Taoiseach insists €20 million Seanad abolition saving is no ’con job’

Taoiseach Enda Kenny rejected allegations he was engaged in a "con job" on the Seanad's running costs and insisted the €20 million figure he used was based on official Oireachtas Commission statistics.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin made the claim, and accused him of using tactics for the abolition of the Upper House “that would make Libertas or Youth Defence blush”.

The Taoiseach and others in Fine Gael were now the only people "sticking to the untruth and dishonesty that had been perpetrated" about the savings involved in abolition, he said.

'Acolytes'
Mr Martin said only Fine Gael and Labour party "acolytes" suggested the actual saving would be €20 million, unless Mr Kenny was suggesting "that you will in some way stop all Seanad pensions, lock up half of Leinster House or turn off the heat". And the cost of running of the referendum, to take place on Friday, October 4th, was €14 million.

Mr Martin accused the Taoiseach of “adopting tactics that would make Libertas or Youth Defence blush. You keep repeating the mantra. Your view is that even if it’s untrue it doesn’t matter. You will simply carry on regardless and keep up the untruths because that is all that matters for the duration of the campaign”.

Rejecting the allegations, Mr Kenny insisted the figure was not a con job. He said it was not created by any individual or political party. “It is a statement of the costs, indirect costs and pension requirements set out by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. It is completely independent of my party, your party and every other party in the House.”

It emerged last week that the Oireachtas Commission, in a letter to the Referendum Commission, said the cost of running the Seanad was €20.1 million but that it was not possible to state what the net saving would be if it was abolished.

Mr Martin said Dáil Éireann was the weakest parliament in Europe, and people were “very worried about an excessive concentration of power in the hands of a small group of Ministers”.

The Taoiseach told him that in the past former senior Fianna Fáil members "Jack Lynch, George Colley, Martin O'Donoghue and Des O'Malley had their own quartet which dealt with all, or the vast majority of, matters relating to the budget".

'Gang of four'
Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins suggested the Taoiseach was saying that "the 'gang of four' is a reflection of an honourable tradition in Irish politics".

The Taoiseach said the founding principles of engagement and representation of civic society on which the Seanad was based were never adhered to, because the Upper House was hijacked by the political process, including his own party.