The Seanad is broken, so you have to fix it!

Double Vision by Charlie Adley

When politicians rush to destroy something, I become suspicious. When they want to destroy a democratic institution, I become fearful. Although it’s something of a stretch to describe today’s Seanad as a democratic institution, Ireland’s second house has democracy within it, in much the same way that raspberry ripple ice cream has raspberry.

Throughout Margaret Thatcher’s ‘reign’ over England, she was taunted by the Greater London Council (GLC), led by Ken Livingstone. Each day a massive neon sign attached to the GLC’s headquarters on the Thames’ south bank flashed the nation’s shameful unemployment figures across the river to the Houses of Parliament directly opposite.

Challenged daily in policy and public relations by this Old Labour stronghold, Thatcher acted according to type, and simply abolished the GLC.

I remember well the outrage I felt at her ability to remove a democratic institution that she just happened to disagree with. At least her motives were brazenly honest.

Typically, this Irish government are being neither honest nor open about their motives for trying to abolish the Seanad.

Each time I drive past one of those ‘Vote Yes’ posters, my blood comes to the boil. Do they really think we are so stupid as to be beguiled by a saving of €20 million and a promise of fewer politicians?

We all know this country recently borrowed over €80 billion to pay off the banks. We know that in the order of things, €20 million is not a vast amount of money. For goodness sake, if we’re talking of wasting money, the Mahon Tribunal cost the country €101,314,920, taking 5,687 days to peruse 1.6m pages of evidence to find just one person guilty.

We know that this potential €20 million saving won’t be used to build a new hospital. It’s a pathetic gambit that fails as dismally as the promise of ‘fewer politicians’. If the Irish were really allowed to rid themselves of worthless politicians, they’d be trampling over each other to shrink the Dáil.

In their haste to break away from their oppressors, ex-colonial countries sadly often end up mimicking the worst features of their erstwhile overlords. Only a country once ruled by the British, whose House of Lords is unelected and unaccountable, could have come up with the formula that allows only NUI and Trinity graduates, councillors and politicians to vote for their representatives in the Republic’s second house.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.