AN INDEPENDENT Senator has sharply criticised calls from the main political parties to abolish Seanad Éireann as a populist gesture posing a threat to democracy.
University Senator Joe O’Toole has defended the Second House by saying wholesale reform and not abolition was necessary. “No political party, whatever they are saying, is going to be enthusiastic about a second chamber where they have to listen to the voices of different groups of people whether it be from the Gaeltachts, Northern Ireland, business, farmers, unions, unemployed, voluntary groups, arts community etc,” Mr O’Toole said.
“We have this extraordinary situation in Irish life at the moment where people are screaming for a voice for civic society. The Seanad was set up to do that. The political parties made sure it never happened and now people are saying it’s not working, let’s get rid of it.”
He was responding to Minister for Defence Tony Killeen who said on Sunday the Government will consider holding a referendum on the future of the Seanad on the same day as the general election.
Labour spokesman on the Constitution Brendan Howlin said yesterday his party’s new policy was to shut down the Seanad.
While Green Party leader John Gormley also indicated he was in favour of a referendum, his party colleague Senator Dan Boyle said yesterday he believed it was “unlikely” a referendum would happen on the same day as the general election.
“I don’t think time allows for it to happen,” Mr Boyle wrote on his Twitter site yesterday. In a later post, he added: “I don’t see it happening. I don’t see the Seanad supporting it.”
Mr O'Toole, speaking on RTÉ's News at One, said the Seanad had not been allowed to develop as it was intended in the Constitution.
“They have now placed the ball for a penalty kick in front of goal. They’ll put it to the people and I have no doubt the people will vote to get rid of the Seanad because they have not been offered the alternative. They have not looked at what it would be like . . . It is like getting rid of an awkward neighbour. It is very attractive to the political parties to get rid of it and I’ll tell you something, the people who will lose are the ordinary people on the ground.”
Mr O’Toole said similar moves were seen in Europe before. “In Europe in a recession, whether it be in Italy with Mussolini, whether it be in Germany with Hitler, whether it be in Spain with Franco, the first thing that happens in a recession is that people start cutting back on political accountability.”
Mr Howlin said yesterday the Labour Party policy document on Oireachtas reform would outline how parliamentary oversight would be strengthened using only one chamber, the Dáil.
He attacked both Coalition parties as trying to find “ways and means of prolonging the life of the Government”. Similarly, Fine Gael TD Lucinda Creighton said it was a delaying tactic. She said the Bill to hold a referendum would be defeated in the Upper House.
“This would add 90 days to the lifetime of the Government. This is a truly clever, though unbelievably cynical, move,” she said.
Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said the Government’s belated call came many months after he had called for the abolition of the Upper House. He described the Seanad as elitist, a complete waste of taxpayers’ money, and an affront to democracy.
Asked how could these views be consistent with him being a senator for three years, he responded that he had used the opportunity it presented to further the causes and policies of his party: “Some people might find that hypocritical. I went in there to use the system but at the same time I was calling for its abolition,” he said.
The Independent MEP for North West Marian Harkin echoed Mr O’Toole’s views.
She said yesterday if political parties had a genuine commitment to democracy they would not be seeking to abolish the Seanad.
“It is disquieting, to say the least, that the main political parties are trying to outdo each other in populist advocacy of Seanad abolition,” she said.