In this blog Robin Hanan responds to the current debate on the abolition of the Seanad. He suggests that the Seanad is an easy target in its current elitist form, but that does not necessarily mean its abolition is the best thing for democracy.
The Taoiseach’s main argument for abolishing Seanad Éireann is that ‘we have too many politicians’. This is a crude appeal to public cynicism about politics and politicians, or at least to try to deflect this hostility away from the Government parties.
There are already signs that he may have misread the mood of the country. A superficial distrust of politics and politicians has long been part of small-talk and media chat-shows in Ireland and across Europe, and this has deepened with the current crisis. However, when particular issues or crises emerge most people also recognise the need for more democratic scrutiny and control of powerful economic interests and of the state itself.
The cost saving argument is one of the weakest. Contrary to public perception, the Oireachtas has always been relatively cheap and poorly resourced by international comparisons. There is some scope for improving efficiency by transferring resources from ‘constituency work’ to more policy and research support for politicians and by reducing salaries, but democracy always costs money. The cost of poor policy and poor regulation is more obvious now than ever, and dwarfs anything which an enhanced Oireachtas would cost. The €25 million it takes to run the Seanad annually might seem a lot to people struggling to make ends meet, but it is a very small part of the public finances.
The Seanad is an easy target because it is clearly undemocratic and elitist. The election of six senators by graduates of two universities is an outdated hangover from less democratic times and is an insult to the creativity of the rest of society. The indirect election of most of the rest of the Seanad by county councillors is a little better, but not transparent or empowering for ordinary citizens. The appointment of the remaining 11 members by the Taoiseach simply strengthens patronage and centralised control.
However, before abolishing it, we need a serious debate on:
- What the Seanad has contributed to Irish political life?
- What a chamber which is not based on local constituencies (like the Dail) could achieve?
- How the Seanad could be re-formed or replaced to deliver on this potential?
It is true that Senators, like backbench TDs, currently play little role in actual decision-making, which is dominated by the Cabinet and senior civil servants. The Seanad’s strength has been in raising new ideas and debates which are too controversial for TDs to risk, in providing a second look at legislation and in contributing expertise to Oireachtas Committees. Well–known examples of national debates initiated by Senators include WB Yeats on divorce, Owen Sheehy Skeffington on censorship, Mary Bourke/Robinson on contraception and David Norris on gay rights. Decades before public debate had moved on enough to allow the Dail to legislate on any of these issues, Senators were putting ideas and embarrassing questions on the table.
Increasingly, many senators work with civil society organisations to promote new legislation. A recent example is the Climate Change Bill, potentially one of the most important pieces of legislation this century, initiated in by Ivana Bacik building on work by Friends of the Earth and others as well as her own analysis.
As a campaigner on human rights and social justice issues, I have been impressed over the years by the quality of informed inputs to Oireachtas Committees by senators. There are also very impressive inputs by TDs, but for many this is an extra luxury on top of the real job of being seen to be active in their constituencies and keeping their clinics busy.
The examples above all come from the university senators, who make up only 10% of the total, although in recent years there has also been a strong input by Senators appointed from civil society backgrounds by the Taoiseach. Just to mention three new members of the current Seanad, one has been Director of the Children’s Rights Alliance, another the Chairperson of Threshold and a third is a former Director of the National Women’s Council. All have been active on a wide range of issues linked to civil society.
The dominance of the university senators is not because graduates have more to say than anyone else. Anyone working in the community sector will know that much of the social drive and creativity in our society comes from communities who have least access to university and are least represented in the Dáil. The real reason is that they are elected with a national rather than local remit and are not subject to the same pressures of constituency work, or the same level of control by party whips.
The election of nationwide representatives who have the space to consider issues in more depth than the Dáil, which is currently the preserve of graduates, needs to be extended to the whole of society, not abolished.
In 2011, along with two other Seanad candidates Peter Mooney and Seamus Boland, I proposed that six principles should drive reform:
- A reformed Seanad should be elected by all of the people
- Senators should continue to have a national, not local, remit
- Emigrants who are Irish citizens should be represented in the Seanad
- Candidates should be prohibited from standing for both Dail and Seanad within a set number of years
- There should be strengthened powers of inquiry and a specific remit to hold hearings to scrutinise key public appointments, the process for allocating major state contracts and important public policy decisions
- There should be a gender balance
There has never been a more urgent need for reform of our political system. However, if we are to get out of this crisis, and make sure that powerful interests don’t ever run amok in the same way again, we need more politics, more effective politics and more transparent politics. There is no reason to believe that simply abolishing the Seanad will deliver this.
A reformed Seanad can provide new openings for social justice advocacy. It can strengthen democratic accountability, facilitate more substantive debate, be more inclusive, and provide greater opportunities for access to Oireachtas structure for civil society.
Transparency, accountability and openness are essential to balancing political debate and ensure that excluded voices are heard.
Robin Hanann is Director of the European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) Ireland and ran for election during the last Seanad elections.