A chara, – I’m delighted that there will be serious opposition to the Government’s plan to abolish the Seanad. Abolition was never the policy of the Labour Party – and it was not in Labour’s general election manifesto.
The Seanad has served a purpose. It has been responsible on numerous occasions for identifying errors in legislation that has emerged from the Dáil. Additionally it has been responsible for substantial rewriting of legislation which was introduced in the Seanad. But it had a more significant role. All through our years of Roman Catholic hegemony it was in the Seanad that issues the Dáil was too timid to deal with were raised.
Issues like legal adoption, the status of illegitimacy, censorship laws, contraception, divorce and anti-gay policies were all raised in the Seanad long before any serious discussion took place in Dáil Éireann.
That was because the Seanad allowed at least some small space for dissenting minorities. That role hasn’t changed even if the nature of the minorities has. Only in the Seanad was there any serious questioning of the civil partnership legislation. Members of the Dáil were apparently so intimidated by the new hegemony that no one was prepared seriously to challenge the legislation. As a supporter of same-sex marriage I would have supported the right for such dissent to be heard. Like one of my heroines Rosa Luxemburg I believe that freedom is only real when my opponents are free to be heard.
The Government claims to be committed to deepening democracy. So far it has decided to abolish direct elections to Údarás na Gaeltachta, is apparently going to abolish many local councils, and proposes to abolish the Seanad. It has retained the iron grip of government on the Dáil and has seriously hamstrung the constitutional convention.
With the abolition of the Seanad it will further reduce the opportunities for civic society to hold power to account and to influence the agenda of the powerful. And how the unaccountable bureaucracy, most notably the Department of Finance, loves that.
The Seanad could be reformed to ensure it was very much the forum of civic society, elected directly with fixed terms of office and with members precluded from running for the Dáil and much more besides. The outcome would be a forum closer to the people, and more able to challenge autocratic and largely unaccountable institutional and bureaucratic power.
It’s not too late to call off Enda Kenny’s populist referendum. Failing that, we will just have to persuade the people to protect themselves from yet another power grab by the political elite. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The six former Senators who feel that Ireland would benefit from some form of consultative forum to draw on their wisdom need to look no further than the MacGill Summer school, which is providing an excellent and well-reported platform for the country’s leaders and opinion makers – past and present – to air and debate their views.
The Seanad as an institution has been a failed experiment and needs to be ended – the McGill school has de facto become the forum that the Seanad was intended to be, at no cost to the taxpayer. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – What do Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, and Sweden have in common? They are all small westernised democracies with a single legislative house.
Even large democracies like South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan and Ukraine have no need for a Senate.
If they can do it, why can’t we? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I commend your Editorial “Reform, not abolition”, on the relative merit of the same in the case of the Seanad. Abolition of the upper house represents a worryingly simplistic approach to the complex and very necessary issue of government reform.
That the Seanad is seriously deficient is not in doubt, but a considerable sequence of reports on its potential reform have gone ignored, and the institution remains an anachronistic product of its constitutional framing in 1930s corporatism. The most recent Report on Seanad Reform (2004) provides a number of recommendations to tackle democratic deficit in the senate’s electoral system, as well as suggestions for changes to its remit.
Of particular note was the proposal that it become a centre of debate and scrutiny on EU relations and legislation; an area crucial to our current economic and sovereign status and one desperately needing informed discourse and greater public engagement.
We are not without well-researched starting points to prompt a national discussion on the role and reform of the upper house and I feel that abolition without debate would do us a great diservice. To simplify the Seanad to a “cost we cannot afford” is to ignore both its tremendous potential as an institution to inform governance, and the history of cogent voices for social change that it has already given us, many of which would not have been heard in Irish politics without it. – Yours, etc,