I think what annoys most people about the Seanad is the salaries paid for the work produced. Furthermore it is sometimes used as a retirement home (eg. Mary O Rourke)

So my reform would begin with offering a salary of 40,000 Euro p/a with no expenses.
No former TDs could be members, and I would reduce the number of members by 20%

They had the chance to prove their worth with the budet cut issues and didnt so its time for it to go

It’s the most expensive back to work scheme ever. n

Get rid of the gravy train and all the leeches on it!

Enda should thank Ronan Mullen for being such a great advertisement for Seanad abolition.

Bring it on … also lets get rid of 50% of the gang in the Dail ..

My heart is saying “get rid of it” as they have proven to be as self centered and as complacement as the government.
They had a chance to stand up to kenny & co’s bullying tactics but backed down into line like the rest that are bought & paid for.
But if we get fid of it then the likes of kenny and his gang will have free reign to trample over and adjust any constitutional laws or suchlike.
I would rather see reform rather than abolition.
Get rid of the dinosaurs and replace them with people that will stand up and ask the right questions.

I worry greatly that 53% of people would be happy to get rid of the second house. I know in its current form it has no teeth but I’d hate to hand total control over to the spineless Gov currently in the Dáil. I want to see it reformed.

I was very disappointed that so many members of Seanad passed the Bankers’ Budget, particularly the cut to Carers’ Respite. It was a missed opportunity to make it relevant.

Get rid of it a waste of money.

reform it! proper democratic elections and give it extra powers, many government bodies could be disbanded and the powers handed to the seanad, the referendum commission being a prime example, we need more people in power on less wages then the power concentrated in the hands of a few millionaires, power to the people!

Exactly Daisy. It is small groups that have voting rights like graduates of the national universities of Ireland, VECs and other small interest groups. Democracy – ya right! Who do we want more, nurses on wards or senators. 70 000 a year these senators get plus a guaranteed pension. And they are accountable to noone nor do they have to hold clinics like TDs.

Surprised only 53% of the people want to make 60 politicians redundant.

Has the Seanad in the last 10/15 years proposed/blocked/edited any meaningful legislation?

Personally I would prefer to have a Bicameral legislature that a Unicameral Legislature. Second chambers are useful for revising legislation that may be rushed through the lower house by the government in power. The Irish Parliament would not be effective if it became a Unicameral chamber but the Dail retained it current make up. A reformed Seanad could lead to improved legislative procedure and better governance if done properly

Well done Ireland. Trying to think of a place where the people voted away democracy before…..oh yea, 1930’s Germany.

Anything that gives Ronan Mullen a platform to air his views should be abolished, in my opinion.

The Dail doesnt want the second house to have power. If it did no law would be passed and we would be left wondering who had the power and who did we elect to make decisions. The Taoiseach nominates several of the senators, basically a favour for a favour. Reform is a waste of time. We have enough TDs elected to take responsibilty for passing laws.

Not surprised by poll…the fact that no senators voted against the budget , and instead followed the party lines like sheep ,was the final straw for many who might have voted for a reformed senate….me included !

Get them out more freeloaders sittin round .

Shows what little thought Ireland has regarding its own ‘Republican’ tradition. Abolishing your own upper house of the Oireachtas will weaken the balance of power, giving the TDs of the Dáil complete control over government decisions (besides the limited powers of the President). Give senators more power and responsibility and you will get more out of the presently stagnant Seanad.

Abolishing the Seanad would be a slap in the face to good parliamentary debate and accountability.

W.B Yeats highlighted the inequalities in Irish law that made unity between North & South impossible while he was a Senator in the late 1920s.

Mary Robinson & David Norris, among others, helped advance the rights of women, lgbt people and other minorities.

Shane Ross in his time as a Senator used parliamentary privilege to expose many inadequacies in the public sector – many would remember his investigations into fas.

Also the current make-up of the government system doesnt allow for free and open debate in the oireachtas discourse. There is no real separation of powers and pure control is given to the Executive.

So, why does this government believe in abolishing one wing of government while at the same time doing nothing to make the Dail more independent of government … Power!

If you support the complete abolition of the second house of government, I would have serious doubts about your understanding of democratic process in government.

Please refrain from the usual chorus of “where was the democratic process for the bankers blah blah blah”.

oversight? um….oversight?, hang on I’ll run that past my brain again just for the sake of it………..o..v…e….r…s….i…g…h….t……….okay then, bollox, now the government has hurt my brain.

yes, “oversight” now there is a subjective and somewhat colorful interpretation of what the senate in this jurisdiction allegedly spends its rather inordinately expensive time getting on with.

They did a wonderful job in oversight when the Dail decided it would be a good idea to introduce law that would allow them to retrospectively deny nursing home residents a refund for overcharging outrageously for their care over the years in residential care facilities. The illustrious Seanad simply could not get their sticky grubby little hands on a rubber stamp quick enough to get that one through. One for the cause eh? One for the team, what? what?

It took a president with a decidedly different view of the Constitution to kick that ball back into touch. If I ever needed an example of what the senate is capable of, i never look any further than that.

