Political World
New zeal for Seanad reform only comes after the death knell has already sounded
World of Politics with Harry McGee
The argument for saving the Seanad is a bit like the way we tossed up the prospects for Galway’s senior footballers ahead of their clash with Mayo in Pearse Stadium two weeks ago. Deep in our hearts we felt we might just have a chance and you’d never know; the lads might just pull it off against the odds.
Meanwhile our heads kept on repeating ‘not a chance, not a chance’ over and over again – and so it proved . . . doubly so.
The same goes for the Seanad. We who write about politics for a living feel a bit of a grá for it, a tinge of fondness, a tincture of nostalgia.
When we take the calculators out, and run the spreadsheets and pore over the graphs with our cold unflinching eyes (well, shifty rheumy eyes), the case for preserving the Seanad becomes a far less attractive proposition.
It costs over €10m a year to run and doesn’t really do very much. If you wanted to be very cynical, what it boils down to is 60 underworked people campaigning to save their soft not-very-challenging jobs.
Since De Valera created the second Seanad Éireann when he rewrote the Constitution in 1937, there have been 12 reports recommending reform of the Upper House.
The last one was completed in 2004 by a committee chaired by Mary O’Rourke. Unsurprisingly, it recommended an increase in numbers, from 60 to 65. But it also recommended that half be directly elected.
Just like all the other reports, it was long-fingered. O’Rourke’s Fianna Fáil Government put it on the same dusty high shelf where its 11 predecessors had been placed by previous Governments. The Seanad had become like an overgrown garden, there all right, part of the house, but ignored and never really used.
And so the long tradition of inertia over what to do with the Seanad might have continued had not Enda Kenny stood up in October 2009 and announced – without warning – that if Fine Gael got back into Government, he would abolish the Seanad.
When I wrote about it at the time I said it was “almost up there with Donagh O’Malley’s free education announcement in 1966 or John A Costello’s impromptu declaration of the Republic while on holiday in Canada in 1949”.
Kenny’s announcement that night was so well guarded that it came as news to most of his own TDs and Senators. Many of the latter, while supporting Kenny publicly, have been fighting a quiet rearguard battle to retain the Seanad ever since.
The momentum for abolition really came when Labour came on board in the run-up to the election and made the same argument. Fianna Fáil also included the abolition of the Seanad in its manifesto but it’s beginning to do a reverse ferret on that also.
When de Valera reconfigured the Seanad in 1937, his most important alteration was to make sure it was shorn of its power. The first Seanad had been a bit of a thorn in his side, and had voted down several pieces of Government legislation.
The new iteration reserved 11 of the 60 seats for the Taoiseach’s nominees, thus more or less guaranteeing a Government majority. Only once in recent history – during the 1994 to 1997 Rainbow coalition – has the opposition control the Seanad.
Even when the government is not in control of the Seanad it makes little difference. The Seanad cannot defeat a Bill. All it can ultimately do is delay the passage of the law for 180 days, after which time it is deemed to have been passed.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
