Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is a subject which is very close to my heart. When Members rise on the business of the House, they have some small amount of time, some three to six minutes or thereabouts, to express themselves on the issue. It is well worthwhile to elaborate on what Senator Higgins has just said.

The history of this is as follows, and let it be stitched into the record of this House. At a time when his leadership of the Fine Gael Party was under strong pressure, the then leader of the party, Enda Kenny, fearing a heave, decided to come up with a gimmick. The gimmick he decided to come up with was to announce, without any internal discussion whatsoever in the party, at a party dinner - I think it was in Citywest - that he was going to propose the abolition of Seanad Éireann. Many people in Fine Gael were astonished and shocked at this stunt, which it was, but that was his proposal.

When he got into government, he duly prepared legislation to mutilate our Constitution, to leave large holes in it, to take away the supervisory role of Seanad Éireann, to scrap completely the idea of a second House and to amend the present Constitution, which at least gives this House a right of veto over any proposal to abandon our veto in the European Union. All of that was to be swept away in order to satisfy the gimmicky stunt of abolition, which he had come up with without any pre-thought or pre-discussion.

Let us remember what happened then. The people of Ireland were told it was important to get rid of this House because it would save €25 million per annum. Of course, that was an inflated figure but it does not matter as that was what was run up on lampposts all over the country. A cynical campaign was then launched to abolish Seanad Éireann. I participated, with other people, in its defence on television, and I was at that stage not a Member of the Oireachtas at all. I recall that the late Senator Feargal Quinn asked me to come and speak to Senators from right across the political spectrum in this House at a meeting he convened to discuss the proposal. We had a discussion and many of the people who were Members of Seanad Éireann came along and expressed complete horror at the consequences of abolishing Seanad Éireann as proposed. Feargal Quinn, Katherine Zappone, who was then a Member of the House, Noel Whelan, former Senator Joe O'Toole and myself all got together to establish a group called Democracy Matters. It successfully contested a referendum, in combination with the Fianna Fáil Party, which opposed the proposal.

The people of Ireland rejected the proposal to abolish Seanad Éireann. The Taoiseach at the time, Enda Kenny, referred to the result as "a wallop". It was a well-deserved smack across the face for the cynicism that had brought him to that point. Let us be clear about what happened after that. I should say that in the course of the campaign, he had said that if the people voted to retain it, he would not reform it at all. He did not want the people to have that option of thinking it could be reformed. However, he then did yet another U-turn and decided that he was going to institute a reform process. He invited former Senator Maurice Manning to examine the whole process of reform without a further constitutional amendment, which he did. I was very honoured to be asked by Joe O'Toole and Maurice Manning to assist them with the drafting of their report and to show what could be done within the terms of the present Constitution to make the election of this House more democratic.

Having established this group, Mr. Kenny then went on to have another election, where he said that implementation of the Manning report would be part of the Government programme, and this was in combination with the Labour Party. Having done that, he did precisely nothing - he did not lift a finger to bring that about. Katherine Zappone, who was then a Government Minister in that Administration, pressed strongly at Cabinet that something should be done about this. Eventually, there was a change of leader in Fine Gael and Deputy Leo Varadkar succeeded Enda Kenny.In the meantime, Senator Feargal Quinn had asked me to stand for the NUI constituency because he wanted to retire from politics. To progress the Seanad reform project, it was agreed that an implementation group would be established. The group was established and, as Senator Higgins said, it was all-party. We set for ourselves, and we were given, terms of reference that were demanding. Within eight months, we had to produce the legislation to give effect to the Manning report and to make any recommendations for its amendment to make it more acceptable. We did all that work, and we went through every aspect of electing the Seanad. Due to other things, there was quite a controversy about who should chair the group, but eventually it chose me as its chairperson. I will not go into what the then Minister, former Deputy Shane Ross, did or did not attempt to do in respect of that matter.

In the end, however, we produced our report. More important than that, though, we decided that we would not just produce a report that could lie on some politician’s table. We asked for, and we were given, a professional parliamentary draftsman to embody our proposals in draft legislation. The cost of doing that was borne by the Taoiseach's Department, with the agreement of the then Taoiseach, and present Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar. We worked might and main to meet our deadlines. It was a thoroughly democratic and inclusive process. We listened to everybody and everybody participated. Nobody was excluded or stigmatised as a minority person. Everyone was free to participate in the production of the report. We presented it, and I duly sent it to the Taoiseach in time and with the draft Bill attached to it.

