John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I extend my personal welcome and gratitude to the Taoiseach. He has shown very considerable grace and statesmanship by coming here today and giving Seanad reform top priority so soon after the referendum. I am very grateful to him for doing so. He has also shown great wisdom and judgment in viewing the result of the referendum as a personal mandate to lead, as our leader, the efforts to reform Seanad Éireann and, hopefully, to institute some wider reforms in the way that the Oireachtas does its business.

Obviously there has been a certain element of repetition during the debate. I am sorry if there has been repetition. We basically know the core issues. We are concerned about reform in the way that we are elected, how the Seanad does its business, and reform of the business that we actually do.

In terms of the way that we are elected, clearly and in summary, there are three broad approaches. There is an approach that the Taoiseach has outlined, to immediately implement the decision of the people from the seventh amendment of the Constitution referendum of 1979 - one of the most clear cut referendum results that we have ever seen - and to extend the franchise to graduates. It should be noted that if we did that at a stroke we could extend the direct Seanad franchise to one third of the population of the country. Approximately one third of the population will probably qualify as graduates so such a minimal alteration of the current Statute Book would have a hugely democratising effect on the Seanad.

The more ambitious plan, and the one which I personally hope the Taoiseach will keep an open mind on, is the plan to extend the vote, through universal suffrage, to every citizen in the country, as per either the Quinn-Zappone Bills or my own legislation. I am sure that there will be other proposals. There may also be a proposal made by the Government parties.

I shall outline the first objection raised to the Bills, namely, that if we do so we will have a mini-Dáil. In truth, that objection must be dissected right now as it is not correct. If the Seanad was elected according to the existing constitutional mandates and through the panels system, it would give us one Chamber that was not elected directly. The people elected to the Seanad would not be the products of local constituency competitions. As such, we would elect people who would bring a different perspective to the body politic, a different set of experiences and a different set of personal and political priorities. As such, dismissing it as a second Dáil or a mini-Dáil is probably not correct.

Second, it is timely that we had the debate at a time when the United States appeared that it might melt down into complete anarchy over a gridlock between the Congress and the Office of the President. The suggestion has been made that if we had a second Dáil-like Chamber elected here gridlock would also exist. In truth, in the absence of a major constitutional change in the powers of the Seanad, that could not happen because the reality is that the Dáil has the primacy of power. In the relationship between the two Houses we would still be a revising Chamber but hopefully an improving and amending Chamber and very rarely a blocking Chamber whose block could be overcome by the wishes of the more powerful Dáil. That is appropriate. We do not want to set ourselves up for gridlock.

The third argument advanced against the Bills drafted by Senators Quinn, Zappone, myself and others is on our somewhat more radical proposal to extend the franchise outside of Irish citizens currently resident in the Republic of Ireland to Irish citizens who live abroad, to folks from Northern Ireland and also to legal residents of Ireland who are currently on the rolls for local government elections. The suggestion is sometimes made that perhaps somehow the democratic will of the people who live in the Republic would somehow be overruled or swamped by unrepresentative voices from outside of the jurisdiction. I do not believe that would happen and believe that we would be safer than that.

We also need to make reforms in this House. We need to make reforms ourselves in the way we do our business. We have heard people mention, correctly, the Whip system and the need for more Private Members' time.

As I mentioned previously, we have had that near-death experience. We heard ourselves being asked to walk towards the light. Often that near-death experience makes people change their priorities in life when it happens medically, and I think it should change our political priorities here too. Members who are on panels should realise the constituencies they serve. The expertise they need to acquire is to do with the questions that are of concern to those panels and not those of concern to the mythical Dáil constituencies that they do not have.

I thank the Taoiseach for coming to the House. I hope we will have the opportunity for a chat at some stage about issues relating to Dáil reform. It is probably not the right agenda for today, but I thank him for his concern. I look forward to working with him and I hope we will have a chance to have some input into this process.