A shining example of over funded Irish style governance in action.

Abolish the seanad , get rid of the rsa, psa, hiqa, and all the other government quangos , then reduce social welfare spending by half atleast , we’ll be out of debt in no time

Abolishing the Seanad would also have implications for the nomination of the President. 20 nominations are needed from the Oireachtas. If you don’t have a Seanad the 20 nominations will have to come from the Dáil. This will make it harder for independents to get a nomination through the oireachtas. The announcement that the number of county/city councils will be reduced also makes it harder to get a nomination.

Just 53%? The chances of the Seanad being abolished are therefore nil. There is no way that such a percentage would hold up in the teeth of full debate leading up to the referendum. The Government might as well ditch plans for one now and save the country the expense.

A democracy needs an upper house! I agree that the current system is useless but abolishing the Seanad outright gives the elected & unelected muppets who run our country even more power!

The Seanad should be reformed, made up of the various (elected) leaders of our City & County Councils (Lord Mayors, Mayors, etc) and the MEP’s elected here!
No extra pay, just brought together, if needs be by video conferencing, to debate and vote on matters!

The people said no to ivana balak when she stood for election, we told her we did not want her to represent us, Gilmore thought he knows more than the people and gave her a senate job.
The place is full of people collecting tax payers money that the Irish people said that they did not want to represent them.
Complete waste of money and as for democracy how is a place full of unwanted unelected parasites democracy?

Agh the Government and greater democracy! Yet we have a Government where 4 people, through German advice, writes our budgets! So in effect the main house is, by way of this reasoning, beyond saving! In abolishing the Seanad graduates will be disenfranchised! How are we supposed to embrace the Diaspora when we are cutting them out of democracy!!

The problem with this is that you’re left with one house of government. Reform, not abolition

I agree with Oisin Coffey. The Seanad should be kept as a check and balance against the Dail. It shoudl be reformed and given more powers. Unfortunately, as it probably wouldn’t suit Government to give it more teeth, nothing will be done by way of reform, we’ll get a referendum which will ask us to keep on what has effectively become a talking shop and there will probably be a majority in favour of abolition. (IMO)

If democratically elected in separate polls to the Dail, and given substantially more power, the Seanad could help prevent the centralization power in the hands of the cabinet and aid the democratic process. Sadly there’s no will to do any of this neither among the politicians or the people.

IS SIR HUMPHREY STILL IN CHARGE ?

So it was announced last week by the government , apparently in the interest of democracy, to it would appear great populist approval in this democratic state of ours ; that the Irish electorate will have the opportunity next August to vote in a Referendum on the proposal to abolish the Seanad .

This indeed sounds very equitable and fair, , if taken at face value.The government is living up to its pre- election manifesto to abolish the Seanad and in so doing , reducing the cost of the Oireachtas to the electorate, the same electorate who democratically gave them their mandate to govern.

This however begs the question , are the government being a tad too democratic or perhaps cynical ; by offering the Irish electorate the opportunity to vote in a Referendum to abolish a democratic institution which was not elected by the majority of the people in the first place ?

Are the government in offering said Referendum, perhaps inferring that it feels that the populists view among the Irish electorate is that the constitution with regard to the Seanad is paradoxically circumventing or preventing democracy , acting like a form of negative constitutionalism, and therefore needs amending ?

If only it were all so simple , so black and white ?

Why is this democratic government of ours opting to propose the abolition of this democratically essential upper house ? Why is this democratic government of ours not offering the electorate the opportunity to trim some of the fat , so to speak ,from , it’s statistically, highlighted to be, top heavy Dáil, that is, when compared to a similar sized country?

It has long been enshrined in our constitution that Dáil Éireann has a minimum of 1 TD per 30,000 and maximum of 1 TD per 20,000. The European average however is 1 representative per 87,000. Based on these statistics our Dáil is astoundingly top heavy by approximately 60 to % .In other words , rather than the 166 TDs we currently have , and purely based on European average representation it should feasibly function with a mere 46 TDs.

So in light of this statistic is our Oireachtas genuinely showing , “that it is ready able and willing to participate in the general reduction of administration costs ” , as stated recently by Junior Minister Alex White ?

The purpose of an upper house in a justly functioning democracy, one would have thought is imperative , so as to safe guard against flawed legislation being passed by the lower house.

A strong argument can certainly be made for the reform of the Seanad . Its retention, and the possible extension of its powers of veto, to include Fiscal legislation. The Referendum for its complete abolition is a cynical proposal dressed up in a veil , then spun around ,and around , until its opaque reflection can no longer be clearly observed through the dull fog of smoke and mirrors . Such a Referendum will not serve democracy or the people of Ireland.

It has been pointed out in hind sight, that perhaps if the Seanad had not had it’s hands tied fiscally , back on that faithful night in September 2008, that possibly the bank guarantee would have been vetoed , and subsequently brought into the public forum for debate . Further more if the Seanad had had fiscal powers of veto, the clearly flawed legislation pertaining to the bank guarantee might never have made it as far as the President for her mandatory approval .

