Senate must be scrapped, but not as death-bed action of Government

WELL, that was a year to say good riddance to, wasn’t it? The year we lost our independence.

The year we discovered that the total tax take for one year, from all sources, wouldn’t be quite enough to bail out our banks. The year we resigned ourselves to many more years of cutbacks in essential services, because of the political mistakes of the past five years or so.

And it was the year some of our cabinet ministers decided to avail of very large pensions rather than face the electorate ever again. It’s hard to imagine a bigger admission of failure than that, isn’t it.

Every time over the next few months they tell us how good their record was, and how much they put the country first, we need to remember how many of them walked away from the judgement of the people.

At least, right at the tail end of the year, we had the chance to say good riddance to the man described by his successor as the “consummate politician”. That consummate politician, who now sails off into the sunset with the biggest pension of them all, but without ever admitting to any mistakes or wrongdoing on his own part, left one final legacy behind. Because last year was the year we finally lost faith in politics. So much for consummate politicians.

This year is the year we have to start rebuilding that faith. We will elect a new government this year, and we will elect them without huge expectations. We all know that the incoming government will have no money to play with, and there can be no miracles. I imagine that some members of that new government are dreading the fact that they will have to preside over more cuts and more unpalatable decisions.

But they shouldn’t. Because ironically, no government has ever had such an opportunity laid out before it. We know they didn’t cause the mess. We know they won’t find anything in the kitty when they take office — in fact they’ll discover we’re still not being told the full truth. The only way they can fail, really, is by pretending to be something they’re not.

If, four years or so from now, we are talking about a government that really rolled its sleeves up, that lived modestly and worked hard, that spent time amongst the people, and that really reformed the politics of our country — if we can say all those things about them, they will be well on their way to a second term. They have a chance to make austerity mean something good, something we can all feel a bit better about.

Of course we’re going to hate some of the things they have to do.

That’s why they will need to settle their economic and social priorities early. And they will need to tell us what they are.

I actually believe that this government should do something no other government has ever done. Normally, after an election like the one we’re about to have, there is a period ranging from three to six weeks when the parties that have secured a mandate sit down behind closed doors. Party experts and front bench politicians from both sides (I’m assuming it will be Labour and Fine Gael) hammer out the bones of an agreement, while the party leaders wait.

They’re waiting to do two things — to resolve any areas of disagreement reported to them from the policy negotiations, and they’re waiting to discuss the division of the spoils — how many cabinet seats each party will get, how many junior ministers, who occupies what slot. That’s business as usual.

From now on it needs to be different — no more business as usual. I believe the leaders of the two parties in government should set the tone, right from the word go. The first meeting to take place after the election should be between them, just the two of them, and they should agree a statement of economic and social priorities, and fundamental politic reforms, for their negotiators to flesh out.

That statement should be made public, and the party negotiators should be tasked with ensuring that the leaders’ priorities are turned into reality.

Of course it won’t be possible for every public spending decision to be contained in that initial statement. It needs to be a statement of values, that outlines who and what the leaders see as critical. It can and should be very specific indeed when it comes to the sort of political reforms the country is crying out for though.

One such measure, incidentally, is the abolition of the Senate. Regular readers will know that I have advocated that for a long time now. The Senate adds no democratic value whatever to our system, and is incapable of reform. It is long past its sell-by date. There is no aspect of public life, public debate or public policy that would suffer if the Senate never turned up.

However, vigilant readers should also beware of the trap that Fianna Fáil and the Greens are trying to set with the hints they were dropping last weekend. Not for the first time, it emerged that the government has a plan to put forward proposals to abolish the Senate in such a way as to enable the holding of a referendum on the same day as a general election.

That can only mean one thing. If the opposition were to accept the offer to hold the general election and a referendum on the Senate on the same day, they would effectively be agreeing to about three month’s more delay in the election.

Because as desirable as abolishing the Senate is, it’s complicated.

Dozens of articles of the Constitution refer to the Senate — not just those dealing with the Senate itself (articles 18 and 19, which cover about eight pages of the Constitution), but many others. If you read through the document, you discover references to the Oireachtas and both of its Houses throughout. An amendment to abolish the Senate even has to be approved by the Senate first.

So making sure that everything is covered, and that no current or past legislation will be invalidated by abolishing the Senate, is complicated, and will require careful analysis and drafting. And then, once legislation is agreed, a further month at least must elapse before the actual referendum takes place.

We need to do it, for sure. But it needs to be among the first specific tasks of an incoming government, rather than the swansong of the outgoing one.

Abolition of the Senate, as part of a sweeping package of reforms designed to force our political system to wake up to the demands of a modern democracy, could be a defining stamp for a government committed to rebuilding trust. For that reason if no other, I hope both opposition parties will refuse to countenance any death-bed conversion to democratic reform coming from a discredited government. It needs to be seen for what it is — a cynical ploy to buy a bit more time by a government whose shelf life has more than expired.