NO POLITICAL issue has been more widely discussed for so long – decades - to less visible effect than Seanad reform. Last year Fine Gael proposed the abolition of the Upper House, with party leader Enda Kenny claiming a second chamber can no longer be justified. In 1936 Eamon de Valera scrapped the Seanad before restoring it a year later, via a new Constitution. Ever since, the Seanad has been the subject of much debate and discussion – reviews of the Constitution, reports by Oireachtas committee, party policy documents. But all these have produced little change.
Michael McDowell, a former minister and Progressive Democrats leader, is the latest to revise his views on the utility of the Upper House. He admitted last week to having second thoughts about abolishing the second chamber, a move the party favoured in the late 1980s. At that time he believed Seanad Éireann served as an ante-room to the Dáil, largely used to accommodate political aspirants and those who had lost Dáil seats.
But his later experience as minister, where he handled a large volume of major law reform measures, has prompted a reassessment. What he had regarded as a redundant parliamentary institution, he now says can be redeemed by radical reform. Mr McDowell, once an abolitionist, has become a reformist. Mr Kenny, once a reformist, has become an abolitionist. And he has promised that Fine Gael in government would give voters an opportunity, through a referendum, to decide the Seanad’s fate.
In 2004, the Seanad in its own review of the second chamber acknowledged that for many members of the public it is seen as “weak, ineffective and of questionable value”. And for three decades successive governments have ignored the will of the people on university representation by failing to pass legislation to give effect to the result of a 1979 referendum. This would give all third-level graduates a vote in Seanad elections, not just those from Trinity College and the National University of Ireland. Over a period of more than 80 years, there have been some 12 reports on aspects of Seanad reform; in recent years no fewer than three: including two reviews by an Oireachtas committee on the Constitution. Since 2007, the Government, through Minister for the Environment John Gormley, has been trying to establish the extent of cross-party agreement on the recommendations of the 2004 report on Seanad reform without much success. Reform of the second chamber remains as elusive as ever.