Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 18 Apr 2002

Vol. 169 No. 19

Order of Business. - All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution – Seventh Progress Report – Parliament: Statements (Resumed).

Miss Quill

The abolition of the Seanad is a founding principle of my party. However, as a Progressive Democrat, it is important to state that I am of the opinion that this Chamber does valuable work which is of enduring, long-term importance. This House has the capacity and the potential to do much political work which remains undone.

The debate which preceded the referendum on the Nice treaty highlighted the ever-widening gap between the European institutions and the institutions of this State. It also highlighted the urgent need to narrow that gap and to enable Members of the European Parliament and European institutions to address the Irish people and policy makers in the Houses of the Oireachtas. This is the ideal opportunity to create such conditions.

This House received an interesting contribution from Commissioner Byrne which was helpful to us all. On that occasion we were able to ask questions and receive answers. That was an example of what could happen. We should not just offer the right of audience to MEPs, the Council of Ministers or members of the Commission. We should also have an opportunity to make an input into their thinking. That would be one of the badly needed ways in which we could narrow this gap and fill the democratic deficit which has bedevilled the attitude of Irish citizens towards Europe and European institutions.

There is a lack of communication and engagement. There is plenty of information, but it is so unintelligible that people just put it in the bin. We have to invite Europeans to decommission their language and to talk to the citizens of Europe in language which will involve, engage and interest them. That is the kind of thing which can happen in this Chamber in a more meaningful way than in the Dáil. One of the changes I would like to see in this House is the creation of conditions to enable this kind of communication to take place.

I spent ten years in the Dáil and five years in this House. There are areas of public life which do not receive the level of detailed discussion by elected representatives which I would wish. One such area is arts and culture which is so important to the development of the intellectual capital of this country. We have new insights into education as to what triggers intelligence – what gets people to think and to make decisions. This area needs to be brought into mainstream education. It is difficult to create the conditions for such a debate in the Dáil. However, there is plenty of expertise and time in this House to begin this debate from which young people would benefit. We should allow more time for education and other issues which can be debated with great skill in this House. Some Members have much expertise which remains untapped.

The initial idea of vocational panels was good. It was a good idea that people would be drawn from different sectors who would bring their insights and direct experience on the ground to public debate and policy making. We should seek to revisit, strengthen and restructure this idea.

What worries me is the strength of the lobby brigade, unelected people with a huge influence on the making of public policy. I want to see democratic values upheld and the elected people who have the expertise having an input into the making of public policy. When we consider changing the method of election we should revisit those principles and bring that kind of expertise on board. Then expertise, experience and ideas will come from people who are answerable to the public who elected them.

Mr. Quinn

I thank Senator Manning for the opportunity to speak and also the Acting Leader whom I congratulate on his new position as Chief Whip.

The meat in this report is in the chapter on the Seanad. Most of the other recommendations are more concerned with technical matters. It is gratifying that there now seems to be a strong political consensus that the Seanad should stay. I am delighted to hear Senator Quill speak about it and to learn that even the Progressive Democrats are having a rethink about it.

On the last occasion we discussed reform of the Seanad I put forward a possible role for the Seanad as a forum in which legislation could be discussed, even before a Bill was written. What I sought was to bring back to where it belongs the consultative part of the legislative process. I am concerned that there are too many done deals. A deal is struck and all the consultative work is done before something is brought to the Seanad. This is an ideal role for the Seanad and would be possible without any change to the Constitution.

The value of such a change would be seriously diluted if we did not first address the fundamental task of establishing democratic legitimacy for ourselves. To go straight to the heart of the issue, why should university graduates have a vote when others do not have one? There may have been a solid reason in 1937 but that does not stand up now. I cannot defend it and cannot explain why a constitutional amendment of 20 years ago, which enabled a widening of the university vote, has not been covered. Whatever justification there was in the past we cannot guarantee justification for those university seats any longer.

Our six seats are not the only ones lacking democratic legitimacy. The 11 Members appointed by the Taoiseach also lack democratic legitimacy but there are solid reasons for having those appointees. The Seanad has benefited from having a Government majority on most occasions, although Senator Ryan often refers to the three exciting years when it did not.

As this report makes clear, the lack of democratic legitimacy applies not just to the six university seats and the 11 Taoiseach's appointees but to the other 43 seats also. We are all in the same boat. The vocational panels that ostensibly nominate candidates are just a sham – Senator Norris gave a good example earlier. The idea that this House represents a cross-section of vocational interests, as defined by the panels, is fiction. If the nominating panels are fiction then the electorate which then votes for them fails to add legitimacy to the result. To say that Members on those panels are democratically legitimate because they have been chosen by people who were elected by the public is stretching democracy too far. I am not trying to defend or offend anybody and I would not envy anybody the task of having to get elected to one of those 43 seats. Despite the work involved, the process does not gain the legitimacy it needs if the people are to take this House seriously as a democratic institution of the State.

