Sir, – Further to recent reports by your entertaining correspondent Miriam Lord, I feel a few facts will lend balance to the mischievous tone of the articles ("Norris exit prompts wave of indifference", June 29th; "Healy-Rae makes stand over seating", July 2nd).
Joe O’Toole and I started the Independent Universities Group 30 years ago. All the members were Independent university senators. For most of those 30 years Joe O’Toole was leader by consent. When Joe retired six years ago, I was involved in the presidential election and so although I was the senior member, Senator Rónán Mullen took over as leader. However, for the last two years of the late government, I was elected leader.
After the recent election and with increased numbers of Independents of various kinds in the Seanad, I decided to try to plan for a large and powerful group of Independents to include all these elements. We would have been the second largest group after the Government and have constituted the opposition. However, some led by new Senators Alice Mary Higgins and Lynn Ruane felt they would be better off with a smaller group of their own.
We were still the larger group and I summoned another meeting at which I was elected leader and appointed to the foreign affairs committee. Subsequently Senator Michael McDowell engaged in unofficial discussion with Government and other elements and to the next meeting brought Senator Billy Lawless and Senator Marie Louise O’Donnell without advance notice. I had already approached Senator O’Donnell regarding membership but she had declined as a Taoiseach’s nominee and Government supporter.
Senator McDowell demanded a re-run of the division of posts. In the new election Marie-Louise O’Donnell received six votes, myself two and Gerry Craughwell one.
I felt that as a vote of no confidence had been passed in my leadership, I had no alternative but to resign.
In the second of her articles (I am flattered by the scale of Miriam Lord’s indifference) a number of remarks are attributed anonymously to my former colleagues, ie “The ground swell of opinion among members was that the veteran senator had been monopolising Seanad speaking slots when they expected slots to be rotated.”
In fact, the practice in the Seanad has always been that on the order of business the leader of group or party is automatically called first.
However, I made it clear to my colleagues that if they had an urgent matter they wished to raise to let me know and I would yield to them. My practice was to approach colleagues every day unofficially before business commenced and on several occasions I did yield. I may point out that since my removal, my former Independent colleagues have been pretty thin on the ground at the order of business, although this may change after my letter.
People may be tempted to read something sinister in the paragraph: “David was a lucky leader. He resolved the knotty issue over which of them would get the first right to move a Private Members’ Bill by holding a draw in his office which he was fortunate enough to win. His fellow Independents were understandably delighted when he told them the result.”
In fact, I was not present at the draw, which was undertaken by my PA and the PA of Senator Gerry Craughwell and who in fact pulled the names out of the hat.
Moreover, immediately on leaving I offered to yield the private members’ time slot back to the Independent Group but it was not prepared to take it up.
The remarks about North Great Georges Street I will regard with appropriately 18th-century disdain! – Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.