One morning last week, John Waters was on the NewsTalk 106 Breakfast Show with David McWilliams. I was debating equality with a moderately well-known feminist. Having spoken about her commitment to equality for nearly half an hour, it emerged that this individual was running as a candidate for one of the Trinity College seats in the Seanad election.
Having long commentated on the brass neck of feminists, it shouldn't have surprised me that she saw no contradiction between pontificating about equality and running in an undemocratic election, but strangely it did. The CEO of the Equality Authority, Mr Niall Crowley, was on the same programme and he saw nothing wrong with the Seanad elections either, but the only thing that would surprise me about the Equality Authority would be news that it had done something to promote genuine equality.
Like roughly 95 per cent of the general electoral register, I do not have a vote in the Seanad election. If I had been to Trinity College or one of the National University of Ireland colleges, I would have the right to vote. But because I left school at 18 to work and pay taxes to subsidise the education of people attending university, I do not have any right to vote in the election for the Upper House of the Oireachtas.
You might imagine that the general tolerance for such a devaluation of the essential principles of democracy, in what aspires to being a modern state, would be a matter of public outrage and debate. It might at least, you would think, excite comment from those who claim in other contexts to be the watchdogs of civil and human rights, equality and democratic freedoms.
That is does not is due mainly to three factors: 1) virtually all the watchdogs of civil and human rights, equality and democratic freedoms have been to either Trinity or the NUI; 2) almost all opinions formers in this society can vote in Seanad elections also; 3) the Seanad is a completely irrelevant and useless talking shop which was created out of a post-colonial grandiosity seeking to replicate the House of Lords and nobody can think about it without falling asleep.
Given its anti-democratic nature, the sheer uselessness of the Seanad emerges as its only redeeming quality. Its main function is as a political life-support system for failed TDs. In all, there are 60 senators, 11 of whom are nominated by the Taoiseach, so as to ensure a government majority. A majority of senators (43) are elected from panels of persons alleged to have "knowledge and practical experience" under five vocational headings: 1) national language and culture, literature, art, education and so forth; 2) agriculture and fisheries; 3) labour; 4) industry and commerce; and 5) public administration and social services.
For these 43 seats, only 900 local and national politicians mayvote, and this arrangement ensures that the Seanad functions as a shadow of the Dáil, its composition reflecting the relative strengths of the major political parties. A provision in Article 19 of the Constitution whereby vocational groups, councils or associations might directly elect their representatives has not been activated by legislation.
THE remaining six senators are elected by graduates of TCD and the NUI. There are 102,000 NUI and 39,000 TCD voters, each body electing three senators. NUI graduates do occasionally get hot under the collar about the undemocratic nature of this disproportion, but rarely extend their logic to the full picture.
A constitutional referendum in1979 permitted the extension of voting rights to graduates of all third-level institutions, but no law has yet given effect to this. If it were not so useless, if it were more than a refuge for the casualties of bad vote-management strategies and the congenitally unelectable, if it had the slightest contribution to make to the democratic life of this nation, then, clearly, the fact that election for the Seanad is the locus of one of the most blatant instances of privilege in this society would matter a great deal. So yes, the Seanad's very irrelevance means the democratic deficit is not at first sight a major concern.
There is, however, the distinct likelihood that such an undemocratic construction is contributing to public cynicism by bringing the political system into disrepute. When these provisions were introduced by the 1937 Constitution, a degree was still a novelty and there was a perhaps understandable assumption that a university graduate was smarter than the average.
Today, some of the most spectacularly ignorant people in this society have emerged from the university system. Yet, despite the steady increase in the numbers of young people attending third level, there remains a considerable geographical/socio-economic complexion to the sector excluded from this privilege, and this overlaps significantly with the segment of the general electorate least likely to vote in any context.
On Friday last, I was back on NewsTalk to debate the undemocratic nature of the Seanad with Senator David Norris, who has represented TCD in Seanad Éireann for many years. Mr Norris's position was simple: elitism is a good thing. It seems the election, albeit undemocratically, of special representatives of the most privileged caste in this society has something to do with "excellence", which only the mediocre-minded could cavil with. The problem is that in politics, "elitism" does not translate as "excellence" but as oligarchy, monarchy or dictatorship.