Seanad debates

Tuesday, 11 March 2014

General Scheme of the Seanad Electoral (University Members) (Amendment) Bill 2014: Statements

 

4:20 pm

Photo of David NorrisDavid Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes, but we all agree that it is tripe.

I believe this Bill is a prelude to the invasion of the university seats by political parties, and that is made quite clear by the Minister's remarks towards the end of his contribution, in which he said:

Head 8 makes provision for an alternative arrangement for the filling of casual vacancies based on the "replacement candidates list" system that operates for European Parliament elections in Ireland.
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that the Government proposes to invade these seats. This is a gratuitous act of revenge against the universities, because it simply will not work. I said a couple of weeks ago in the House that the only way it could work was if the Taoiseach was prepared to be generous and gracious and give some of his powers of appointment away to create a larger constituency. I said at the beginning that I felt this would be very difficult to work because there might be up to 500,000 people entitled to register, but the Government now says the number is 800,000.

Let us just look at this; it is complete nonsense. What we propose is quite acceptable and we all spoke about it when the Government was doing sweet damn-all about activating this reform. The Minister was not a bit bloody interested in reform but now cannot wait. Let us see what the effect will be, however, because he is not reforming the whole Seanad but just doing a little bit to gratify the Government and get at the people who speak out openly in this House. We will have 800,000 people electing six members, 1,000 electing 43 and one person electing 11. Is that what the Minister calls democracy? If so, I was quite right to say he is a hypocrite. While I like him personally, I do not like hypocrisy. This is the greatest bit of bloody hypocrisy I have ever seen in my life. It is matched by several other elements in this Bill. The general scheme states, "As a consequence of having a model based on a single constituency, no graduate would have more than one vote in the election of members by the institutions of higher education." Come on, now. What kind of eejits does the Minister really think we are? This is not necessary. The Bill is not necessary to achieve that objective. I am glad the Minister is looking embarrassed and picking his lip. He is quite right to because he has left intact the fact that the political people will still be left with six votes each if they have a graduate degree. There are five votes for the parties. Those concerned are saying they are desperately worried that somebody with a degree from both Trinity and UCD might have two votes but do not give a rattling fart for the fact that there are five votes on the political panels.

As far as I am concerned, this scheme does not take into account Northern Ireland or graduates abroad. What is the meaning of the franchise section? Are we now to be run by the bureaucracy? What happened to representative democracy? The Minister does not give a sugar about it.

I am staying on merely to hear my colleague, Senator Barrett, on whose time I hope I have not trespassed. I regard this as the most contemptible piece of blatant hypocrisy. The Government will get nowhere with it. The public will not be fooled and will accept only real reform. The entire Seanad must be reformed instead of this tinkering around.

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