Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to get into the Seanad by-election name-calling but there are serious e-mails being sent to me and other Members of this House in recent days, and I think somebody somewhere needs to deal with them fairly quickly.

I rise today with respect to the Order of Business of 22 October, where Senator John Crown asked the acting leader of the day, Deputy Paul Coghlan, to amend the Order of Business to allow No. 51, the Seanad Electoral Reform Bill, to be taken before No. 2. The acting leader in reply said, "As I understand it, there is a Government implementation body and I am afraid I will not be able to accept the amendment." I am sure the acting leader spoke in all honesty, believing what he was saying to be true. However, a member of the public has contacted me and has had correspondence with the Taoiseach's office, asking questions about this implementation body. The reply from the Taoiseach's office is as follows:

I refer to your recent email to the Office of the Taoiseach, Mr. Enda Kenny, T.D., regarding the membership of the proposed Seanad Reform Implementation Body.

As you will be aware, the Taoiseach established an independent Working Group on Seanad Reform earlier this year and gave it a wide remit to propose Seanad reform within existing constitutional parameters. When the Group's Report was published, the Taoiseach welcomed it, saying it was innovative and radical and contained some far-reaching recommendations on the way members are elected to the Seanad and on how the Seanad should perform its functions and that there needed to be public and political discussion and consultation on it.

In that context, the Seanad debated the Working Group's Report On 5 May last and again on 8 July; also the Taoiseach met with the opposition party leaders in July to discuss its contents.

Arising from that meeting, the Taoiseach gave a commitment to having a debate in Dáil Éireann on the Working Group's Report. No decision has been taken in advance of the Dáil debate on the establishment of an Implementation Body on who the membership might be.

I do not believe anybody set out to deliberately mislead the House but we need to be told straight out whether there is an implementation body in place. If there is not, that needs to be made clear in the House today.