Seanad debates

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

2:05 pm

Photo of Feargal QuinnFeargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome and I am glad to see him in the House for this valuable debate. On 4 October over 634,000 people voted to ensure that the Seanad would not be abolished. I suspect that for many citizens, 4 October was the first time they had the chance to cast any type of vote relating to the Seanad. The question now is how long they will have to wait before they can have a say in Seanad elections. Will they have a say in the elections?

It is often asserted that this House cannot agree on a series of reform measures yet earlier this month Democracy Matters published a paper that set out six core principles around which this House can unite, and Senator Zappone has included some of them in her motion.

The Seanad Bill 2013, which Senator Zappone and I published, and the Bill published by Senator Crown, light the path towards reform of this House, and today's motion rightly focuses on two of those fundamental principles, namely, universal suffrage and one person, one vote as a starting point for reform. I hope these are two principles on which this House can unite.

Some 43 Members of this House are elected by a cohort of county councillors, and 11 are nominated by the Taoiseach. Of the 60 Members of this House, I am one of only six people who are elected by a significant number of people from around the country, Northern Ireland and throughout the world. During the referendum campaign, many critics of this House labelled the Seanad as being elitist and unrepresentative. I agree with those assertions. However, I find it incomprehensible that any Taoiseach would want to maintain a Seanad electoral system whose underlying principle seems to be one councillor, seven votes. That is the position with a number of county councillors who have five votes automatically and if they happen to have degrees from two universities, they get seven votes. That is an intolerable situation when the majority of citizens have no vote. As democrats, we cannot allow that to continue.

Opening up the electoral process to citizens at home and abroad, as well as to people in Northern Ireland, will deeply enrich the political dynamite of this House. Since the economic collapse some years ago, there has been much navel-gazing about how Ireland can best harness the views and the confidence of the diaspora who are scattered throughout the world.

However, one of the best ways to achieve this is by opening up the Seanad elections to citizens around the world, as proposed in Senator Katherine Zappone's motion. In the face of Government inaction on Seanad reform the public may be without a voice in Seanad elections for the foreseeable future. As a result of the Government's plans to implement the 1979 referendum result, the ranks of the privileged who hold university qualifications that entitle them to vote in Seanad elections will be added to, while those without a voice in Seanad elections will continue to be ignored. The extension of the franchise to vote in Seanad elections to more graduates can only ever be a small first step towards reform; it is not of itself real reform.

Since the referendum people have occasionally stopped me to ask me what the Seanad had done to reform itself. In Democracy Matters we marked the passing of 100 days since the referendum and highlighted Government inaction in the delivery of reforms, but as a House we have yet to deliver the reforms which are within our gift. It was interesting to listen to the Leader and hear some of the proposals he was making. They are worthy of consideration and we should make sure we give them consideration, but anybody who has spent any time following the proceedings of this House can clearly see that it is dysfunctional, despite the efforts of the Leader and others to do something about this. It is imperative that its business and workings be reformed through changes to Standing Orders. It needs a more clearly defined role that reflects its constitutional mandate as a House of the Legislature, not just that of a mini-Dáil.

There is an opportunity to make this House more reflective of the gender balance in society. The Bill Senator Katherine Zappone and I put through includes such a measure. In failing to implement reforms we do not do justice to ourselves and the people who place their trust in the reform agenda. In the absence of reform, the Seanad will remain elitist, undemocratic and unrepresentative. The reluctance to deliver root and branch reform plays into the hands of those who like everything just the way it is. It disappoints me somewhat to have to say this, but the only people I know who want to keep the Seanad the way it is are some of my fellow Senators. We should make sure we listen very carefully, but more than this we should do something about it also.

Last October, some weeks after the referendum, the Taoiseach came to the House with the stated intention of hearing Senators' reform proposals. He followed this up with a number of meetings with party leaders in December and I was one of several people who called on him to establish a Seanad reform task force which should comprise a mix of Members of the Seanad as well as people outside the House. Why should the incumbents of the House be the sole deciders of its future? I know the Taoiseach was unhappy with the referendum result, but rather than walk away from the Seanad, he should grasp the opportunity to reform it and take all of the criticisms the Government levelled at it during the campaign and fix the underlying problems that had given rise to them. He has been given the answer which is included in Senator Katherine Zappone's motion. If he took hold of it, it would enhance his reputation and he would be able to look back and say he was the one who reformed the Seanad and made it democratic and worthy of consideration. He should accept the motion.

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