Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I will take as my starting point Senator Paddy Burke's comment that the current Seanad, in a way that has never previously been the case, is not under the thumb of the Government. I suspect that depends on how one defines the "Government". I am not sure that historians will necessarily take the view that this Seanad showed itself to be completely independent of the will of the Dáil in significant ways. The real test of independence is that this would happen from time to time. Whether it should happen or whether our system should allow that type of conflict with the directly elected Legislature or how such a conflict might be allowed and managed are matters for another day's debate.

I commend the members of the implementation group on the work they have undertaken. Senator McDowell, in particular, deserves thanks for chairing the group and the work he did. The extent of just how tortured the debate on Seanad reform has been is starkly illustrated by the list of 13 previous reports on the issue on page 5 of the report. It appears that forests have been felled to produce reports on this topic. Let us hope we are getting to the end of that and towards a day of action. The 2016 programme for Government stated that the Government would progress Seanad reform and the Manning report as a priority, yet it took 18 months for the Government to establish the group. It has taken nine months for the report to be subject to debate in this House. Perhaps there are reasons for those delays of which I am not aware.

The report contains a number of what might be described as minority reports dissenting from certain conclusions of the report. Mine is not among them as I did not make a submission so I approach what I will say here with a degree of humility. I have always been of the view that the changes we need require constitutional change, therefore what I would like to happen would go beyond the remit of the Manning report and the implementation group's report. I noted with interest the dissent of the Fine Gael Senators, who strongly attacked the report's conclusions. They talk about meaningful and tangible reform and say it can only be achieved through constitutional change through a referendum. I do not know if that statement will cause surprise in their party, but the 2016 Fine Gael manifesto said nothing about a new referendum, nor did the programme for Government. Indeed, the Taoiseach, wrongly in my view, explicitly ruled out a new referendum when he addressed this House in February 2018. It appears the Fine Gael Senators took it upon themselves to abandon that position. Fine Gael Deputies did not do so. The Senators say they agree with the Taoiseach's position on extending the Seanad franchise.I am not sure how I would feel about that, but I would have some reservations in so far as what might be proposed would go beyond giving the franchise to the citizens of this State.

The decision to propose a referendum to abolish the Seanad in 2013 was a disastrous, politically immature decision that was based on the premise that the Seanad was not functioning in the way that it should, and it jumped from there to a mere simplistic proposal to abolish it. The public, by a very slim majority, saw through, dare I say, the lack of sincerity around political reform that lay behind that proposal. It was a grab for political popularity cloaked in the guise of an attempt at political reform, when what was really needed was reform both in how the Members of the Seanad are elected and how it functions. Of course, that was not on offer on that occasion.

It was said at least once in the time afterwards that the referendum had happened and there could be no further in-depth reform of the Seanad or there could be no recourse to a referendum. It seemed to me that showed a real lack of engagement with the need to reform how Members are elected to the Seanad and how the Seanad functions.

The public, having given their decision that there must continue to be a Seanad, in much the same way that the public in Britain have given their decision in favour of Brexit, just as the question should now be what type of Brexit, extreme or minor, by the same logic the question is what type of Seanad do citizens want in light of the fact that they have voted to keep it. I do not think it is correct to curtail the public's options by saying that whatever way it is going to be reformed, it must be reformed within the existing constitutional framework. While some might accuse Senator Paddy Burke of advancing the type of arguments against the type of reform favoured by Senator McDowell as somehow wanting to perpetuate a system that involves a relationship with councillors of a particular type and so on, the issues that Senator Burke is bringing to the surface do arise once it is decided that reform of the composition of the Seanad and the election of Members can be done only within the existing constitutional framework.