FROM THE ARCHIVES:Abolition of the Senate in the Free State – quite a different institution from the current Seanad – was an issue within years of its foundation. Fianna Fáil opposed its existence at all, while an all-party committee was set up to look at its membership and functions, which acted as a method of involving former unionists in the Oireachtas. The Irish Timeshad this to say about the moves. – JOE JOYCE
NO PART of the [Free State] Constitution was framed more carefully than the Articles which define the scope and limits of the Senate’s authority. As a result of their operation during five years, the Chamber has done good work . . . By general agreement, however, the method of election to the Senate requires early reform.
Under the existing plan some 15 members are elected, once in three years, from a panel of some 45 nominated persons.
The electors comprise the whole parliamentary electorate of the Free State and vote on the principle of proportional representation. In practice this system has been a failure.
The electorate is too large and the candidates are far too numerous. At the last election for a fourth part of the Senate it became manifest that, of the small fraction of the electorate which voted at all, the majority voted in the dark.
Mr. de Valera and his friends demand, for two reasons, that the Senate shall be abolished. In the first place, they urge that, as a useless body, it is an unnecessary and indefensible drain upon the public purse. We feel no surprise that Mr. de Valera should wish to isolate the Free State’s constitutional procedure from that of every other Dominion of the British Empire; but we feel – even in his case – some slight surprise that he should be ready to flout, so ignorantly and so arrogantly, the political wisdom of the world.
Yet the world’s example, it seems – if Mr. de Valera should attain to office – would count for nothing in one of the world’s youngest States. He would abolish the Second Chamber without even the formal courtesy of argument. This imperious folly is of a piece with Fianna Fáil’s proposal to make Ireland self- supporting by means of an insurmountable tariff wall. Furthermore the Senate shelters persons who have the audacity to disagree with Fianna Fáil’s political and economic views.
Mr. Lemass finds a grievance in the fact that through the Senate a minority, which otherwise would be extinguished by the democratic machine, has some influence on public affairs.
In other words, the Constitution recognises that the education, wealth, brains, economic training and patriotism of the ex-Unionist minority are entitled to certain rights and are important assets to the State.
To Fianna Fáil’s despotism – or is it Bolshevism? – this recognition is an outrage. It will tolerate no policies, no opinions, no loyalties except such as are sanctioned by its own narrow and petty scheme. What a gospel – and what an object-lesson for the people of Northern Ireland!
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