Sir, – You report that the referendum – to be held in September – will ask us to “either scrap or retain the Seanad” (Arthur Beesley, Front page, May 29th).
Is any consideration being given to the fact this will not simply be a vote on whether or not the senate is to disappear but also on whether or not large numbers of Irish graduates living abroad are to be disenfranchised?
For most of us in that position, our only voting right in Ireland is the right to elect a senator in one of the senate’s two academic sector electoral constituencies (the National University of Ireland and the University of Dublin). Are we then to have a vote in the referendum on the abolition of our voting rights? If not, how does Ireland plan to justify removing voting rights without the consent of those to be disenfranchised? – Yours, etc,
KATHLEEN FINGLETON,
Avenue Général de Gaulle,
Brussels,
Belgium.
A chara, – Why do we allow the cynical exploitation of the Seanad by political parties seeking electoral advantage in the Dáil to pass without comment?
A quick look at the websites for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael shows that all incumbent senators of both parties have been assigned Dáil constituencies, such that a Fine Gael senator elected to the Seanad by the Labour Panel now represents constituents in Galway West, while the Fianna Fáil website proclaims another to be the “senator for Dublin North” (to pick but two examples). Although the Labour Party website does not assign constituencies to its senators, they appear free to make such a claim in their online biographies, and many do.
Under our Constitution, the two houses of the Oireachtas are supposed to perform distinct functions. To pretend that sitting senators somehow act as elected representatives for named Dáil constituencies that cannot vote for them is completely dishonest. This pretence not only subverts the constitutional distinction between the Seanad and Dáil, but also arguably demonstrates that a majority of senators either do not understand what their role is or are happy to disregard it, viewing their time in the upper house merely as a stepping stone to something better. – Is mise,
STEPHEN WILSON,
Kochannstraße,
Berlin,
Germany.