Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Paul Kehoe. I thank Senators Zappone, Quinn and others for tabling the motion.

There are three areas to be considered: the promised democratic revolution which turned into a power grab; the national democratic deficit which has been in place for many years, as outlined by some speakers; and what is possible for the House to achieve.

I will start with the issue of the power grab. In recent months we have witnessed how the democratically elected Údarás na Gaeltachta was abolished. The people who will sit there and decide how taxpayers' money is spent and how issues shall be resolved in the Gaeltacht are now going to be appointed. That is not a step in the direction. We witnessed reform painted as some panacea in local government when in fact we are seeing the dismantling of the democratically elected town councils, the merger of some areas and more powers being centralised. I do not think anybody in the House would argue that is a good thing. We have the least number of locally elected public representatives in Europe. The current position is one locally elected public representative for every 5,000 people. We rank second worst to the United Kingdom which has one locally elected public representative for every 2,500 whereas France has one public representative for every 98 people. We are the worst in Europe when it comes to local democracy. We witnessed the attempt to abolish the Seanad and centralise power in a dysfunctional Chamber in the Dáil. I am sure the Government Chief Whip recognises how dysfunctional it is and it continues to be the same. Nothing has changed fundamentally in the Dáil.

In terms of our national democratic deficit we see a system that failed in the run-up to the economic crisis. The consensus politics which was in place in the making of a building bubble, a housing boom and bust is still there. The basic fundamentals of that system, the committee system, the way legislation is passed, and the lack of accountability, are still in place today, therefore, we continue to have a national democratic deficit.

In the local property tax legislation which was run through amendments had to be brought back in to rectify its failings. We have had a debate on the Water Services Bill prior to Christmas and the organ donation legislation was debated in this House in August 2013. The first EU directive on organ transplantation in the history of the State was signed into law by a Minister without a Deputy or Senator seeing it prior to it being brought into Irish law. Some 80% of the laws made in Ireland every year are EU directives, which are amended by Ministers and no committee, Deputy or Senator sees them in advance. As Members of the Seanad we should scrutinise EU directives separate from what is done by the committees. The committees scrutinise some but not all of the EU laws made in Ireland every year.

We are talking about what is possible for the Seanad. An argument was made prior to the election that the House it elitist. When the number of voters who are entitled to vote in any election is confined, therefore, it is elitist. To offer to make it less elitist but still elitist in terms of the electorate is not genuine reform. One cannot say that is real reform. To turn around and say that if one had the opportunity to go to third level that one will be given a vote but if not, one will not be given a vote, is not the democratic revolution that people sought in the last general election. All we had was a change of parties but there has not been a dramatic change in terms of the way business is done in this country. What is also possible, as outlined by Senators Zappone, Crown and Quinn, is to open up the franchise to give those in the North and the Irish diaspora, some 800,000 people who live overseas, a say in this Chamber. Every other European country, bar three, allows its overseas citizens a vote. We are in poor company when we say that Greece, Malta and Cyprus, are the three countries, with Ireland who do not give votes to their overseas citizens. However, in the Government's proposal only those who have third level degrees and who had to emigrate will have a vote in a reformed Seanad. Some 800,000 overseas citizens have Irish passports, the equivalent of the populations of Galway, Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Waterford, and yet they do not have a say in this Parliament. They should have a say in this House we should have a more democratic House.

How it is elected is important but what it does is far more important because these Houses have not been reformed in any real way. The system that failed the people and caused an economic collapse is still in place. The infrastructure has not changed. All that has changed are the people involved but the structure remains the same. The system that failed remains and it will fail again because the reform that should have happened has not happened. We must see that reform to ensure that the system does not fail the people again.