Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. He is always welcome here. He came to the Chamber on a previous occasion to explain the Government's activity on this matter. We were entertained by promises and commitments at that time from both himself and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. We were told that, in very short order, a consultation group would be set up among the Government parties and the Minister would come back to the House by the autumn of that year to present proposals. That was two years ago.

Am I surprised nothing was done? No, because it is entirely to be expected. Lying at the heart of all of this is a deep-seated cynicism on the part of the powers that be in government. I know this because I, Senators Higgins and Warfield and others soldiered on the group charged with preparing legislation to give effect to the modified version of the Manning report, using a Government-funded expert parliamentary draftsman. All of that was done in accordance with terms of reference laid down by the Government. We did our job within time and presented the report. I then went to see the Taoiseach to learn what he would do next. He informed me that he had no intention of doing anything. We had wasted our time. It was a cynical ploy and it was disgraceful in many respects. The Taoiseach said that as far as he was concerned, our proposals did not accord with his personal views about this House. He explained to me that he had been an abolitionist, although I do not understand how that is relevant to the issue. He said that if somebody in the Dáil wanted to introduce the Bill that was appended to the report, that person could do so in Private Members' time and he would allow a free vote on the matter. In short, he was trying to kill the Bill in the most cynical and brutal fashion. I am here a long time and I did not lose my temper with him, but I looked at him very differently from that day on. There was a matter of honour involved in that he asked us to work on terms of reference. The work we undertook was set out in the programme for Government under Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. Katherine Zappone, as Minister, supported it and was an enthusiast. She was thwarted at every hand's turn.

The Leader says the provisions we are discussing are not in the programme for Government. She is right, but why is that so? The Green Party's attempts to legislate on this matter were cynically quashed. That is what happened. A decision was made that the Government would, once again, do the old trick of getting rid of the unionist and diaspora representatives in the House and stuffing it with people they thought would end up in Dáil Éireann with a favourable wind behind them. How mistaken they were, according to the opinion polls. That is the cynicism we face.

It has been suggested that Senator Malcolm Byrne's Bill might be the way forward. We need to understand what is involved in the provisions of that Bill. There are 1 million graduates of the National University of Ireland, NUI, as I was told recently by somebody in NUI, of whom only some 100,000-plus are registered to vote. Trinity College probably has 200,000 or 300,000 graduates. If we add in the technical and other universities, including Dublin City University, DCU, and UL, there are approximately 1.8 million votes. The Senator's Bill would have the effect that a single constituency would elect six Members of this House on the basis of nearly 2 million votes, leaving out the 3 million people in our population who are not graduates. The view seems to be that this would be fine and would constitute the reform for which we all voted. That is what the seventh amendment is all about. In fact, it is not what it is about. When Enda Kenny, as Taoiseach, thought he could win his referendum and all the opinion polls were with him, he said that if he lost it, there would be no reform. The reason he said that was to pull the rug from under the people who wanted to retain the Seanad. He said, in effect, that we could have the rotten boroughs that exist at the moment or we could get rid of the Seanad. That was another cynical ploy.

The time has come to stop the pretence, foot dragging, cynicism and the abuse of this House. The plan was to have different people from different backgrounds involved in the democratic process, not to have a second Chamber of the Dáil. As I put it many years ago, the plan was to have this House represent something slightly more than a cross between a convalescent home and a crèche for party politicians who are having difficulty with convincing the electorate to elect or re-elect them. That is something with which I have my own difficulties.

The Government has been confronted by the Supreme Court with a very simple challenge, which is to say before the end of July what it is going to do. I do not expect the Minister of State to tell me this evening what that will be. A few days ago, I tabled a Commencement matter on this issue. I was told that the Minister of State and the Minister are working on a scheme they will bring to the Cabinet. The Government will be the first to hear about it. There will be no public consultation. The Government will do the least it possibly can to ensure it keeps the Seanad as firmly under its control as possible. It is a scandal and we will keep fighting it. At the next election, there will be a majority for reform. All the cynics who lose their seats and all the people here who do not get elected to Dáil Éireann will wonder why they turned down the opportunity to do something decent for the first time in their lives.