The Seanad was abolished before – now let’s shut it once and for all
When Éamon de Valera was elected president of the executive council of the Irish Free State in 1932, he ran into opposition in the Seanad, which frustrated his plans to implement Fianna Fáil’s promised reforms. At the time Cumann na nGaedheal controlled the Seanad.
The government appointed half of the 60 senators, and the other half were elected by the Oireachtas. Senators had a nine-year term, with one-third of them up for election or reappointment every three years. Thus it was going to take some years for Fianna Fáil to redress the imbalance of the 1920s
Cumann na nGaedheal deliberately frustrated Fianna Fáil with the Seanad’s power to delay legislation for up to 20 months.
The Seanad was acting as “a barrier to the things that I thought should be done in the interests of the nation, and that the people had elected me to do,” de Valera told the Dáil. Accordingly, he wished to abolish the Seanad.
Even if he were allowed to nominate 30 members of the Seanad, he indicated he would still be opposed to the whole thing. “What respect would the people have for them?” de Valera asked the Dáil rhetorically. “None. There have been nominated chambers, and their influence has been nil because the people have no respect for them.”
“The proper thing to do is to end the Senate and not to mend it,” he explained. “It is costly and we do not see any function that it really served.”
For 20 months the Seanad was able to use its power to block de Valera’s efforts to abolish it, but then it was scrapped in 1936. This was the era of the great dictators. Desmond Ryan’s 1930s biography of Éamon de Valera was entitled ‘Unique Dictator’. The Long Fellow was actually open to persuasion and did not always insist on getting his own way. Against his better judgment he agreed to demands for a reformed Seanad at part of the 1937 constitution. The old Seanad’s delaying powers were scrapped and the number of appointees was cut by almost two-thirds. The Taoiseach was allowed to appoint just 11 senators instead of 10 every three years. Nevertheless, most of the senators were effectively political appointees – 90% of them are elected by politicians or appointed by the Taoiseach. The only exceptions are the six university senators who are elected by graduates of Dublin University and the National University of Ireland (NUI).
Prior to 1937 university graduates elected six deputies to the Dáil. This was an affront to the concept of “one person, one vote,” because university graduates had two votes, one in the constituency where they lived and the other in the constituency of the university from which they graduated.
That provision was included mainly to provide a representative voice in the Dáil for Irish unionism. Ironically, the three deputies from Trinity College were elected by acclimation in 1923 and they were returned without opposition at every subsequent general election. The three NUI seats, on the other hand, were often hotly contested.
NUI graduates elected Cumann na nGaedheal cabinet ministers Eoin McNeill and Paddy McGilligan, along with Michael Hayes who was Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil from 1921 until 1932. Conor Maguire served as attorney general in the Fianna Fáil cabinets of 1932 to 1936.
The Taoiseach’s ability to name people to the Seanad afforded an opportunity to appoint some particularly appropriate person of real experience to ministerial office, but this route has generally been ignored. Only a handful of ministers were appointed to cabinet from the Seanad – such as Joseph Connolly who served as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1932 to 1933 and Minister for Lands and Fisheries from 1933 to 1936, while Seán Moylan was appointed Minister for Agriculture in 1957 after he lost his Dáil seat.
Jack Lynch famously offered to appoint Tony O’Reilly to the Seanad with the aim of making him Minister for Agriculture in the 1960s. O’Reilly had made a name for himself as a businessman in charge of Bórd Báinne and later with the Heinz Corporation both in Ireland and internationally.
This was before he took over Independent Newspapers, so that was not a factor in the offer. Dr O’Reilly turned down the offer with the explanation that the field was not big enough for two bulls. This was an allusion that there would not be room for himself and Charlie Haughey.
Garret FitzGerald later appointed Jim Dooge to the Seanad and from there appointed him Minister for Foreign Affairs in his short-lived government of 1981-’82. The Seanad had potential, but it was never realised.
During 2009 it sat for a total of 102 days, which averaged out at less than two days a week. A senator’s basic salary is €70,133, rising to €72.371 after seven years and €74,608 after a decade. Other than teachers and Dáil deputies, almost everyone else in the country is expected to work at least 230 days a year.
Everyone else has to pay their own way to and from work and they cannot claim this against income tax on their earnings, while senators have been paid expenses that have little relationship to their actual costs. It is understandable that people outside Dublin should be able to claim, but we have the outrageous situation in which Ivor Callely, whose home is in Dublin, claimed €81,115 in travelling expenses last year.
HE was forced to resign as minister of state at the Department of Transport in 2005 over a scandal following the disclosure that a building contractor involved in public contracts had painted his house for free in the 1990s. Callely lost his Dáil seat in the general election of 2007 and then failed to secure election to the Seanad, but Bertie Ahern appointed him to the Seanad anyway. So much for the democratic will of the people.
Of course, Callely’s money was just small change in the context of the overall cost of the Seanad. The Oireachtas paid more than €27 million to senators in expenses and salaries for the period 2005 to 2008. That does not include the staff for the running and upkeep of the place.
One would be very hard pressed to detail any effective contribution that would remotely justify such expenditure on the Seanad over the years. There has been no shortage of outrages that the Seanad could have exposed.
Last week the media disclosed that 18 executives in Anglo Irish Bank are paid more than the Taoiseach, who gets more that the American president, who is the highest paid public official in the United States. Yet the state owns Anglo Irish Bank, which is probably the most culpable for the current economic mess in this country. Why did it take over Anglo – to reward the gougers who have plundered the country? The Seanad could have exposed this outrageous situation, and it could have done many other useful things too, but it has failed dismally. It is just a waste of money and space.
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