Independents to meet over non-party Senators

INDEPENDENT POLITICIANS from across the State will meet in Athlone today to discuss the prospect of electing non-party senators for the first time, on the vocational panels in the Seanad elections.

The meeting has been convened by Independent MEP Marian Harkin who said yesterday that while there were 144 Independent votes in the vocational panel elections, “no Independent candidate other than from the university panels has been successful in a Seanad election”.

Forty-three of the 60 Senators in the Upper House are elected by members of the outgoing Seanad and incoming Dáil and county and city councils, known as the vocational panels.

Ms Harkin said different panels had different quotas. Some of the quotas are just 79 to 80 votes while others are up to 139.

She said that with 144 votes, including more than 120 councillors as well as a majority of the 19 Independent or smaller party TDs, it would be possible to elect Independent senators.

She said the figure rose with the inclusion of Socialist Party and People Before Profit TDs and the councillors from the Workers and Unemployed Action Group led by Séamus Healy, TD for Tipperary South.

About 25 TDs, Senators and councillors are expected to attend the meeting at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone at 3pm, including retiring Independent Senator Joe O’Toole and Independent TDs Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central) and Catherine Murphy (Kildare North).

Ms Harkin said a lot of Independents were waiting to “gauge if there was a groundswell of support” for the idea.

Fine Gael and Labour are expected to win the majority of seats, with control of most of the local authority councils and with the 11 nominees to the Seanad by the Taoiseach. A number of Independents are expected to back the expected coalition partners and other parties including Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.

Candidates require the nomination of four Oireachtas or European Parliament members. Ms Harkin said there were 19 TDs who were not with mainstream parties and six outgoing Senators. “They could nominate six people between them”.

“Given the outcome of the election, people are more likely to vote Independent now”. She said the best contributors to Seanad debates had been Independent senators.

There are 27 candidates for the three seats on the National University of Ireland and 20 on the Dublin University panel, which closed on Thursday. Nominations for the vocational panels close on March 11th.