Sir, – Prof Eunan O'Halpin (Letters, March 4th) claims incorrectly that the university senators have "done precisely nothing to remedy the one obvious injustice in Irish life which they are uniquely placed to address", namely to implement the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of 1979 to extend the university franchise to graduates of third-level institutions other than NUI and Trinity.
His claim is wholly untrue. In 2016, I and the other NUI senators tabled the Seanad Bill 2016 to reform radically the Seanad’s system of election and to fully implement the Seventh Amendment. But Enda Kenny’s government cynically delayed passage of that Bill. In 2018, the all-party Seanad Reform Implementation Group, which I chaired, again drafted a reform Bill which would implement the Seventh Amendment. The then-taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who received the report, informed me that his government would not support our proposals to reform the election of the Seanad or to give all citizens a right to vote in Seanad elections. In 2020, I and other senators tabled the current Seanad Bill 2020 which, yet again, is being shamefully stalled by the present government. That Bill also fully implements the Seventh Amendment. Prof O’Halpin, in the face of all these facts, makes a rather barbed claim that I and other university senators are engaging in “self-serving inaction which gives the lie to their collective image as fearless champions of the public good”. Especially before writing as Trinity’s Professor of Contemporary Irish History, he should first check the facts before asserting that “precisely nothing is being done” by me and colleagues to implement the Seventh Amendment or before charging us with “self-serving inaction”.
The easily accessible public record shows that these charges against me and other reforming senators are unfounded and untrue. – Yours, etc,
Senator MICHAEL
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McDOWELL,
Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.