A Better Seanad

at

seand reform

The findings are in.

‘The Government has too much control over the Seanad for it to be effective. Political parties have too much control over the nomination and election of senators and the Seanad is used as a creche for novice politicians and/or a safety net for failed election candidates. The Seanad should be an effective check on the Dáil and Government and different strands of Irish society should be represented better in the Seanad….’

Oh yes.

Oliver Moran, of 2nd Republic, writes:

I thought your readers might be interested to know that we have submitted the findings of the public survey we held on Seanad reform to the Government working group on Seanad reform. Over 1200 people took part in the end. Above is a a textual representation of the combination of all the public responses. You can read the results in full at the link below.
Thanks a lot for your help. And thanks to your readers and everyone who took part too. Broadsheet readers made up an estimated 15% of all participants.

Seanad Reform Survey (2nd Republic)

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11 thoughts on “A Better Seanad

  1. Drogg

    It sounds like you just took my survey answers and put them in the report, good work. But i still think reform will never happen and if it does it will be some sort of big jester before back to business as usual.

  2. Jack

    Zzzzzz

    “The Seanad acts as an important check and counter-­balance to the Dáil and senators from different vocational areas bring important experience to the Oireachtas.”

    When I read that, my hopes that the document might espouse any real reform were dismissed.

    Reading on, it became apparent that the survey was a little skewed:

    “What do you think is the single best feature of the Seanad?”

    No explicit option to say that the Seanad as it currently sits has no redeeming feature. The most popular answer that Senators “bring important experience to the Oireachtas” is sort of belied when they can talk about “fraping” with a straight face.

    When prompting for the “the single worst feature of the Seanad?” – rotten boroughs were not offered as an option, its impotence was not offered as an option,

    When asking people what they wanted from a reformed Seanad, the majority answer was “The Seanad should be an effective check on the Dáil and Government” (even though the intro to the report tells us that it already is. Universal suffrage was not offered for consideration here. One person, apparently, said that the vote should be extended to the Irish abroad, but the authors of the report decided to pluralise that with a reference to “respondents” I guess they liked that idea.

    Almost half of the respondents didn’t think that it was of “very high importance” that we should all have a vote. To me, that is the standout comment from the whole survey.

    At that point, I stopped caring about what either the authors or the respondents thought about the Seanad and quit reading.

    1. Clampers Outside!

      “No explicit option to say that the Seanad as it currently sits has no redeeming feature. ” – – We had a referendum, it’s staying, so why would they. Keep up, stop recycling old, now out of date, arguments by going back to the beginning.
      This is not intended as a “here’s the questions/give me the answers I want now”, it’s a starting point, and free of the govt… it’s a lobby for change, and this is just the beginning.

      Maybe come back in a couple of years, you might get your answers then as it would appear you haven’t the patience for the long haul.

    2. Sancho

      Forget about it. The people spoke- they wanted to keep the Seanad. Everyone know that nothing substantial is going to change about it. Deep down, a majority of people are OK with that. It’s a real pity, I think, that people didnt have the courage to make a real change when they had the opportunity but the Irish are not risk takers. Most of the time, they may make a lot of noise but they vote the status quo.

  3. Alan

    Is it bad that I was more interested in the cover photo (the mechanicals of a musical Harp) than the contents of the report?

  4. ollie

    e mail sent to enda kenny.

    Mr Kenny,
    I would be grateful if you could explain the rationale behind appointing Lorraine Higgins to the Seanad. I find it strange that you can personally appoint a person to the seanad who received less than 4% of the cast votes in the election to the same Seanad, and who in local, national and European elections managed to receive no more than 6% of cast votes.
    Why would you undermine the democratic process by placing
    Ms Higgins in a role that both the public and members of the Seanad Industrial and Commercial panel rejected her for.

    I Don’t expect a coherent reply.

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