Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As a prelude to my thoughts on the Bill I want to address a couple of points made earlier about the relevance of the Seanad and especially the attempts to denigrate the Seanad. I am a new Senator and am in the House only a couple of weeks. There are two very important things to me and to the people I serve in the west of Ireland that we were able to do through this House. One was the situation around homes affected by pyrite. It was not a local issue as it affected hundreds of homes across the State. My colleague, Senator Mac Lochlainn, and I were able to speak to the Minister on the importance of the matter and the need for the Minister to address it.I thank him for the work he has done since and for the work he plans to do around that issue. For me, that was very relevant.

The other opportunity we had was around the bin charges and the instrument that was available to us there regarding the annulment of the ministerial order. If each individual within this Chamber chooses not to use that instrument, it is down to him or her and he or she must reflect on not using that opportunity. It should not be used as an excuse to denigrate the House. I am not here for the good of my health. I leave my children three or four days a week to come up here and make a difference, to represent people, and to put rural Ireland front and centre in the Oireachtas and in this Chamber. That is what I intend to spend the rest of my time here doing. I cannot stand over the denigration that has happened in previous conversations and I always respect everyone's opinion and the experience they are bringing to this Chamber. We can learn from each other. However, Senators are not speaking in my name when they say the Seanad is a useless place or somewhere that is referred to as a crèche or a nursing home. I am in neither a crèche nor a nursing home, thanks be to God.

On the panels, reference was made to the agricultural panel and the fact that people come from different panels and have no experience of it. I was elected on the agricultural panel because I am passionate about the contribution agriculture can make to our economy and to society and the experiences of agriculture I bring into this House. Getting back to the Seanad Bill, we in Sinn Féin will support any measure to make Seanad Éireann more inclusive. We will not, therefore, oppose this Bill's passage to Committee Stage. I thank the working group whose recommendations and draft Bill form much of the Bill that is before us today. Like many others, I have been frustrated at the lack of progress since the referendum results in 2013. It was clear to all that although the people wanted to retain the Seanad, it could not be business as usual. It was only in July of last year, months before the general election, that my own party leader, Deputy Gerry Adams, and other party leaders were invited to a meeting with the Taoiseach on Seanad reform. This turned out to be nothing more than a box-ticking exercise at the tail-end of a term that had promised root and branch reform from the outset.

There are many progressive aspects to this Bill, yet alongside them are retained elements which allow for elitism and abuse of the Seanad by major political parties. We specifically welcome section 8, which inserts a new section into the Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Act 1947 as a measure that increases the franchise. I am somebody who has lived outside this country and who was forced to emigrate for 13 years. I arrived in London with £5 in my pocket. I would have liked to have had an opportunity to have a say in what was happening back here in my home at that time. I will passionately defend the right of the Irish diaspora to vote and to have a say in their own country. The fact they are forced to emigrate does not mean we should cut them off and not recognise their Irish citizenship. We in Sinn Féin would not have limited this electorate to voting for 30 seats but would seek that the entire Seanad be directly elected. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction.

The Bill is just that - a Bill that can only repeal or amend previous legislation relating to Seanad Éireann. In our submission last year to the working group on Seanad reform, and, indeed, the very first motion we placed on the Order Paper of this session, we argued for a committee on Seanad reform that could propose and lay out in detail far-reaching and fundamental change. Many of the criticisms I and my party have regarding the shortcomings of this Bill could form the basis of a plan of work for this proposed committee. Some of this change would involve constitutional change and, more crucially, input from all Members of the current Seanad, over 40 of whom are newly elected. The problem with this Bill is that, by its very nature, it cannot propose constitutional change. It cannot remove the provision for the appointment by An Taoiseach of 11 Members. Needless to say, we in Sinn Féin would advocate the removal of this provision from the Constitution. The most recent Taoiseach's appointments not only showed that they are open to abuse by the Taoiseach, but the fact that a deal was done weeks beforehand with Fine Gael's facilitators in government, Fianna Fáil, led to cynicism among the public.

This Bill provides for the repeal of the Seanad Electoral (University Members) Act 1937 in its entirety. Sinn Féin views the replacement of this Act with the provision for another constituency limited to graduates of all institutions of higher education as a missed opportunity. While the Bill gives effect to the decision of the people in the 1979 referendum to give votes to graduates from all institutes of higher education, Sinn Féin would seek to remove this provision. It is entirely unjust that a person's ability to vote in the Seanad election is determined by their level of formal education. There is no explicit provision to increase representation of marginalised groups within Irish society. It has been proven time and again that merely tweaking electoral rules does not increase representation among the marginalised. The Seanad is the ideal mechanism for direct intervention and reaching out to those who traditionally are disengaged from politics or are under-represented.

There is a serious anomaly in the current set-up of the Oireachtas. If the Lower House represents the political, geographical interests of the State on a population basis, then their social, cultural and economic interests should be represented in the Upper House on a sectoral basis. I would like to see this distinction between Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann maintained and strengthened. When we talk of representing minorities and the marginalised, we must also focus on areas such as the west and the Gaeltacht, whose people have been marginalised by their very place of residence. While welcoming the positive aspects, such as the extension of the franchise to those who are resident in the North and those in the diaspora, we feel the spirit of democratisation should have been progressed much further. We want a Seanad that has the experience, expertise and time to consider legislation, to give ears to those outside the legislative process and engage with those who traditionally have been outside the entire political process. We use the term "engage" in its most direct sense - we want to see citizens talked about and talked to in the Seanad on the issues affecting them. We believe all this is best obtained through an open and direct election by the entire electorate. We look forward to the Committee Stage of this Bill, where we will have further discussion on the amendments.