Removal of the Seanad is a gimmick

IF the people of Ireland had the opportunity, they would probably vote for the abolition of the Dáil and not merely for the abolition of the Seanad. That’s the view of former Fianna Fáil TD and Minister Brendan Daly as expressed by him on Clare FM this Tuesday. I am sure the veteran Clare politician doesn’t really believe this. It was somewhat of a throw-away remark in the context of a debate on the proposal to abolish the Seanad. He made the remark to illustrate the low esteem in which politicians and political institutions are held just now.

 

Brendan Daly knows better than most of us that the survival of the State depends on the survival of the Dáil. We will always need a government. It could be argued, of course, that we do not need the Dáil in its present form. It is merely a rubber stamp for the government of the day. Ordinary TDs have no power whatsoever. They merely rubber-stamp decisions taken by the Cabinet. That is especially so in the current Dáil where the government parties have a record majority.

However, that is the will of the people as expressed in last year’s General Election when they came out and voted in such large numbers for Fine Gael and Labour. Again, you could argue the people didn’t get what they voted for. Fine Gael and Labour pledged to do things completely different to Fianna Fáil. The rest, as you know, is history. Who needs Fianna Fail anyway when we have Fine Gael and Labour carrying out the same policies the people dumped so emphatically some 18 months ago?

Anyway, there is no proposal from anyone to abolish the Dáil and Brendan Daly was probably only joking when he quipped that the people might vote to abolish the Dáil if they had the chance.

The question of abolishing the Seanad is a separate issue.  Enda Kenny promised to hold a referendum on the issue within a year of taking office. However, that is only one of several promises reneged on by this Government.

Still, it does look as if the referendum will go ahead next year despite growing opposition to the move in Fine Gael and especially in Labour. There is now more talk about reform than about abolition.
One suggestion I heard during the week was that instead of putting a simple question like, “Do you favour abolition of the Seanad?” there might be another question like “Do you favour reform of the Seanad?”

You cannot, however, have it as simple as that because there are several references to the Seanad in the Constitution and all those references would have to be addressed in the Referendum. While, we are talking about reform, what do we mean? We have been hearing about reform of the Seanad since I was a schoolboy.  I don’t know how many enquiries have been set up and reports issued on this subject in the intervening decades but they were all conveniently ignored by the government of the day. As Enda Kenny said himself, “Reform has failed”. Well, reform has not failed but efforts to reform have failed miserably. They failed for the simple and ancient reason that turkeys do not vote for Christmas.

I agree with Michael McDowell – the proposal to abolish the Seanad is a gimmick. It was made by Enda Kenny without much apparent thought or without consulting with his Fine Gael colleagues in the run-up to the general election. In other words, it was a political gesture and certainly caught the mood of the people. Perhaps he regrets making it now as Fine Gael didn’t need this particular election gimmick in order to attain power.

However, he is going to have to stick to it whether he likes it or not.  Otherwise, he is going to be made look like a complete eejit. Politicians, however, can always find a way out. It will be interesting to see how Enda deals with this one as the pressure mounts on him to reform rather than abolish the Upper House of the Oireachtas.

I have always felt the Seanad is a useless institution and really has no function. I have some idea of what I am talking about.  For my sins, I was condemned to reporting on the deliberations in the Seanad for a number of years in the early 1970s.  I visited the place again recently, some 40 years after my original sojourn there. There was no change. The same old, same old – God help us but during those best forgotten days of the 1970s, every daily newspaper in the Republic along with RTÉ sent along two reporters each to dutifully record the words of wisdom uttered by the venerable senators. That was 10 reporters altogether. What a waste of time and manpower.  Nowadays, the only paper to cover the Seanad is the so-called paper of record, The Irish Times, which devotes a few paragraphs to the proceedings when they occur.  It’s a long time since the media in general cottoned on to the fact that the Seanad was irrelevant and of no consequence.

They will tell you the standard of debate in the Upper House is higher than in the Dáil. So what? I wouldn’t be looking at the Dáil as the yardstick for any kind of standards. You should visit either House some time to know what I am talking about.

You can get a much higher standard of debate any day or night from RTÉ’s Prime Time, on TV3’s Tonight With Vincent Browne or on Clare FM’s Morning Focus with John Cooke.

So I don’t see any real argument in favour of retaining the Seanad in any form.

Abolition of the Seanad might still be on Enda Kenny’s agenda but he is going to have to grapple with a lot more contentious issues in the months ahead such as abortion, same-sex marriage, alcohol abuse, tension with Labour, property tax, health cutbacks, septic tanks, the household charge and the Budget not to mention Michael Ring and the loss of a seat in Mayo. He can kick some of those issues to the Constitutional Convention but he cannot kick Michael Ring.

I am afraid Enda is facing a winter of discontent.  May he enjoy his holidays.