Madam, – The recall sitting of the Seanad scheduled to take place today (March 23rd) is a party election broadcast on behalf of incumbency. It is an uncunning plan that will achieve the exact opposite of its stated intention of demonstrating to the nation why we need to retain the Seanad.
The legislation to allow for the Seanad to be recalled while the election campaign is underway and polling is taking place in respect of the university panels was evidently intended with an emergency situation in mind.Yet the only emergency the Seanad appears able to recognise is the challenge to the tenure of its existing members.
This recall is purportedly to allow discussion on a private member’s bill – the Mental Health (Involuntary Procedures) (Amendment) Bill 2008 (Seanad). A serious topic, without a doubt, yet it has not darkened the door of the Dáil since it was introduced in the Seanad in the summer of 2008. Nor was it considered important enough to merit a single day’s consideration by the Seanad in the whole of 2010. Yet now it requires the urgent and emergency recall of the Seanad in the middle of its election campaign. This temporary 47-member Seanad will be populated by over 60 per cent Fianna Fáil and Green Party senators and stands more as a reminder of what the people have just voted to reject than it will anything we need to preserve. Meanwhile, the Government parties with only eight Senators (six Fine Gael and two Labour) will vastly be outnumbered, in stark contrast to the verdict of the electorate. Holding this session just as an undemocratic minority of the electorate are casting their votes flies in the face of the electorate’s verdict of February 25th.
We can expect from this session the grandest of grandstanding and the most outraged of outrageous limelight-seeking we have witnessed in years, as candidates seek to get their name mentioned in the national broadcast and print media one more time. We should all hope it is the final time. – Yours, etc,