Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Leader that the most important issue is the forthcoming budget and jobs, particularly when we have one citizen leaving the State every six minutes due to emigration. The way we reform these Houses and our way of government will ensure, in the long term, that the economic crisis that befell us will not happen again. Colleagues have spoken about the Constitutional Convention but the issue of the Seanad’s place in the Constitution has been settled. It is not an issue for the Constitutional Convention to look at again. The two Seanad reform Bills introduced by Senator Crown and Senators Quinn and Zappone should be examined again. The Seanad Public Consultation Committee, which the Leader and Senator Bacik have championed, is the proper way for the Seanad to examine its own role.

Many times I have pointed out how the Oireachtas has failed in EU scrutiny. In the first two years after the Lisbon treaty was passed, 139 items of legislation were sent from Europe to be examined by national parliaments. Of the 428 submissions made subsequently by national parliaments, Ireland made only one, an appalling record for a democracy. We must also examine the Seanad’s role in Government appointments and get an outside examination of our government system such as one by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The role of the permanent government in our democracy has never been analysed. It calls itself the permanent government and is always there. This week there will not be a debate on the forthcoming budget. It is the permanent government that frames the budget and decides the line items but the Ministers themselves do not even know what is in it before it is announced in the Dáil Chamber. That is not a way for a democracy to do business.

A reformed Seanad also needs to have a role and a vote for the Irish overseas, our emigrants and those in the North.