Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am very grateful to you, a Chathaoirligh, and to my colleagues. I hasten to add that the party will mostly take place on Zoom and entirely in keeping with regulations.

I welcome the Minister of State. I commend Senators Byrne, Cassells and their colleagues on proposing this Bill and highlighting Seanad reform so early in the term of this new Seanad. Reform is clearly long overdue as the Senators have said. Many of us who have been in this House for some time will feel a strong sense of déjà vubecause we have debated Seanad reform on several occasions. Unfortunately, successive governments over many decades have dragged their heels on it.

It is disappointing that the programme for Government does not specifically mention Seanad reform, although I very much welcome the electoral commission proposal, which is also Labour Party policy. I think the Green Party was the only one of the three coalition parties to mention Seanad reform and to commit to implementing the Manning report. The Manning report gives us an important blueprint for reform. In 2015, the Labour Party group, of which I was then leader, made a submission to the Manning process. I urge colleagues to read that submission, which made some very practical suggestions and recommendations for reform that would not require constitutional amendment and yet would introduce universal suffrage, which is clearly the gold standard.

Of course, it would also have implemented the seventh amendment and extended the franchise on the university panels to graduates of all the institutions.I do support that, as does the Labour Party, but the difficulty for me is that the reform is one that needs to be done as part of a package of reforms because, otherwise, we are going to see such a skewing of the electorate. We would have six Senators elected by 800,000 university graduates with just this Bill. Without the other much needed reforms, one would not have any reform to the electoral process for the other 43 Senators. It is clear that the 11 are contained in the Constitution and that cannot be changed.

Our proposal in 2015 was that there would be universal suffrage and that those who were graduates of any third level institution would have the option of voting for the university panel instead of one of the other panels, so that one would not be doubly enfranchised as a university graduate, but the franchise would be extended to all third level graduates for one panel. It is a simple and straightforward way of dealing with necessary Seanad reform.

Clearly, there are other big issues with the Bill in terms of logistical challenges, operational challenges and the cost of running for an election where one potentially has 800,000 electors, but those should not stand in the way of reform. I very much support the momentum towards reform. I hope we will see the great work that was done in the Manning reform process and with Senator McDowell's group, the Seanad reform implementation group, on which I was proud to represent the Labour Party. I hope we will be able to build on that in the lifetime of this Government and this Seanad, and we will be able to bring forward the package of reforms that is so badly needed, that can be done within the Constitution and that can bring about universal suffrage, including also the expansion of the university panel to graduates of all third level institutions.