Nothing happened for a couple of months. Disturbed by that, I went to see the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, in his office to ask him what he intended to do in respect of the whole process of Seanad reform. I want this House to know that he told me that he had no intention whatsoever of moving the legislation in the Dáil, that he himself had supported the abolition of the Seanad and that the most he would do for the legislation, which was, of course, a sentence of death, was to allow a free vote on it if it was put forward by somebody else. That is what the then Taoiseach said. It was pretty cynical stuff. As Senator Higgins said, we had worked for eight months. We had done our level best to bring about a situation which I will describe as follows.

This House now has 43 Members elected by approximately 1,200 people, that is, county and city councillors, incoming Members of the Oireachtas and outgoing Senators. In the Constitution, there is already provision for the franchise for the higher education seats in the Seanad, one of which I am honoured to occupy for the time being, to be widened to include other institutions apart from just the NUI colleges and Trinity College Dublin. By the way, the Supreme Court has also accepted for consideration an appeal in litigation to consider whether there is a constitutional obligation to do something about the change in the Constitution that was made to allow for the extension of this higher education franchise. Whether that litigation succeeds or not, and I doubt whether it is likely to do so in the courts, if we were to go down the road of allowing every higher education graduate in this country to have a vote, including those from the technological universities, the institutes of technology and all the established universities, the situation then, depending on what criteria were selected, would be that we would have an electorate of approximately 900,000 to perhaps 1,100,000 people. They would be entitled to vote for six seats in this House, based on the increasing rate of participation in third level education.

Of course, that situation would leave out everybody without a university or third-level degree, including those people who are being encouraged by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, and others, to take up apprenticeships. It would exclude people who have never gone to university, people who have gone to work in businesses and people who have never been employed. It would leave out a huge range of people. People who came to Ireland with foreign university degrees would also have no say in the election of this House in such a situation, even if they became Irish citizens. Of the 5.5 million people in the country now, or whatever the figure is, the situation I have described would leave about 80% of Irish people with no vote for these six higher education seats in the Seanad. As time goes on, about 10% to 20% of people might have a vote on that panel. Such a situation would also mean, however, that the other 43 seats would continue to be elected by roughly one thousandth of the electorate who would be voting for the six higher education seats. If we were to say that there are approximately 1.2 million people eligible to vote for the six seats and then 1,200 councillors voting for the other 43 seats in this House, we get to that rough ratio of one in 1,000. It would mean that a county councillor's vote would be worth 1,000 times any other citizen's vote to establish this House.

Our group came up with the simple proposal that, without changing the Constitution, it was quite lawful to extend the franchise to citizens who wished to be registered to vote in areas such as agriculture and the environment, culture and education, administration or industrial and commercial matters, if they were qualified on the higher education panels, however extended. That proposal would ensure that everybody would be able to opt to have a vote in an area of interest to constitute Seanad Éireann. That is a radical proposal, but it is not all that radical when we think about it. In fact, it is worthy of a republic that every one of its citizens should be regarded as equally entitled, in some respect, to participate in the selection of the Upper House.

People who vote for Senator Higgins and for me, who are a small minority, should not be a privileged few. Everybody should have the right to vote in this context, if they chose to do so. Many university graduates never even register to vote and those registers are hopelessly out of date and messy to function with. In the context of our group's proposal, however, everybody was to have an opportunity to have some input into the constitution of this House.

This is the situation embodied in the legislation we brought before this House. It was drafted at the Government’s expense. Despite the cynical game playing that went on to leave it on the shelf as soon as it was drafted, the legislation was drafted with the intention I spoke of and to bring all that about. It was presented in this House by its proponents. This Government, which had flooded the House with its own appointees and that had scrapped the idea that people from Northern Ireland or the diaspora would be included among the Taoiseach’s nominees, was so anxious to fill up available candidacies in marginal seats that it simply was not even willing to allow the Bill that we put before this House to progress. The Government put down an amendment to the proposal for the Second Stage reading of the Bill to postpone it for 12 months. That period has now well and truly elapsed. It elapsed during the Covid-19 period.

