Seanad – Joerg's Ramblings

Seanad Eireann – Take it off the road, it has failed the NCT!

On Friday a Referendum will take place in Ireland and if you are an Irish citizen you are allowed and definitely should vote. As a foreigner myself and many of you are not allowed to vote. But that doesn’t stop us from having an opinion and having a right to have an opinion. Nobody has to agree, but that is the case with all opinions, isn’t it?

One of the two questions on Friday is if the Seanad should be abolished (YES) or if it should be kept (NO). In the beginning of that discussion there was a strong opinion in favour of closing it, it seemed, but oddly this changed in the last few weeks.

The Seanad is a totally and utterly undemocratic institution. Many many people in Ireland are never allowed to vote for any of the members. It is set up in such a way that always the current government has a majority in the Seanad and it seems to be the political retirement home of Ireland.

The reason why many are never allowed to vote is because a strange system was chosen when it was set up that allows for example people who went to SOME of the Irish Universities to vote and others not and if you didn’t go to university then you most likely are not allowed to vote. The reason why the government always will have a majority is because the Taoiseach is putting 11 unelected (usually failed) party members and friends in as Senators.

If it is not bad enough that the Senate is completely undemocratic, it gets worse if you look at what it has every achieved. It is meant to be a control instance (an Upper House) that controls the Dail (Lower House), but the Senate is not even allowed to veto anything. All they can do is delay a law and if I read that right, they did that only TWICE in their whole history. No surprise if the current government has always the majority in the Senate.

Recently many started saying the Senate should remain but it HAS to be overhauled. And interestingly Fianna Fail, the party that was in government until the last elections and for many years until then is the loudest shouter. The demand correction of the Seanad, but wait, why did they NEVER make an attempt when they were in power? A total joke!

In my opinion it would be good to have a control instance, an Upper House. But that won’t happen with the current Senate and repairing is sometimes not possible. If the foundation of your house is totally useless, then you have to tear down the house and build it new. Getting the paint can out will not make any significant difference.

The Senate is a house that needs to be torn down and re-built or a car that needs to be taken off the road because it failed ALL tests and it has to be newly built! Everything else will not achieve anything and it is not even clear if the politicians in government or in the opposition know how to fix it anyway because no one submitted a comprehensive plan.

So, I would vote YES! Get rid of it and then re-build it again. You say the rebuilding will not happen? Well the parties that think it should be there have to submit a proper proposal and even if the Senate will be gone for 4 or 8 years, it is better to do that than to keep a totally useless organisation in place.

Seanad or no Seanad?

Before they got elected Fine Gael promised that they would abolish the Seanad. At the time most people saw this Upper House of the Parliament as an undemocratic, costly and unnecessary institution that should be removed rather sooner than later. At the time Fine Gael was very popular as they had just won the election. Since then a lot has happened.
Fine Gael is not at all that popular anymore and has less support than Fine Fail, the party that was blamed for the Irish recession and a party that many declared as a “dead man walking”. This turn around happened in such a short time that Fine Gael should be seriously worried.

A consequence of that public change of mind is that people now don’t trust Fine Gael anymore and suddenly think a parliamentary control instance might still be a good idea. They ignore that the elections to the Seanad are COMPLETELY undemocratic as the system of electing Seanad members is a very odd mechanism that was dreamt up by the founders of the Irish democracy who clearly had a somewhat twisted view (from today’s perspective) of democracy. A huge proportion of people in Ireland have absolutely no voting rights.

So Fine Gael has screwed up and now the opinion about the Seanad changes and more people ask for a change or improvement of the Seanad instead of an abolition.

In my opinion the Seanad COULD be a very helpful instance, but only if a way was found that gives EVERY Irish citizen a voting right AND only if the election to the Seanad is completely different than the election to the Dail. One way could be a nationwide list system that is put together by each party completely constituency independent. It would have to rule out Independent candidates (unless they organise themselves in a list of Independents) and the Universities would have to lose their candidates. Another aspect would have to be that the Taoiseach must not have the right to put his friends on the Seanad by-passing the elections.

Significant changes, but they would make the Seanad to what it should be. Without that? Get rid of this unnecessary forum.

Some people have different agendas though and they are always shouting very loud. David Norris is one of them. He will disappear in a deserved political insignificance if the Seanad is abolished and he is fighting for his “importance”. He is attacking “Enda bloody Kenny” (Norris, sophisticated and polite as always!) for trying to abolish the Seanad and calls anyone who supports the plans to scrap the Seanad a “liar, thief and traitor to the Irish people”. www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/norris-slams-enda-bloody-kenny-for-seanad-abolition-attempt-598691.html

David Norris is a rude bully and people like him make me hope that the Seanad will be gone soon.

Tag: Seanad

Seanad Eireann – Take it off the road, it has failed the NCT!

Seanad or no Seanad?