Voters were asked by the then government in 1979 to amend the Constitution to enable the Oireachtas to give all third level graduates voting rights in a Seanad election, not just those from Trinity College and the National University of Ireland. The voters in that referendum, most of whom were not university graduates and had no Seanad vote, nevertheless agreed to do so by a nine to one margin. Today voting begins in the two university constituencies, and the NUI and Trinity College electorate will each return three members in the new Seanad. Although that constitutional amendment to expand the university franchise was passed 28 years ago, the legislation to implement the decision has not yet been introduced. Nine elections later, the graduates of DCU, DIT, and the University of Limerick are still voteless. And the numbers of disenfranchised increase each year.
Since 1979, successive governments have made no attempt to implement the will of the people, as clearly expressed in a plebiscite that all the Dáil parties supported. The Committee on the Constitution in 1967 had first identified the need for reform in this area and recommended a change in the Constitution to facilitate it. Forty years later, however, there has been little progress.
This raises a number of concerns. First, is it right that the Oireachtas should continue to ignore the decision of the people in a national referendum, as has happened? After all, the people are the sovereign authority in the State and there can be no clearer expression of that sovereignty than a referendum decision. And yet successive governments of different political persuasions over three decades, in effect, have chosen to frustrate the will of the people on this matter.
In a democracy, a right to vote in a national election based on some superior educational qualification is always difficult to justify. It seems both elitist and undemocratic that, while all Irish citizens have one vote in an election to the Dáil, some Irish citizens have a second vote in an election to the second chamber, the Seanad. And when an unacceptable electoral distinction continues to be drawn between university graduates, which leaves many disenfranchised in defiance of what the people decided years ago, the position becomes more absurd. It is now wholly indefensible.
Since the Seanad was reconstituted in 1937, its reform has been discussed and analysed endlessly, but to little or no effect. The continued election of university senators on a restricted franchise is, and has been, unacceptable, and the legislative remedy that lies in the hands of the Oireachtas, should now be taken without further delay.