I will record what happened then. I have the greatest respect for the Minister of State, and I know he is sincere in this matter.It became clear he proposed to stall the legislative process for the Bill, with the Government having paid for its drafting. Let us remember exactly what happened then. He made it clear to this House he would come back with his own proposals, and the deadline passed more than a year ago. It may have passed 14 months ago now and it was a deadline he set for himself to formulate proposals for reform. I spoke to him about the matter because he contacted me and wanted to explain his position. He told me he would do the following. He said he would not consult everybody again but would set up a committee of Members of the Oireachtas from the Government parties, which are Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, to come up with their variant of the Manning report and associated proposals. He told me the committee would meet in rapid order and have its conclusions ready by the early autumn of last year.

I have duly inquired of all Government parties whether anybody has ever heard of a proposal to do that or have such a group or meetings. It has not happened. Of course, I was sold a pup, having meekly made an assumption. I indicated to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, at the time that I took in good faith what he said to the House were his instructions as to the Minister's intention. I still believe the Minister of State acted in good faith and he believed the undertakings his senior Minister made to this House.

The Minister has not delivered, however, and he has never even bothered to lift the phone to explain why he has not delivered. He never established that group and, as cynically as the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, simply ignored the matter and come up with the notion that, somehow, this legislation had to be prioritised over it. There is no reason they should not proceed in tandem or this legislation could not have paved the way for Seanad reform. There is not even a hint of Seanad reform in the legislation, and from this I draw the fair deduction, in fairness to the Government parties, that they do not intend to lift a finger to reform this House during this session.

I know the Green Party asked for Seanad reform to be included in the negotiations for the formation of the current Government and it was plámásed too. It seems to have fallen for the idea that something would be done but we would not have the recommendations of the Manning report brought into law in the form proposed in the legislation.

I put on record that what the Government has contrived to do is keep this House exactly as it was and offer no reform of any kind whatever. It will continue the position where 1,200 people will elect 43 Members of this House and toy around with that process. Senator Malcolm Byrne has toyed with legislation to extend the university franchise. I realise the generosity of his spirit but I wonder how it is he could not think about expanding his own electorate in an equal way. As I have said, the result is a two-tier society where on an entirely artificial basis people who hold certain diplomas from certain educational bodies would be given the opportunity to elect Members to six seats. In any view of the matter, for the foreseeable future they are a small minority of the total population of the country.

I am a university Senator and the legislation we put forward respected that referendum result, doing its best to implement the outcome by putting up two models for consideration, both a majority and minority perspective. The former Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, recently spoke about the idea of directly elected mayors and his comments made much sense. From what I can see is happening in Limerick, a job specification is being prepared that for a five-year term will make no difference at all. The chief executive of Limerick City and County Council is to be redesignated the director general so the Custom House rule will continue to exist no matter what.

Mr. Ahern criticised the directly elected mayor proposal, making the point very simply that people would be elected as personality or single-issue candidates etc. and they would have to carry out a very complex function. He implied the whole thing would be a sham. He told the citizens' assembly that was his view and, God bless him, there is much to be said for the views he expressed. If there are 1.2 million people addressing one ballot paper, or even if that is divided into two or three ballot papers, in order to elect six Senators, it would have the same effect. One would have to be a household name to the power of n to have any chance to get elected in a single national constituency of 1.2 million people. I do not know who would be elected but the process would certainly not be in the tradition of Garrett FitzGerald, John Kelly, Feargal Quinn and the others of the same ilk, such as James Dooge. These were people who came from the university sector and brought that third level education perspective to debates.

I will not comment on the Order of Business that we had the dispute about today. It now appears the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, having come here to say he would not guillotine anything and that he would give us as much time as we wanted, has told the Leader that his Bill to reform the third level sector must be rushed through effectively today and in one more day in four hours. That is the kind of attitude we have, although it is a slightly irrelevant point.

The history of Fine Gael in particular with regard to Seanad reform has been shameful and cynical. First, the party proposed to abolish the Seanad without any internal party discussion. It sought to set up the Manning committee and the implementation group before, in private, saying there was no intention to do anything about it. It is cynical and the public is entitled to know about it. I could be given two or three minutes on the Order of Business to make these comments but I needed a bit more time. The only time I am getting is through the amendments of Senator Higgins. She would concur with me that the picture I have painted is a fair and reasonable one and not overly dramatised. The depth of cynicism I have encountered on this is shocking.

A party that does this deserves bad luck and the way opinion polls are going, it will get that bad luck. There shall be other people who may take the matter more seriously than the party has up to now.