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You are > Home > Kenny might need Seanad nuclear option
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Friday, July 09, 2010
Kenny might need Seanad nuclear option
I APPLAUDED, figuratively speaking, when Enda Kenny announced that Fine Gael, once in government, would move to abolish Seanad Éireann. Now, after mature reflection, I reckon we should take that commitment with a grain of salt.
Why? Mainly because the desire for a rest home or halfway house for failed or aspiring TDs is as great within the ranks of Fine Gael as it is in the other parties.
This means that if a serious attempt to get rid of the Seanad is ever seriously contemplated, pressure will build up for its retention and all sorts of spurious justifications for keeping a second chamber will be advanced.
Not that there isn’t a good case to be made for a national parliament having two legislative chambers – bicameral is the technical term for such an arrangement.
That case was very well made in Philadelphia in 1787 at the convention which produced the American Constitution.
Dispersing power -– remember for centuries the dominant political principle was the divine right of kings– is the surest way to guard against tyranny. In the Federalist Papers, a collection of essays written in defence of the new constitution, James Madison put it thus: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny".
Strong stuff, but history has shown that there was much wisdom in Madison’s words. You are building in additional safeguards for democracy if you separate not just the legislative (parliament), the executive (the cabinet) and the judicial (the courts) functions, but if you also provide a two-chamber national assembly.
That’s sound political theory, but it implodes if in reality the two chambers – in our case Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann – are carbon copies of each other. The second chamber must consist not just of different faces but different minds.
The ultimate justification for retaining Seanad Éireann is because it is stuffed with people who can think outside the box and who bring a range of specialist knowledge to bear on whatever is being processed through the national parliament by way of legislation.
But this most assuredly is not the Seanad Éireann we have today. The Seanad we know is stuffed with glorified county councillors – rejected or failed TDs on the one hand, and aspiring TDs on the other hand.
In between, you’ll always find a few who have been rewarded by whoever happens to be the Taoiseach of the day for services rendered.
There are and always have been notable exceptions. Usually they are found among the group of six who occupy the university seats in the Seanad. But six out of sixty is a very poor ratio.
Okay, you can add some others to that six, but you are still left with a second chamber that’s not fit for purpose.
Part of the reason for this is that the electoral mechanism for the Seanad is controlled by the party machines. That’s why, by and large, the second chamber is a carbon copy of the first chamber – or you might prefer to call them the upper and lower houses.
Faced with this unsatisfactory situation, the options are two – a radical reform of the second chamber, or scrapping it altogether or the grounds that it is a useless institution, and one that is an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer.
The case for reform has been made over and over again. The public’s patience is wearing thin. Either reform, or Mr Kenny may yet have to go for the nuclear option.
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