Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, although I will have a few words for him later.

The 2013 proposal on the Seanad’s abolition was produced like a rabbit out of the hat at a Fine Gael president’s dinner as part of Enda Kenny’s defence of his leadership, which was then under challenge by Deputy Richard Bruton. The proposal took his own party by surprise and the arguments in favour of abolishing the Seanad centred mainly on a false claim that the referendum, which would cost approximately €15 million, would save the electorate €25 million annually. In the course of that referendum campaign, Enda Kenny cynically threatened that, if his abolition proposal were defeated, his Government would not reform the Seanad. This was a shameful low in constitutional history. The then Taoiseach stated that if the people voted to keep the Seanad, he would leave it exactly as it was and unreformed. He said that the Seanad was underperforming at the time and threatened the people that, if they kept it, he would keep it as an underperforming Chamber. Shame on him.

Once the people spoke at the ballot box, though, he changed tack completely. He stated that he understood the Government had received a wallop and he established the Manning commission. That working group was tasked with making proposals, which it did. Senator Higgins has dealt with them. They were elaborate proposals, but their gist was that every Irish citizen, regardless of whether he or she had the benefit of a third level degree, should have the same right to participate in the choosing of the Upper House and that no one, due to a lack of educational opportunity, the deliberate choices he or she made to pursue a noble career that did not involve third level education or being unable to get employment and instead spending his or her whole life as a dependant, should be told he or she was a second-class citizen.

In 2016, the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalition was, after a protracted negotiation, replaced by a minority Fine Gael Government, supported by Fianna Fáil through a confidence and supply agreement. Katherine Zappone, a former Member of this House, insisted that implementation of the Manning report be included in the programme for Government as a commitment of that Government. The leader of Fianna Fáil, Deputy Micheál Martin, sharply criticised Enda Kenny for establishing the Manning working group as a box-ticking exercise because he realised that, once its report was furnished to that Cabinet, the Cabinet would not consider it. It was never even tabled for consideration at Enda Kenny’s Cabinet table. Deputy Martin stated that the then Government clearly wanted any substantive reform kicked away until the next government and did not want to discuss anything of significance. He believed that we needed to introduce direct elections for the Seanad, but that it was unlikely there would be any reform before the following general election.

Although the new programme for Government adopted in 2016 committed to the implementation of the Manning report, no steps were taken in pursuit of that commitment. Enda Kenny was replaced by Deputy Leo Varadkar in 2017. When pressed to deliver on the Government's commitment, Deputy Varadkar told this House on St. Brigid's Day 2018:

A Programme for a Partnership Government commits us to pursue the implementation of the report. I am happy to do so ... [a] committee should be established with an eight-month mandate to consider the Manning report and develop specific proposals to legislate for Seanad reform. It is proposed that this committee will comprise Members of the Oireachtas with the assistance of outside experts ... The proposed timeframe is to facilitate changes that will be used to elect the Members of the Seanad after the next one.

Shame on him, as we will come to his U-turn later. He also stated: "There could be universal suffrage using the panel system allowing people to choose which one suits them best." He envisaged a major public information campaign, stating: "People will have to decide for which panel they wish to register, with the most important principle being that one can only have one vote and so can only join one panel." He said that, as with the Ceann Comhairle's position in Dáil Éireann, the selection of the Cathaoirleach should be done by secret ballot, but such a move is being frustrated right now and his party has done the exact opposite. All of these commitments were made to this House on 1 February 2018.

In due course, the implementation group was established and I was made its chairman. I pay tribute to Senators Higgins, Warfield, Cassells and others who participated in good faith and, within a tight timeframe, produced a powerful report. Appended to it was a Bill prepared at the expense of the Department of the Taoiseach by a professional parliamentary draftsman. I just want the Minister to know that all of this happened. The Bill had 100 sections and five Schedules. The Minister can imagine my shock and dismay that, when we furnished the report within time and I went to the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar’s office in early 2019 and sat down in his office with him, he told me privately that he had no interest whatsoever in the proposal. He said that he was an opponent of the existence of the Seanad and that he had always been an abolitionist. I told him that he had got us to sit for eight months and provided us with a draftsman and that we, in good faith, had done the work, only for him to say that the most he could promise us would be a free vote in the Dáil and that the Government would not back the Bill. Shame on him. This revelation shocked me greatly.

There was another election in 2020 and Deputy O’Brien became the relevant Minister. On his first outing in this House, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, stated:

I was proud to argue for the retention and reform of this House in 2013, and was very pleased that the Irish people shared our view of the importance of a second Chamber in our democracy ... The importance of Seanad reform was a key part of the message in that campaign.

He also said that he welcomed the detailed work we had done.

Through his Minister of State, the Minister announced to the House that he was going to put together a group of all three Government parties to determine what to do. I stood up in the House and said I would take that undertaking in good faith.The result was that absolutely nothing was done.

This Bill is badly drafted and is going to cause serious problems. The most obvious one is that if NUI graduates have to reregister and have to be written to in order to notify them of that, given that most of the addresses are already out of date, it will collapse the NUI electorate even further than it is today. The Bill needs to be reformed. It is a disgraceful Bill. It is everything that Senator Higgins said about it. It is an insult to this House and the Irish people.

I want to put one final point on the record of the House regarding the Tomás Heneghan Supreme Court decision. The Government sent the Attorney General to the Supreme Court to say he would need five years to legislate on this matter and it only gave him two. That is the clearest evidence that there is no appetite to reform Seanad Éireann and that we have been cynically deceived by every party leader in the present coalition and the previous coalition in respect of their real intentions. They want to keep this House as it is now - a rubber stamp.