Despite the Taoiseach's assurances, the vote on the Seanad's future is being kicked down the road towards oblivion, writes DEAGLÁN de BRÉADÚN
STAND-UP COMEDIANS take a jaundiced view of the world and search out the funny side of tragedy. That’s what we pay them to do. One of the pioneers of the genre, Lenny Bruce, had a darkly humorous if somewhat cynical routine about child-custody battles.
The New York-born satirist saw them as a way for estranged spouses to get even with one another. “I really love that kid,” the departing husband would insist, but as soon as he had won the battle, the unfortunate child slid down the agenda
The current war of words over the future of Seanad Éireann recalls that Lenny Bruce routine. When Enda Kenny reiterated his plan for a referendum to abolish the Upper House there was a sudden outpouring of devotion for this neglected institution.
Don’t kill off the Seanad, change it for the better, we are told. But ironically, the best hope of reforming this body is if the Taoiseach keeps holding a gun to its head.
The Seanad has been an uncared-for child for many a long day. Eleven special committees and 10 reports on its functions have failed to produce any significant changes. Only the prospect of extinction will galvanise its supporters to take real action.
The late Patrick Lindsay, who spent three years as leas-cathaoirleach, summed up the Seanad as a refuge for “failed politicians and political eunuchs”. He acknowledged at the same time there were some very talented members.
Most Senators are elected by members of the Oireachtas and by county or city councillors, which strengthens the tendency to make it a temporary rest home or even retirement community for those who have lost their seats or failed to win one in the general election to the Dáil.
Kenny’s initial proposal to abolish the Seanad as a cost-saving measure came out of the blue when, as opposition leader, he got up to address a Fine Gael dinner in Dublin three years ago. He declared he would hold a referendum on it “within a year of taking office”.
Kenny’s attitude to the Seanad was echoed in a Labour document a few months later, with Brendan Howlin as its main author. But there were rumblings in the Labour Party. The Kenny-Howlin proposal was not going down well with all the comrades. Motions for and against were tabled for the party conference.
The implications were serious. Fine Gael and Labour were the obvious alternative government at the time but divisions on a basic constitutional stance taken by the Fine Gael leader might damage their prospects in the coming election.
The Labour conference took place in Galway that spring: what would the party do? In the event it pulled a masterstroke: the issue would be put to a citizens’ convention on the Constitution.
Eamon Gilmore’s move took the issue completely off the news agenda and removed the opportunity for Fianna Fáil and the media to highlight a potential source of division in the alternative government.
The general election came and went and when the two victorious parties sat down to discuss their coalition programme last year, they engaged in some serious salami-slicing.
Yes, there would be a citizens’ convention on the Constitution – but wait for it: Seanad abolition wouldn’t be on the agenda. There would be a separate referendum on that. Oh yes.
And when would that referendum take place? No date was given but the programme for government used the word “urgent” twice in this context, along with its constant companion nowadays: “prioritise”.
Urgency ain’t what it used to be. As Sinéad O’Connor might put it in one of her songs, it’s been 16 months and 19 days since this Government took office, and we’re still waiting.
The latest word is that there won’t be a vote on the future of the Seanad before the second half of 2013. We have to get through the children’s rights referendum this year, you understand, and in the first half of next year we shall be preoccupied with our presidency of the European Council.
The excuse about having to hold the children’s referendum on its own is pretty thin and the suggestion that the EU presidency will be all-consuming is equally hard to swallow. It’s a long way from “within a year of taking office”.
Back in January 1988 – could it all have been so simple then? – the Progressive Democrats published a “Constitution for a New Republic” which envisaged a President and a Dáil but no Seanad.
The Seanad has outlasted the PDs: do I see a crinkly smile on de Valera’s death mask? In addition, the formidable Michael McDowell, joint author of the 1988 PD document, has undergone a conversion worthy of St Paul on the issue.
Indeed, the former tánaiste and attorney general was involved in generating a letter published in this newspaper last Monday morning from six distinguished former senators, calling for reform rather than abolition of the Upper House.
Enda Kenny wasn’t having any of it. He bounced into Glenties that afternoon and with his usual ebullience, assured reporters covering the MacGill Summer School that the referendum was going ahead.
The traditional PD position was upheld the same day by the party’s founder, Desmond O’Malley, who told the thoughtful assembly of MacGillerati in the “Glenties Senate” that the Upper House was “unnecessary and undemocratic”.
A referendum on abolition would generate a serious debate but it looks as if it may never be called. Kenny’s ability to get his way should not be underestimated but one hears the distinct sound of a can being kicked down the road, the noise of metal on stone getting fainter and fainter as it recedes towards political oblivion.
Our institutions have failed us in many respects in the current crisis and we need a national “think-in” on their value or lack of it. It would also be fun: can you imagine the heights of rhetoric to which David Norris would soar during the campaign?
With a few exceptions, the Labour Party exudes the same enthusiasm for abolition as a lifelong vegetarian would have for eating a medium-rare rib-eye steak and, apart from the Taoiseach, there is no great appetite in Fine Gael either. It’s a pity because a referendum would at least take our minds off our economic woes for a while.