Paul Bradford (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the debate. It is positive that the heads of the Bill are being debated rather than the specific legislation. A couple of Ministers use the Oireachtas committees to present heads of Bills but we are using the Seanad, which is very appropriate.

I listened with interest to my colleagues and my difficulty is that ten Governments since 1979 have refused to respect the people's decision in the 1979 referendum. We finally have a Government which is acting on the June 1979 result but I am a little worried about the type of response proposed. We are suggesting a national constituency to select six Senators. Presumably, there will be hundreds of thousands of voters and the figure could perhaps reach 1 million. That will fundamentally change the type - I will not say the quality - of Senator traditionally elected to the university panel to contribute to this House.

In the aftermath of the referendum on the Seanad and of the huge input not only into the referendum debate but into the Seanad over the past 20 or 30 years of Independent and university Senators, some of the more cynical among us could say that what is being proposed is political revenge rather than political reform because a national constituency of six seats with an electorate of hundreds of thousands will certainly ensure that the type of Senator - I will not say colourful characters because that is an unfair description - traditionally returned by the university panel electorate will possibly not be the type of Senator elected under the new system and that concerns me.

The Minister is as much a scholar of politics as anybody in this House and if he looks at the university panel down through the years, only two party political figures were elected. The President, Michael D. Higgins, was, to the best of my knowledge, elected to the university panel in the early 1980s as was a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jim Dooge, who never hid his Fine Gael colours. However, the typical university Senator, whether elected by Trinity College, Dublin, or National University of Ireland graduates, is a very independent-minded Senator but I fear if we have one national list of six Senators, that type of Senator will never be elected again. I think we would all be at a loss as a result.