I fail to be outraged

[nwhyte]

Bertie's appointment of various party hacks to the Seanad yesterday has drawn a surprising amount of criticism. Face it, folks; the constitution gives the Taoiseach of the day total discretion to appoint 11 of the 60 senators, with no accountability to anyone and no criteria needing to be fulfilled. He did it because he could and because he has

Comments

[inuitmonster]

There was an interesting proposal for radical Seanad reform put forth by some Seanad committee a couple of years ago. They bottled it and kept the Taoiseach's nominees, but their more interesting proposals were to cut the crap about vocational representation and have one block of Senators elected by the Oireachtas Members and councillors electoral college, another elected by everyone in the country in a list PR vote, and a third block elected by all university graduates using STV; university graduates would have to choose whether to go on the national list or university register of electors, so they would not be getting a double vote. If you assume that Ireland actually needs a second chamber (and this is a big if), then this is probably as good a way to go as any

[nwhyte]

As I see it, it's basically a mechanism for the government to manage a certain chunk of parliamentary business out of the glare of the media. Looking at the unicameral Scandinavian systems which are, I guess, the nearest competitor as a model, I agree that there isn't a lot to choose between them. If you boost the power of committees in the lower house as compensation for abolishing the upper, all you have done is create a new power centre which is no more democratically accountable than the old upper house was.

Northern Representation

[anonymous]

I would agree reform of the Senate is long overdue. I've always thought the Senate was a good forum to have a voice representing northern unionism and the ideal vehicle to achieve this was the Taoiseach's nominations. Former nominees such as John Robb, Gordon Wilson and Sam McAughtry have all made a significant contribution. Therefore I am disappointed that the nominees are fairly pedestrian. What do you think about formalizing some limited form of this type of representation?

Conal.

Re: Northern Representation

[nwhyte]

Let's not go overboard, in that the northern voices you mention were not really in the mainstream of Unionism! It's difficult to formalise, of course, in that you can't legislate for policy-makers to be imaginative.

What might be possible would be for the Taoiseach's eleven to be ratified formally by the Dail, which would mean a formal debate at least and perhaps also a stronger motivation to appoint a Northern voice.

[natural20]

I know we touched on this at the weekend, but again, my issue is not that Bertie gets to pick people, it's who he picked, simple as that. I mean, I'm pissed off that the country re-elected FF (effectively), but I wouldn't for one moment suggest that they shouldn't be able to do so.