So, a date has been set for the referendum to abolish the Senate. The battle lines are emerging. On the one hand, there’s the cost issue – though, as some have already pointed out, it’s not actually that expensive to run. There’s the history – although again, much of it is padding. The decision by Sinn Fein to promote a Yes vote lends an interesting note, since the other big opposition party, Fianna Fail, wants to retain the status quo. It is, as they say, all to play for…

For the Hog, two words summarise why the Seanad should be abolished: Ronan Mullen. But then along comes Fianna Fail senator, Jim Walsh, to add two more.
These fellas were elected by two very different paths, both embedded in the conception of the Seanad – and both entirely outdated. One was elected through the panel system. This has its origins in 1930s vocationalism, a view much favoured by Falangist politicians like Spain’s General Franco. The other was elected as a university representative.
The vocational panels are voted for by local councillors and usually give us politicians on the rise locally – or on the bounce after losing a Dáil seat. It’s actually closer to a continental-style panel system than to our constituency system. And it is a double-edged sword. It has introduced some great politicians to the wider stage, but its lack of meaningful scrutiny and the absence of rigour in the selection process can also open the gate to some nasty, strange pieces of work.
As for the university seats, to one of which Mullen was elected, these derive from the 1930s desire to have a Protestant voice in the legislature. This was achieved through having three seats to be elected by graduates of Trinity College. As is the way, these had to be balanced by three seats for Catholics, hence the NUI seats, one of which is filled by Mullen.
But Trinity is no longer a bastion of Protestantism. Nor is the NUI a Catholic institution. Nowadays almost two-thirds of any given age cohort attends higher education, in a wide range of settings. Notwithstanding that Trinity senators have consistently proven to be star performers, whose presence has enhanced the legislature, the idea of the university seats, as they are currently constituted at least, is ridiculous in the 21st century. So too is vocationalism.
It seems too much to hope that the Seanad could be reformed to be a useful or effective entity. Lots of worthies have made proposals, the central effect of which would be to render the Seanad as a rival assembly to the Dáil. I just don’t see it.
Yet there is, without a shadow of doubt, a need for some forum or mechanism to formally interrogate what happens in parliament. The Government says the committee system does this and when it’s good it can be very good. But it is not enough. Nor indeed has the party political system consistently delivered to the Dáil people of the necessary intellectual calibre to make this happen on an ongoing basis.
I say this having read a number of recent articles on the bailout, the austerity agenda and the weakness of economics as a science. On the last of these, blogger Chris Johns comments that, unlike the hard sciences, the tools, techniques and data “are simply not up to the task of building accurate representations of how, in aggregate, the world works.” Yet, economists, and bankers, have no qualms about predicting and prescribing …
By way of example, the ESRI and Central Bank of Ireland have warned the Government to stick to the austerity path. Klaus Regling, Managing Director of the European Monetary Stability Mechanism, has just done likewise.
But nowhere in this official mantra is there room or capacity for a forensic evaluation of the policy against its stated objectives. Specifically, as many commentators have pointed out, including former chief of the IMF mission to Ireland Ashoka Mody, austerity has not delivered growth.
Chris Johns makes what he calls an obvious suggestion: that if your policies aren’t working you should try something else. But, as regards economic policy, there seems to be no way to do this, in Ireland or in Europe – unlike the USA, where they seem to be less anchored to failed orthodoxies.
You might say that some opposition politicians provide robust critiques of policies – and they do. But because they are locked into the adversarial processes of parliament, not to mention the five-year campaign to keep their own seats, thoughtful and reasoned reviews are few and far between.
Perhaps the committee system could be further enhanced to achieve this – but this is unlikely given that the committees are largely focused on legislation. Where they invite contributions from outside, these too often fall into the classic for-and-against camps and tend to weaken the position of informed, enlightened leadership.
These functions can occasionally be glimpsed in summer school presentations by the great and the good, often including politicians. It’s not that the capacity for depth and breadth of critical thought is completely absent in politics in Ireland. It’s that it has no room to flourish in the official structures and processes.
The proposal to abolish the Seanad should at least get the debate about this deficit going. One thing is for sure: if the second house is to be obliterated rather than reformed, we will desperately need new mechanisms to encourage and accommodate contributions from within and beyond parliament that breathe new life and energy into our sadly formulaic parliamentary processes.