The recommendation of the committee is that both university and vocational seats be abolished and that the 49 seats concerned be thrown open to the full electorate on a list basis. As I understand it, the proposal is that, at the same time as voting for the Dáil, voters would mark their Seanad preferences. However, instead of voting for a specific candidate they would vote for a list. The seats would be allocated among the lists in proportion to the votes they actually achieved. There would obviously be a Fianna Fáil list, a Fine Gael list, a Labour list and also a Senator Norris list, a Senator O'Toole list and a Senator Quinn list, etc. It would obviously be a rare Independent who would command a high enough proportion of the vote to claim more than one seat but Independents could be elected under the system just as candidates from political parties.

This proposal is particularly attractive because it provides all the democratic legitimacy that the House lacks at present without putting in place a duplicate constituency-based system like that of the Dáil. I am now convinced of the merits of this suggestion. I hope the next Government will be concerned about the way democracy is going in this country and will take this on board. It could be the catalyst for the process of reviving public interest and engagement with the political process. We need this and if we ignore it we do so at our peril. There is a great deal to be said for the report, particularly where it speaks of the Seanad. Let us make sure we give it the attention it deserves.

Mr. Ryan

The committee has put great thought into its work. The Leader has introduced substantive and significant legislation in this House on a regular and routine basis. The reason the activities of this House are not regarded as newsworthy is more a commentary on the way the world of the media has evolved than on the operation of the Houses of the Oireachtas. What is done here on Committee Stage of legislation has always been one of the fundamental parts of the role of the Oireachtas. That role is to hold Government accountable when it proposes to initiate change. Legislation is a change. Government has two roles. One is to hold together what is there and the other is to initiate change.

The role of the Opposition in the Dáil is to deal with the way the Government manages the existing order in terms of what is happening at the moment and, following that, to deal with legislation. This House has taken an increasingly significant role in that area but that work is not easy to transmit to the media. An excuse given by broadcasting organisations to my own party is that many of their resources for political coverage are devoted to the tribunals and they must therefore reduce their coverage of the Houses of the Oireachtas. The logic of that escapes me. That decision is particularly unpleasant because it means that the negative side of the activities of many people in politics is hugely covered. It is quite correct to report it because it is disgraceful but the positive work Members do is left out.

A case can be made for the two Houses meshing together better. I am not sure it makes sense to spend weeks working on legislation as we did on the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000, which I will carry with me to my grave. When it has been dealt with in the Seanad, legislation goes to the Dáil where it is treated as if it has never been discussed anywhere in a parliamentary forum before. That should not be the case. It must be possible to link the two Houses and have them complement each other better.

Like Senator Quinn, I welcome the university seats. I have enjoyed one and hope not to have to for much longer, but there is no overwhelming reason to retain them. However, I do not think they will be abolished because I am sceptical as to whether these worthwhile proposals will be implemented. Therefore, they may be here for some time yet. Even though, as Senator Norris said, the university Members have annoyed people from time to time, they have served the House well. The proposal of a list system linked with a clearer focus on what the Seanad does is also welcome.

I agree with Senator Quill that it is important to make the European institutions and the way in which Irish Governments deal with them more visible and transparent in allowing consultation before decisions are taken. One of the things we have learned about the European Union since the referendum on the Treaty of Nice is that the idea of European laws being used by Governments to excuse their inaction in policy areas must be dropped. Entire chunks of the never-to-be-forgotten Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000, could not be altered because they had already been agreed in international treaties. None of us had any input into Government policy on the matter before decisions were taken. In this context, the role of the Seanad is important.

There is also a role for institutionalised representation from Northern Ireland in this House, although I am reluctant to be prescriptive. It would be a good idea to have five seats in the Seanad filled by representatives of both communities in Northern Ireland in a manner to be prescribed by legislation. If we wanted to have an exercise in gender balance in our activities, the Seanad would be a good place to start. There is a possibility to explore various institutional innovations and balances to use the House better.

The committee's report is very good, but we should remember that this House has served the country well. For a period in the 1970s and 1980, when this country was closed in its thinking, this House introduced the beginnings of a succession of constitutional, institutional and social policy changes. In this House, too, issues that had slipped through the Dáil were identified and disposed of through the sheer hard work of Members of this House. Members should never need to apologise to anyone for their work. As the report points out, this House is necessary for the effective functioning of Oireachtas committees because if they were based on a Dáil of 120 or 140 Members, they would not have enough members.

When the Constitution was introduced, government was a small entity, but we are now trying to make accountable a government of a complexity unimaginable 70 years ago. It is a huge task for 226 Members to make national and European government of that scale accountable. Any suggestion, therefore, that a significant reduction in the number of Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas would be helpful to government and European bureaucracy is profoundly damaging to the idea of democratic accountability because government is now so complex one would need two teams of experts to advise every committee of the Oireachtas.

This is a serious and worthwhile report which deserves to be considered. I will have no problem if the basic bones of the proposals are put into legislative or constitutional form.