Scrapping Seanad will not improve governance
This isn’t a foregone conclusion. While all the polls show the yes side is in the majority, it is inevitable that turnout will be low. Such a scenario is more likely to favour the no side. Not to put too fine a point on it, but most of society appears not to really give a toss one way or the other about the fate of the upper house.
But if, as expected, the vote goes with the Government, what will the post-Seanad world look like? Will we be able to carry on at all?
The most immediate impact will be on the man for whom abolition has grown into a pet project, Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The Seanad will be left to see out its days until the next election. Last weekend, reports emerged suggesting that senators in the government parties and some of those among the 11 of the Taoiseach’s nominees, may disrupt business as a retrospective protest at their abolition.
These members could make life difficult for the Government by voting with the opposition, and thus delaying legislation. If some senators become a nuisance, public opinion won’t be long in swelling against them, to the point where they will be under huge pressure to desist from throwing their toys out of the pram.
Then it will be onward to the next election, and the introduction of a single chamber system of parliament. In anticipation of this brave new world — and with one eye on the referendum — the Government published reform proposals for the Dáil in early September. Ostensibly, these proposals were designed to reassure citizens that law-making will function better than ever without a second house, particularly under a government hell bent on reform.
The reform proposals were delivered with a flourish, but nobody at the launch or since have noted the overweening irony of the occasion. The reform of the function of Dáil Eireann was announced not by the Dáil, but by the executive.
Instead of assuring the public that the imbalance of power between the executive and the legislation would be addressed, the occasion merely reinforced the reality of where all the power lies.
Central to the brave new post- Seanad world will, according to these proposals, be the committee system. Currently, there are 20 Oireachtas committees, which will be replaced by 14 Dáil committees. These, we are told, will suck some power from the executive.
“Committee chairs will be appointed using the d’Hondt system for a proportionate distribution of committee chairs between government and opposition,” the proposal reads. “These committees will have the power to consult civil society groups, advocacy groups and individuals with expertise in a specific area to inform and assist them in their work.”
Apparently, a beefed up committee system is going to ensure that checks and balances will be enforced on the executive in the absence of a second chamber. Is this genuine reform, or another example of the spinning at which this government excels?
LAST Wednesday, Luke Ming Flanagan turned up for a scheduled meeting of the joint Oireachtas environment committee. The meeting couldn’t go ahead as the attendance couldn’t muster the required quorum of four TDs and one senator.
According to Mr Flanagan, this was not an unusual scenario.
“It’s not that TDs couldn’t be bothered to turn up or anything like that,” he said. “It’s more about the system. It’s in disarray. Anybody who works on committees in their local areas and then comes into the Dáil and see how they’re run here, they’re shocked.”
He pointed out that the committee he’s a member of frequently meets at the same time as leaders’ questions.
“And then there’s the unwieldy nature of the system. The environment committee covers so many areas that we don’t really get around to dealing properly with some of them,” he said.
“I’m in favour of getting rid of the Seanad, but they’re talking about fewer committees which will be something else. And that’s apart from whether you’d be able to get a quorum for some of them if there isn’t even going to be senators to make up the numbers.”
The post-Seanad world of beefed up committees is a theme that Fianna Fáil’s Éamon Ó Cuív visited last week at the National Ploughing Championships. Talking on Newstalk’s Lunchtime programme, Mr Ó Cuív raised the spectre of there being too few politicians to take the workload if the referendum passes.
“The Government has said that more work will be passed onto the committees,” he said. “You can’t really serve on more than one committee. There are 15 on the agriculture committee, including six senators. We’re already reducing the number of TDs by eight. We may well come back in 10 years with proposals for 200 members of the Dáil, because with the reduced numbers they’re talking about you can’t run Dáil Éireann.
“Privately, a number of government backbenchers are saying, ‘you’re absolutely right, the Dáil can’t be run on those numbers’.”
Of course, the populist response would be that doing more with less is the slogan that the Government has used in cutting back services in the public sector at large. Yet anybody familiar with politics knows that politicians work extremely hard as it is. The problem is that far too much of their focus is on the constituency and the eternal battle to get re-elected. Allegedly reforming the committee system will have no impact on where politicians spend the bulk of their energy. Thus, it is the business of governance that will suffer in a system where fewer committees with fewer members are being delegated greater power.
A reformed committee system is one of the carrots that has been dangled in front of the electorate ahead of Friday’s poll. But scratch beneath the surface of the proposal and it looks threadbare, another example of spin taking pre-eminence over substance, another exercise in smoke and mirrors by an executive reluctant to cede any real power to the parliament.
In essence, the reformed committee proposal chimes with the whole approach of the Taoiseach and his spinners to the referendum. They are determined that it is passed by any means possible. If that involves propagating inaccuracies about the cost of the Seanad, then so be it. All that really matters is that the vote is won in order to save the Taoiseach from any political embarrassment.
There may well be an excellent case to abolish the Seanad in the wake of genuine reform. That case has not been made. The required reform has not taken place ahead of any proposal to abolish. Nothing has been set out to show how governance could be undertaken better in a single chamber, operating with the kind of powers enjoyed by most such bodies in any developed democracy.
Instead, a referendum is taking place because prior to being elected to his current office, Mr Kenny once required a boost in the opinion polls, and reached for something that might strike a chord with an electorate disaffected by politics and politicians.
Abolition will also be grist to the spinning mill, allowing him to point to it as a genuine reform, while ignoring the real reform that is required. Maybe he should be careful what he wishes for.
Victory in the referendum will deliver short-term political kudos from some quarters, but it certainly will do nothing to improve governance of the country.
