Sir, – The fact that as many as 57 per cent of the Bills passed by the Dáil have been guillotined by the Government, as pointed out by Harry McGee (Front page, June 10th) is extremely relevant to the debate on the future of Seanad Éireann.
This Government’s readiness to use its huge majority – the largest in the history of the State – to foreshorten debate and to short-circuit the time for deliberation of legislation is a recipe for bad law.
In recent times, there has been a significant number of Bills passed by the Dáil with real defects and, as a result, these Bills have had to be subsequently amended in the Seanad. This list includes the Personal Insolvency Bill, the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Adults) Bill, the Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Bill, the Nurses and Midwives Bill and the Credit Union Bill.
So far, in the lifetime of the current Oireachtas (up to May 2013), the Seanad has made a total of 529 amendments to 14 different Bills that had been passed by the Dáil in an inadequate or incorrect fashion.
The Government is now trying to persuade people to abolish the Seanad on the basis that they will fundamentally improve the way the Dáil does its business. This is despite the fact that the Government's own chief whip has admitted that its track-record in relation to Dáil reform is, in fact, "deplorable" (Irish Times June 10th).
This hardly inspires confidence; indeed, on the contrary, it highlights the stark reality that there is little credible basis to believe that the Dáil will suddenly stop making mistakes or show a new-found capacity for properly vetting legislation.
Bad law affects everyone in our society. It damages trust in politics, it undermines economic renewal and it impacts negatively on the way we all lead our lives.
Before voting to abolish the Seanad, I would urge people to ask themselves a couple of fundamental questions – who will monitor and, where necessary, amend the legislative work of the Dáil?
And who will correct the next 529 mistakes? – Yours, etc,
Senator FEARGAL QUINN,
Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.