Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to be here and also that we did not get our P45s. We all knew when we signed in initially that we would be subject to a referendum and the Taoiseach must be complimented on sticking to his word. He said he was going to hold a referendum and he did. Many had spoken about reform and about doing this, that and the other, but nobody had done anything. At least, the Taoiseach did something, about which we cannot complain. We facilitated the holding of the referendum, engaged in the debate and ensured that the issues were put before the people. Now they have spoken and, as good politicians, we are bound to listen. They have spoken in many ways. We cannot compliment ourselves and declare that we are the greatest thing since brown bread, given that the people wanted to save us. There are many reasons they voted in the way they did. I listened to phone-in radio programmes on the issue and there were many reasons for the way people had voted. Having said that, reform was very high on the agenda and we must take note of this. Some were in favour of abolition, but for others, their vote was a kick in the backside for the Government. However, we cannot be complacent about the result. People want to have a good Seanad and we must ensure we give them a better Seanad than the one they now have. All through the campaign it was agreed that what existed was not ideal. Nobody disagreed on that point.

The Leader has done much to try to reform the House within the current limitations. I compliment him on framing this debate in the context of political reform rather than simply Seanad reform. As he and others have said, political reform is a wide umbrella.

Political reform of the other House and the committees is also necessary. I sit on the environment committee which was discussing the important climate change Bill today. However, owing to a debate in this House, I had to absent myself from the committee for a while. That is not right. There was all-party agreement several years ago that there should be a dedicated week for committee hearings. If we brought this in, we would be doing the whole legislative process a favour.

It is important to extend the franchise to all university and institute of technology graduates. We tried to extend participative democracy by bringing citizens before the Seanad, an effort on which the Leader must be complimented. When the House was originally established, it was envisaged that it would offer real opportunities to build bridges to citizens representing different sectors of society. Without having another referendum, we can make changes to provide this opportunity again.

When we tried to scrutinise European legislation before, we could not go ahead with it. It was through no fault of our own as one needed back-up and secretarial support. In theory, committees are supposed to be scrutinising EU legislation. However, from sitting on committees, I know many of them just rubber-stamp the legislation presented to them. Staff from the committees can be diverted to the Seanad for the scrutiny of European legislation.

We cannot speak about political reform without speaking about local government reform. I have often asked for a debate on this issue. Many of the examples of unicameral systems used in the referendum have good local government systems. Ireland does not. We need a strong local government system with real powers. Powers from central government need to be devolved to local government, too. While most Members have a background in local government, the Taoiseach’s 11 nominees came from outside this area. There are many changes to the Seanad we could introduce without having a referendum and we should proceed with them.