OPINION:Upper house's expertise must be called on to make wider contribution to decision making, writes DAVID NORRIS.
LIKE ALL institutions, the Seanad is imperfect and should of course be subject to reform. However, I believe that there is a strong case to be made for the retention and regeneration of this branch of the Oireachtas. If I did not believe so, I would take the honourable course and resign immediately.
Those members of the Dáil who call for its abolition while retaining their seats in the hopes of using the upper house as a launching pad to become TDs have placed themselves in a position that is at least morally ambiguous and should also consider the honourable course of resigning at once.
Since 1937, despite a proliferation of reports recommending change, there has been no substantial attempt to reform the Senate. This was undoubtedly because it was, on one hand, an intensive care unit for those discarded from the Dáil and, on the other, a convenient launching pad for aspiring TDs.
The Senate consists of 60 members. Forty three of these are elected basically by county councillors acting in the party interests. These are the real rotten boroughs. There are a large number of professional and other bodies with the power of nomination, but they have no power to vote and no Independent representative has ever been elected through this system. Every one of those elected has always had a clear party allegiance.
In addition to these 43, 11 are nominated directly by the taoiseach without even the pretence of an election in order to sustain an automatic government majority. This can be interpreted as making the Senate a rubber stamp, but the same is essentially true of the Dáil, where the government can be expected to win every division until an election becomes necessary.
The strength of the university representation does not come alone from the commitment given to the House by those elected, but principally from the fact that the ordinary members of their electoral college are given the right to vote. There is an electorate of 50,000 in the case of the University of Dublin and 100,000 in the case of the National University of Ireland.
This means that during the election, instead of traipsing around the provinces sucking up to local councillors, the candidates have to subject themselves to the scrutiny of a large, alert and sometimes awkward group of voters who express a wide range of interests outside the narrow confines of partisan politics.
The university seats require to be examined. The representative element needs to be strengthened by extending the franchise to other third-level institutions. I have long advocated this. However, I think that the essential character of the two constituencies should be retained if possible.
The Trinity College constituency has traditionally been overwhelmingly a Dublin one while NUI has, quite naturally, had a more national profile. I would suggest the extension of the Trinity constituency to include groups such as Dublin City University, the DITs and National College of Ireland. NUI should be similarly extended to include the graduates of Limerick University and Waterford Institute of Technology. This would keep these constituencies within manageable proportions while extending their representative capacity.
So far, however, similar flexibility has not been forthcoming from the political parties. At the first meeting of a recently convened committee to examine reform, the first and virtually only target was the university element. I indicated vigorously that as far as I was concerned, it was either all or nothing. All constituencies or none should be up for review.
Have a look at the record of the university Senators, they are usually the only ones whose names are recognised by the general public. In the past they have included the likes of Prof John A Murphy and Prof Joe Lee, representing the NUI, and, from Trinity, Mary Robinson, Noel Browne and Owen Sheehy Skeffington.
At the moment sitting on the Independent university benches, we have the former owner and chief executive of a multimillion pound supermarket business (Feargal Quinn), the former general secretary of the INTO and president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Joe O’Toole), the editor of the influential business section of the leading Sunday newspaper (Shane Ross), the Reid Professor of criminal law in Trinity College (Ivana Bacik), a former spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (Rónán Mullen) and myself.
The range of expertise represented here speaks for itself and it is significant that every single one of these members has placed Private Members’ legislation before the House for consideration on issues as diverse as climate control, broadband, civil partnership and credit union legislation.
Despite the almost entire absence of media coverage (apart from The Irish Timesand Oireachtas Report) Seanad Éireann has consistently proved itself to be a seed bed of ideas which are subsequently taken up by the Dáil . Examples include the very first debate on Aids to be held in either house, the establishment of the Foreign Affairs Committee, moves to establish a metro in Dublin, the first resolutions against cluster munitions and the recent call for the establishment of an international inquiry into possible war crimes in Gaza.
One can either make the dates of the Seanad and Dáil elections coincide, thus preventing failed Dáil candidates from entering the list once more or establish a fixed five-year term for the Seanad.
This would end the scandal of situations such as those I have experienced when, for example, every single named office holder – the Cathaoirleach, leader and Leas-Cathaoirleach – had all been rejected in the preceding elections. On the recent Late Late Show discussion on Senate reform, the old canard about only a handful of people being in the chamber was trotted out. The Irish taxpayer would be a hell of a lot worse off if the chamber was full all the time – with Senators simply dozing as they used to do in the old days in the House of Lords.
Far from being lazy, I and most of my other colleagues will be found either working in committee or their offices sometimes until after 11pm.
It is strengthening to a democracy that as members of the Oireachtas we have the right to raise issues under privilege. This means that controversial matters of human and social justice and miscarriages of justice can be raised in the house without fear on behalf of ordinary people.
There are of course weaknesses in the system and these include the absolute prohibition on the Senate having any real influence on exchequer spending. Moreover, in light of the unmitigated mess of the economy made both by successive governments and leading financial institutions it is incredible that the upper house of parliament should be so excluded.
I believe that there is a role for a second chamber in the Irish parliament. I have stated as strongly as I can the case which I believe in my heart to be valid for the retention of Seanad Éireann, but I have also accepted the need for reform and where that reform could be achieved most satisfactorily.
David Norris is an Independent Senator