Let’s get smart on the Seanad
One of the half-truths propagated by the ‘trashers’ is that the Seanad is elected by a tiny minority of the population – most of which are alleged, (inaccurately), to have no role whatsoever in that election.
You yourself err, (or Homerically ‘nod’), in this respect. The number of NUI graduates alone eligible to vote on their own Seanad panel is 50,000 – equivalent to the electorate for a Dáil five-seater. The equivalent figure for TCD is 30,000 — equivalent to the electorate for a Dáil three-seater. Add to that a further 20,000 to 30,000 graduates of other third level institutions, ! and one gets a figure closer to 100,000.
Should graduates, (after six years’ hard work getting into college and a further three or more getting a degree), be allowed an extra vote to what, remember, is not the final National Assembly? The proof is in the pudding, ie what comes through those university elections. The quality of the contributions made by the University Senators has been superb. All the remaining 54 senators are elected or nominated by public representatives who were themselves elected – by us. Almost all of our officeholders, from the Taoiseach and the rest of the Cabinet, and virtually all administrators, even judges, are appointed indirectly. So what is the problem? We actually do have a role in the election of the majority of the Seanad. The only real problem is that most of us are so ignorant of our system of governance we just do not know that when we vote for Jimmy to fix the roads and Marie to get us a street lamp we are voting for individuals who also have the right, and indeed the duty, to vote for senators to take their role in the running of our country.
Whatever may have happened on one particular aspect of the Personal Insolvency Arrangements, (I am checking it out because I believe in facts), the current Seanad has proposed and had accepted hundreds of amendments to Bills which had left the Dáil in a seriously unsatisfactory state. Former Minister Eamon Ryan has said on radio he accepted a similar volume of amendments during the 2007/2011 Seanad.
So if the Seanad may not have done the wonderful things that the Constitution does not allow it to do, somebody in the Seanad spent a lot of time, energy and expertise cleaning up after a dysfunctional Dáil. This is dull, grinding, complex technical stuff but do we not now know that the failure of the governments from 1997 to 2011 to keep up with a complex, technical reality is not only the reason why we got in our mess — but also a reason why it has proven so difficult to get out of it? We live in a harsh, technical and complex 21st century requiring tough, technical and complex 21st century solutions — and we need 21st century men and women to provide them. Not chatty, decent yesterday’s people for whom the world began and ended in 1975.
As for ‘One House’, (the new ‘civil society’ grouping supporting Mr Kenny in his midnight whimsy and the Government in its unilateral decision not to allow us to discuss possible reform), finding the appropriate name for anything is difficult. But did nobody at that hasty planning meeting point out vulgar venomous cavepersons such as the undersigned would immediately bay: ‘One House, One Leader, One Voice’?
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