Fine Gael TD for Limerick Patrick O’Donovan, has said that the two referenda which will take place on the 4th of October are both very important in their own ways and he is calling for a Yes vote in both. The referenda cover the abolition of the Seanad, something which Fine Gael and other parties promised before the last election and the setting up of a special Court of Appeal, which is needed to reduce the current times being taken for a person to have their appeal heard in court under the current system.
Patrick O’Donovan said that many countries of the size of Ireland have already abolished their upper houses, which were in many cases based on the UK’s House of Lords and had no democratic basis. He said that here in Ireland we established a Senate when the Irish Free State was established in 1922 and changed it in 1937 when the current Constitution came into force. In the period up to now there has been no serious attempt to reform or modernise the Seanad with the result that the Taoiseach gave a commitment before the last election, that if the people elected him to office, he would give them the choice to keep the current Seanad or to abolish it.
Patrick O’Donovan said that he did not accept that the proposal to abolish the Seanad was undemocratic. “There is practically no democracy in the current method of electing Senators. Most people have no vote in Seanad elections whereas I have six. If you are a County Councillor or member of the Dáil you automatically get five, and if you are a graduate of Trinity College or that National University you get one, so a person could potentially have seven votes in the Seanad when most people have none. Add to that the fact that the Taoiseach of the day gets to fill eleven seats, to ensure that the Government has a majority, and while Enda Kenny has appointed Independent Senators who vote freely, almost every Taoiseach since 1937 has used the eleven nominations to build their own party membership in the Seanad.”
Patrick O’Donovan said that the Taoiseach has stated regularly that the political system had to get smaller and had to show that if changes were being made in every other element of public spending that politics had to change as well, and that the political system needed to get smaller to reflect the Modern Ireland. That is why, he said, that County Councils were being amalgamated, Town Councils were being abolished, the number of TD’s was being reduced, State cars were removed, the number of Dáil committee’s was reduced, salaries have been cut and other changes that have reduced the number of quango’s have also been introduced. Last week the Taoiseach and the Chief Whip announced major changes on how the Dáil works, and with the abolition of the Seanad these changes will make the running of the Dáil a lot more effective than what we currently have.
In relation to the establishment of the Court of Appeal, Patrick O’Donovan said that this is an opportunity for Ireland to modernise our Courts Service, to allow the Supreme Court to focus on Constitutional issues and will ensure that people who have cases that are being appealed from the High Court will be able to do so a lot sooner than the current system, which has people waiting for four years and longer for a case to be heard. He said it was an old saying that “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied” and that is why it is so important to establish this new Court of Appeal here in Ireland.
He concluded by saying that these two issues were part of the Programme for Government which was adopted by both parties and we committed to putting them before the people in these referenda which we are now asking people to vote Yes in.