Surely the abolition of the Seanad would leave the Dáil , notwithstanding the President’s veto right , with complete undemocratic legislative authority ?

Surely we are not facing the prospect of another Referendum in which of our government acts wrongfully in spending money on a website which is “not fair, equal or impartial”, according to none other than the Supreme court ?

Surely in a fair , equal and impartial Referendum , the electorate should be made aware of the pros and cons of abolishing the Seanad entirely ?

Surely in the interest of a fair , equal and impartial Referendum the cold, harsh fact that the salary before expenses of the averge TD is over 40% that of a senator ?

Surely an eegit or an asal , or indeed a wily man from the west , should know what is the democratic statesmanlike thing to do, faced with a conundrum of such vesuvian proportion ?

That is of course assuming as Dwight D Eisenhowe once said that he is not ” valuing his privileges above his principles” ? Anyone as we all know , who would do such a thing, “soon looses both”.

Old idioms are wonderful things and are some times very , very pertinent to modern society .

Take for example the one about how , too many cooks spoil the broth or that other doozy , too much of a good thing can be bad for you.So is it possible for a country ,a republic ,an independent state to have too much democracy or representation if you will ?

Democracy as Sir Winston Churchill once said is “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried .” Does that mean that Democracy should be thought of in terms of the old proverb , if at first you don’t succeed , try ,try ,try again ? Can it be as Alfred E smith once said that , “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy”? Surely the more people trying , trying , trying to do the right thing , the better ? The more the merrier so to speak . But then comes the argument against too much representation ,namely parochial , parish pump , cronyistic style politics at the expense of the more pressing issues of national importance.

Maybe clement Attlee was right when he said, “Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.” So surely too many people talking and not enough people acting is a bad thing for democracy? Is 166 Tds in the Dáil maybe not a screaming example of the too many cooks spoil the broth idiom ? If Ireland were to follow the European average of 1 representative per 87,000 and not 1 per 20,000 , then our Dáil could feasibly function with a mere 46 TDs . 70% less than it now has.

Is it as Michael Novak once said that “Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.” Surly not , as the the loudest clanging to be heard of late is the undemocratic death knell ,heralding the Referendum to abolish the Seanad. A democratic institution, clearly in need of reform , but not abolition. A Democratic institution which is paradoxically not elected by popular vote . No , not elected by the majority of the people, but by a majority of a minority of the people , plus of course 11 of the Taoiseach ‘s disciples.

George Soros once said ,” A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy. ” The operative word surely being “fair” , in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling , namely , ” not fair ,equal or impartial ” Lets hope our democratically elected government supplies us with all the details in the forthcoming Referendum on the abolition of the Senad . Including the fact that the average TD is paid more than 40% more than a senator. Facts such as this will fairly , enable the electorate to make an informed decision. Because as Jim Lehrer once said , “If we don’t have an informed electorate we don’t have a democracy.”

So the government must inform the electorate. But don’t forget that old proverb ,you can bring a horse to water ,but you can’t make it drink. None the less as Robert Caro once said , “In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.”

This all seems perfectly reasonable , so George Bernard Shaw was most likely correct when he said , “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” But then why do a supposedly informed electorate keep giving a mandate to govern to the wrong people? More to the point once the electorate have discovered their error how do they as Milton Friedman once put it “make it politically rewarding for the wrong people to make the right decisions ” ,at least according to the majority who elected them ?

After all its not like the politicians don’t known what is the right decision, as one Belgium politician recently put it , “lots of politicians know the solution to the current economic crisis , what they have not yet figured out is how to enact this solution and get re -elected at the same time .” Are governments by virtue of the expensive nature of political campaigning beholding to someone other, than the electorate ?

Democracy is certainly a complicated ideal and is full of contradictions and indeed many a paradox. Consider for a moment the fundamental precept of a representative democracy . The majority of the electorate elect individuals to represent them , based on the various manifestos of these varying candidates . Once elected and in power these individuals form a government and then repeatedly contradict their own manifestos by enacting legislation that the majority of the people opposes.

Why would a government once elected disregard its own pre -election manifesto , doing in some cases the complete opposite of, what it is the majority of the electorate elected them to do in the first place ?Perhaps governments are dictated to by strong powerful lobby groups ?

In the end is representative democracy nothing more than an elected dictatorship of sorts? Surely its not ,as Alan Corenk once said that , ” Democracy consists of choosing your dictators ,after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear” ?

One thing we can be sure of it is that , “Democracy without morality is impossible” , as Jack Kemp once said .

Woodrow T Wilson once said that, ” democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles. ” Speaking of principles in a democracy, as Dwight D Eisenhower once said: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

A lass a final note regarding Democracy , never a truer word were spoken than those of Alexander Woollcott when he said ,” I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. we are supposed to make it work.” Hopefully the electorate bear that in mind in next August ‘s Referendum on the abolition of the Seanad

Abolish it… I’d rather bulldoze it with every single member inside!

Get rid of them all and start again the whole lot of them, Dail, Seanad everything, self serving shites.