It would suit the politicians not to have to answer to a properly constituted second chamber
ENDA KENNY has made great mileage out of his proposal to abolish Seanad Éireann. When he floated the idea two years ago, it was clearly part of a strategy to announce himself as a decisive leader and simultaneously to tune in to a particular band of public outrage concerning politics and politicians.
Kenny was trying, quite legitimately from a vote-seeking viewpoint, to appeal to a crude and unthinking layer of public sentiment, which is intent upon destruction for its own sake.
This unrepresentative sentiment arises largely from the repetitive agendas of radio phone-ins, and from the texted content now dictating the tone of other programming and spilling over into other media. It can be described as an expression of democratic sentiment only if you discount its intrinsic vacuity, malice and indifference to anything other than self-interested lamentation.
Mostly, it amounts to no more than the repetitive assertion of banalities emanating from idle and unthinking elements of the population.
For three years now this clamouring has provided the dominant chord of public discourse, its strident appetite for destruction reducing the analysis of major public issues to a series of crude mantras: “They’re all the same!”; “They’re paid too much!”; “They’re all at it!”
In offering the Seanad as a sacrifice to this unfocused disgruntlement, Kenny was guaranteed access to the kind of acclamation that is readily available from such quarters to anyone who proposes something banal, pious or disparaging of the political process.
But now Kenny is Taoiseach, he must represent not just the texters, tweeters, bloggers and whine-liners, but all of the people. And not just the people now living, but also those not yet born, who will be citizens of this Republic in the centuries to come.
The Seanad was never meant to be what it became – a nursery for political aspirants and deadbeats. Its founding intention – to maintain a check on the Dáil by providing a forum for voices from outside the political system – has never been honoured. While, in pushing to abolish the Seanad, the politicians pass themselves off as striving to implement the “will of the people”, they are really pursuing a recourse that will mainly enhance the interests and convenience of the surviving political class.
It would suit the politicians not to have to answer to a properly constituted second chamber, as, unable to rely absolutely on whips, they would have to present legislation in accordance with reason and democratic values.
I am, I suspect, much less a fan of the Seanad in its present form than is Kenny or any other politician. That a significant minority of its membership is elected by the votes of privileged beneficiaries of the public purse, ie graduates of a small number of universities, is an outrage against democracy.
Arguably worse is that, due to the failure of politicians to give legislative force to a provision in Article 19 of the Constitution – whereby vocational groups, councils or associations would directly elect their own representatives – 43 of the 60 seats are currently elected by less than a thousand politicians.
Such an institution may appear a suitable case of abolition, but it is not what the Seanad was intended to be. No less than a dozen bodies established to examine the issue have recommended the wholesale reform of the Seanad to render it more democratic and congruent with its founding ethos, but the political establishment has resolutely refused to implement any of these recommendations. And yet, politicians shamelessly propose the Seanad’s outright abolition while seeking to present themselves as friends of democracy.
There has so far been a remarkable absence of commentary in defence of the second chamber. This I attribute to sheepishness on the part of the thinking classes, mostly comprising graduates, in whom a reluctance to be seen defending one of their own elitist privileges has generated a deafening silence.
There have been exceptions. Senator Ronán Mullen, currently running for re-election on the NUI panel, has proposed that the Government stage a preliminary “preferendum” in which the people would be asked a series of questions designed to tease out deeper public sentiment. Rather than a simplistic “yes” or “no” choice – abolition or retention – he proposes that the electorate be offered a number of options on overall parliamentary change, including that of reformed and slimmed-down first and second chambers.
Depending on the result, this could be followed up with a referendum to decide the final outcome.
Mullen has observed that it is unacceptable to present “one populist, simplistic solution as the end point of the process, and to dress this up as political reform”.
I agree.
To acquiesce in the dismantling of our beautiful bicameral system on the say-so of people who think “know” is spelt “no” would be an act of supreme folly. For the electorate to abolish the Seanad in the present circumstance is the equivalent of using a Stradivarius as firewood because it hasn’t passed muster as a badminton racket. It would go down in history as an act of gratuitous political vandalism and shame forever the name of anyone associated with it.