Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think any reform should be a good and meaningful one. I am not sure whether, if the public were actually aware of the all-party proposals and the different reports that were made, they would actually be supportive of the reform that was proposed. I am being honest about that. If we are going to reform the Seanad, it should be a reform for the better, and the difficulty with what was proposed, in my view, is that it was constrained by the Constitution, which requires that, for example, the Seanad be elected by postal vote. How would we explain to a public who all went out to vote in September that 90 days later, we would have to have a postal vote of 3 million people?That is kind of impractical, and the public would think so too. That would also require people to sign up to certain panels. People in our country identify in different ways. They might identify by the county or region they live in, or they might identify by being part of some affinity group. Asking 3 million citizens to sign up to administrative, labour, industrial and commercial or university panels is not actually a good idea. Those panels do not reflect Irish life, nor did they ever. They derive from a papal encyclical from, I think, the 1930s. I also do not believe in excluding local authority members from having a voice in the Seanad.

There is a case for indirect election of a second Chamber, if we are going to have one. If we have a directly-elected Chamber, there is a case for indirect election to a second Chamber. I would not like to say to our councillors that they will no longer get to elect any Senators. That is what was proposed, so they are among-----