Forget half-baked reform, the choice is between this Seanad and no Seanad

With little sign of passion or belief so far from the party troopers who have been wheeled out to sell the Yes argument on the airwaves, and the prospect of prominent dissenters from the Government side when the campaign proper begins, the referendum on Seanad abolition bears all the signs of an autumn banana skin.

Add to that the fact that any passion or intellectual firepower is emanating from the Senators, retired politicians, ex-spin doctors and academics behind the Democracy Matters! campaign, with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin due to jump on that bandwagon soon, and you might think Enda Kenny is regretting making that hasty promise back in 2009.

But passionate advocacy shouldn’t be enough if the cause isn’t worth the candle. Killing the Seanad is the right thing to do. Not because of the paltry sum of money involved, but because it won’t be missed and its removal can act as a first, albeit symbolic, step towards meaningful reform.

Meanwhile, the long wait for the referendum itself may ultimately benefit the Yes campaign. The arguments to retain the Seanad in a restructured form have already been vigorously made, but they don’t stand up to too much scrutiny.

Arguing for the retention of a reformed Seanad, Noel Whelan has acknowledged that "there are some unicameral systems that work well but most of them also have strong regional and municipal assemblies that have more authority and responsibility than even our Dáil does".

Fair enough, but why not pursue the point to its logical conclusion? The most glaring democratic deficit in Ireland is at local level.

A truly reform-minded movement would focus on this, and on Dáil reform, rather than on what Michael McDowell breathlessly describes as a power grab by “a deeply dysfunctional chamber totally dominated by members of the executive and savagely ruled by the party whip system”.

Tinkering
If the main chamber, which after all will continue to determine our fate in most respects no matter what the outcome of the referendum, is so deeply, hopelessly (or even savagely) dysfunctional, would it not be better for McDowell and other concerned citizens to direct their reforming energies in that direction, rather than tinkering with the Seanad?

Another campaigner, the journalist Una Mullally, says that: "a gender balance with equal numbers of men and women elected from vocational constituencies, is something we should aspire to".

Really? These “vocational constituencies” – the administrative, labour, cultural and educational, agriculture, and industrial and commercial panels – are a corporatist relic that are now to be genetically spliced with on-trend gender quotas, and with Mary Robinson’s flickering diaspora candle thrown in for good measure (Robinson’s saintly legacy hovers over the whole Seanad reform movement like a Marian apparition, although a cursory perusal of the Seanad rolls reveals at least three senator Callelys for every senator Robinson).

The whole thing smacks of an uninspired Junior Cert civics project. The ridiculous panels are to be retained because the campaign is predicated on the notion that the Seanad can be effectively reformed without constitutional change. So the elitism of the university panels will be retained and extended to all graduates (as allowed for in the 1979 constitutional amendment). And everyone else will somehow be slotted into the other panels.

“Among the options would be allowing a vote in Seanad elections to every person over 18 who could show themselves vocationally qualified for the relevant panel,” according to the Seanad Reform Group’s consultation paper .

“This could be done, for example, by allowing all teachers a vote on the education panel, all union members or unemployed persons a vote on the Labour panel, all owners of a small and medium business a vote on the industrial and commercial panel or all persons with an involvement in agriculture a vote on the agriculture panel.”

Absurdity
The absurdity of this shouldn't need pointing out, especially if you're a non-unionised employee or one of the many other categories of non-"vocationally qualified" citizens. But it illustrates the rather queasy line of inheritance that runs from 1930s corporatism through 1990s social partnership to contemporary identity politics. Everyone has to be a member of a group, which will be defined for you by your betters (all vocationally qualified, of course).

So a reformed, gender-equal Seanad with new powers to consider, among other things, European legislation, voted on by the entire electorate, including all Irish citizens overseas and in Northern Ireland, but still consisting of the various (meaningless) panels will provide an essential bulwark against the overweening power of the executive? Well, no, it won’t.

Because even if you agree with them, none of these proposals has a chance of being introduced by this Government or a future one. Listen this autumn as Micheál Martin lays out Fianna Fáil’s ambitious new plans for Seanad reform, then reflect on the reality of his party’s performance on this issue during his own long tenure in government. Observe as anti-abolition campaigners attack the self-serving Dáil, then wonder why they expect the same Dáil to cede some of its authority to a reformed Seanad.

The choice is simple: the current Seanad or no Seanad at all. It’s not really a tough one.