the Cabinet.

Here was a man willing to discuss ideas which I do not think surfaced anywhere before. Presumably, they would have been in the newspapers if they bothered to cover the House. I agreed with the Minister and this gave him the forum in which he could express his exasperation about being outvoted on that issue. As the Minister of State knows, the irony was that the Irish Banking Federation said that it was in favour of fair competition, yet there was none between outfits which destroyed the country and ones which run their affairs properly. The Minister for Health accepted an amendment here that the audit committee of the HSE should have people trained in auditing and accounting. I think that makes a total of 530 amendments - Senator Quinn keeps the scoreboard on that.

That is the tradition that has always been there. In his great book entitled The Irish Free State and its Senate, Donal O'Sullivan mentions Paddy Hogan, who was probably the best Minister for Agriculture we ever had. This was 1923 during the very early days of the Seanad. In one debate, he said that a Bill left the Seanad much improved, especially in section 24, which he considered a very important section. He said the Seanad realised that the Bill did need improvement in that direction and that he considered it a big improvement. He thanked the Seanad for the consideration they showed to him during the discussions.

On 9 August 1923, W. T. Cosgrave expressed his and his colleagues' deep appreciation for the co-operation and assistance of the second Chamber and the useful and constructive criticism given by it to the legislative proposals of the Ministry. Right from the beginning until the past few days, we have been playing a constructive and valuable role in the running of this State. I am proud of it. It is galling that a man who never comes here thinks we do not do anything worthwhile but there we are. To put it mildly, I am far less impressed by the Taoiseach's wonderment and enchantment at seeing second Chambers being abolished 50 or 60 years ago in Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden.

The Taoiseach spoke recently at the European Parliament. That was democratised in 1979. That is a development that deepened and widened our democracy just like this House does every day. He was in Derry the weekend before last at the British-Irish Council summit. In his company were the new representatives of the parliaments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. I hope the Minister of State talked to and learned some lessons from them. Other people appreciate parliamentary democracy - widening and deepening it.

Looking at the Taoiseach's original statement, we will leave out who caused the Celtic tiger to collapse.

He is the only person who blames the Seanad for that. He is unimpressed because this is an institution of 19th century British democracy. Would he like to know the number of voters when the 19th century began in the UK and when it ended? There were massive increases. That parliamentary system reformed and he might to refer to the fact that many of the great reforms were introduced by Irish men: Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Charles Stewart Parnell, Isaac Butt and Daniel O'Connell. In Ronan Fanning's new book on how the Irish parliamentary party developed into independence, he said, to use a phrase by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, they did the heavy lifting. We were so good in the Westminster Parliament they wanted to shunt us out and, unfortunately, due to the intervention of the First World War and the failure to get the Orange community on side, it did not happen. He paints the picture that they could not give the key quick enough to Michael Collins in Dublin Castle because our parliamentarians were so good at holding the balance of power and annoying both the Conservatives and the Liberals, that was what got Ireland its independence. It is somewhat at variance with the more militaristic role, but I do not think the Taoiseach, on deeper reflection, should run down the 19th century parliamentary institutions on which this one is based.

We are both fans of Grattan's parliament and I enjoyed the Minister of State's reference to it. The teaching about Henry Grattan, and it is in Grattan: A Lifeby R.B. McDowell, is that he was never a Minister. He relied on his oratory. It was so good that people outside called it Grattan's parliament. He never held office. That is what this House does. It is the talking shop, the centre of ideas, as has been stated, and we do not seek power but we do seek to inject into it ideas, like Skeffington said, such as that one should not beat children. What a pity we did not listen to him 50 years before we did-----