New Seanad sees Bertie having the last laugh, but joke is on us
When Sean Moylan lost his Dail seat more than half a century ago, Eamon de Valera took exception to the voters' decision. Did they think they were living in a democracy or something? To show them who was who and what was what, he appointed Moylan to the Seanad and made him Minister for Education. The new minister commented: "And they say de Valera has no sense of humour!"
Bertie Ahern's Seanad nominations prove that our present Taoiseach, like his most eminent predecessor, has a sense of humour. The choice of the Last Eleven, like the elections that preceded it, fascinated political anoraks for one reason, and one reason only. Everybody loves to know who's in and who's out, and everybody likes to get an answer to another question: why?
But with Bertie you may have to wait a long time before you get an answer, either because someone enlightens you or you figure it out for yourself. Sometimes, while out walking or in the bath, it suddenly occurs to me why he took such-and-such a course of action years earlier.
Just as often, it remains a mystery. I suspect that a couple of these nominations will remain a mystery for a long time.
The easiest to explain are the predictable new Green and PD senators, chosen (as ministers are, and you might wonder if this is constitutional) by their parties, not by the Taoiseach. The Greens hope that Dan Boyle will regain his Dail seat in Cork South Central and Deirdre de Burca will win in Wicklow. Similarly, the Progressive Democrats have picked Fiona O'Malley and Ciaran Cannon to have another go in Dun Laoghaire and Galway East respectively.
Just by the way, didn't you think it typical of PD pomposity to set up a commission to decide on whom to recommend? But I mustn't speak ill of dead political parties. Let us look at Fianna Fail.
Here, Bertie was shackled -- or rather, he had shackled himself by taking the Greens and PDs on board and lavishing good things on them. Having promised them two Seanad seats apiece, he left himself with only six Fianna Fail and one independent.
To use a polite word, the Fianna Fail team are unexciting. The words "hack" and "who?" spring to mind. Bertie has put in John Ellis instead of Paschal Mooney to represent Leitrim, something nobody else does: the constituencies commission did not treat the county kindly, and neither did Fianna Fail councillors when they voted lately. Martin Brady deserved something after suffering the double whammy of losing both the Dail and Seanad elections.
But I suspect Bertie had in mind the party's chances in Dublin North East, not Martin Brady's popularity. And I doubt if he thought that naming Eoghan Harris as the solitary independent would make up in excitement what the other nominations lacked. Bertie has not the smallest wish to make the Upper House exciting. He has little to fear.
No doubt you have heard chatter about a 'great debate' between Ivana Bacik and Ronan Mullen. Opportunity for a great debate in the Seanad will arise very rarely, if at all. The Seanad does not exist to provide such opportunity. It exists to rubber-stamp Government legislation.
Besides, they do not need the Seanad to make their voices heard. Bacik, like David Norris, does not lack for platforms. Mullen is a newspaper columnist. So are Eoghan Harris and Shane Ross. We will hear nothing from any of them, or from the representatives of the political parties, in the Upper House that we would not have heard if the place did not exist. We did hear a few noteworthy remarks from Mary O'Rourke when she was Leader of the House in the last term.
Having lost the Dail seat, which she recently regained, she set out to make something of her new job, and she succeeded. She was most accommodating to the opposition in trying to arrange debates, and she worked on serious and properly thought-out proposals for Seanad reform.
But Seanad reform is almost certainly impossible -- and unnecessary. A reformed Upper House would be an uncomfortable rival to the Dail. If we really want to make the system more democratic (a doubtful proposition) we should look at the Dail and ask ourselves how it fulfills its two functions, to legislate and to hold governments to account. The answer in both cases is very badly.
Power has moved from the legislature to the executive to the premier; worse, it has moved to unelected and unaccountable quangoes. If there is any argument for retaining the Seanad, it is that it can scrutinise legislation in a more leisurely and more objective manner than the Lower House. But this hardly happens.
The political parties themselves regard the Upper House as a bit of a joke, and more than a bit of a convenience. The PDs started life calling for its abolition. Now they hope it can give them a lifeline. Labour, who complain about Fianna Fail deals, made a deal with Sinn Fein which gained them one extra seat.
The inventor, de Valera himself, demonstrated his sense of humour in the matter of Sean Moylan; he did not care who criticised him in that case, and Bertie will not care who criticises yesterday's nominations.
There will be no reform. There will be no great debates. The Seanad will wander on through its twilight existence. Future Taoisigh will emulate Bertie and ensure themselves a safe majority -- though the absence of a majority would cause them nothing more than a little inconvenience. Ministers will profess their enormous respect for the chamber, then treat it to platitudes, the same platitudes they inflict on the public.
In the end, the joke is on us.
- JAMES DOWNEY
