Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the Chamber. I congratulate him on his reappointment as Minister of State and his appointment to this area. I know he will bring great energy and natural ability to the role. I wish him well in it. This is one of his major challenges. It is an important challenge. I also congratulate Senator McDowell on bringing forward the legislation. I congratulate my old friend and teacher of a few years ago, Maurice Manning, who in many respects is very responsible for the legislation as well. As my colleagues have all said, we are supporting the legislation in principle and in its full spirit. Naturally, we will be proposing amendments and examining it. That is what this important process is there to do. I hope that there will be much of that in the House.

When we talk about reform, change and all of that, it is important to acknowledge the past and what has been achieved. It might be no harm as a backdrop to acknowledge once again that the Irish Seanad of this Republic has been an enormous success. It has been a success historically in one very important sphere and regard. I am very conscious of this as a Border person. It gave expression, identity and provided a Chamber to which those who are broadly described as southern Unionists could relate. That is not a fair term. It is the Protestant community of the various Protestant churches of the Republic. In the formation and the earlier stages of the State, that community looked to this Chamber as its voice and medium. It was a very important factor in achieving political stability and political buy-in and to normalising the difficult birth of the nation. It was a difficult stage at the outset but the Seanad provided an important Chamber in that regard. That voice was very important. That merits acknowledgement.

Senator Feighan and other Senators has gone through the list in more depth. I will avoid naming names on this occasion, but the Seanad has had many distinguished former Members and many more ordinary people who served in it and did wonderful work. Even from my own constituency, I can think of two particular former Members. It occurs to me as apt to acknowledge them given that Senator Wilson is in the chair at the moment. Two people from County Cavan who served in this Chamber with distinction before Senator Wilson and I were former Senators Séamus Dolan and Andy O'Brien. The former Senator O'Brien's family are still involved in politics in the county with great distinction. He made an enormous contribution to this House. He brought a very particular humour to it and a great quality and incisiveness to examining legislation. The former Senator Dolan became Cathaoirleach and was a distinguished Cathaoirleach of this Chamber. He ultimately became a member of the Council of State. There was also former Senator Baxter from our own county as well who made a real contribution. His daughter is still involved in the civil society and public life of our county.

I accept and understand the principle of a wider franchise. We have to accept the principle of a wider franchise and the concept of one person, one vote. That is a maxim and it has to be accepted. I am concerned that there is great potential that the whole proposal for dealing with that is quite woolly and all over the shop. It has the potential for abuse, whether it is through the online registration or abuse by political parties. If we are claiming that the current Seanad suffers from abuse by political parties - and implicitly that is the proposition - I believe the new system significantly lends itself to that potential abuse. If we consider ourselves to be dealing with an ailment in the body politic at the moment, we would want to make sure that the cure is better than the disease. Great caution is needed. The Minister of State has an insight and his initial remarks suggest that he has identified the difficulty. I say to him that we need to take great caution in the methodologies, the registration processes, in how people register and in all other areas of potential abuse. The mind boggles at the kind of ideas that could affect these processes, particularly online abuse. It needs major thought and work.

I understand the point made by Senator Norris on the reform of the nominating bodies and I accept that there is potential in that area. Again, we have to watch that it is carefully done. That is a very important point. Before I leave his remarks, I must acknowledge that Senator Norris made a valid point. It might sound somewhat elitist and it is not from my own perspective, but I would not like us to totally extinguish the university input and the university constituency that attained expression in the Seanad after feeling that it was not always gaining expression in our popular Chamber. We must be careful. I have a certain sympathy with the points the Senator made.

The Minister of State has a background as a council member in Meath and I know anecdotally that he has a great friendship with his councillors. It is very important that we do not make our councillors feel totally alienated and disenfranchised in this process. They enjoyed this participation and felt that this was their link to the Oireachtas. I think that limiting their numbers to 13 is a bit extreme and should be looked at on Committee Stage. The election of the other 30 will present logistical difficulties and would need amendment on Committee Stage in terms of regional structures.

The whole issue is about how we do this. The concept, the principle and the motivation are good and the ambition is visionary. All of that is in order. However, I am not convinced - I am yet to see evidence otherwise - that we are not at risk of putting a new structure in place that will be open to greater abuse and be much more difficult to manage. The whole thing needs very careful thought. I would like to have time to develop how we look at the management of the House and how we structure our business but that is not today's business. We support this Bill in principle but I think it will need very significant and careful scrutiny on Committee Stage.