Chances are, if you are a Gript Reader, you’re in that section of the population that does not take the view that Irish politicians are generally high-caliber, capable legislators. At the same time, if I know my own readership, many of you will broadly approve at least in principle of the decision by Government to strip Trinity and NUI graduates of their exclusive Seanad voting rights and extend the franchise to all graduates.
The two positions, I think, are in contradiction.
The first thing to note here is that if you view the University Senators as an essentially elitist, anti-democratic relic, you are probably correct to do so. On the face of things, it is absurd to restrict the franchise for a section of our legislature to only those with third level degrees from some of the country’s most elite educational institutions. For the working class plumber, a regular vote for the Dáil; For the unemployed Trinity Graduate of Philosophy and Theology, an extra vote in the Seanad. It has never been anything less than pure elitism.
Yet here’s the thing: Mostly, those elitists have made pretty good decisions.
It is very hard to argue, looking at the record, that the caliber of legislator emanating from the two university panels has not been a cut above those selected in more traditional and more democratic ways. For example, if you oppose the hate speech bill – as many of you do – then consider that the opposition to it was largely (though not exclusively) led by University Senators Michael McDowell and Ronan Mullen. If you opposed the Government’s two referenda earlier this year, then recall that you have the University voters to thank for giving the aforementioned Senator McDowell a platform to be such a strong voice in that campaign.
If you go back through the records, you’ll find that the University voters have given us consistently good legislators: Senator John Crown, for example, who spent most of his term in office being a ferocious thorn in the side of Ministers for Health. Senator Feargal Quinn, who fought bravely and successfully to stop Irish Water obtaining your PPS number, and who exposed and then led the fight against the Passports for Sale scheme in 2003.
You may, like me, oppose almost everything that David Norris stood for during his time as a Trinity Senator, and still acknowledge that he was a cut above, in terms of legislative and rhetorical ability, the kind of 25-year-old NGO press officer who tends to enter politics on the liberal left. The same goes for one of his former colleagues as a Trinity Senator, Mary Robinson. Not my cup of tea either, but certainly vastly more capable than some of her colleagues.
And consider the fact too that that there are worse ways of appointing Senators already in place. Which group do you think we’d be better off without – the Trinity and NUI Senators, or the 12 political stooges appointed to each Seanad by the incoming Taoiseach for the sole purpose of ensuring that he has a majority?
Elitist institutions, I’d argue, have their place.
In their rush to reform UK politics, Tony Blair’s Labour Government abolished almost all the hereditary peers in the UK’s House of Lords, replacing them with appointed “life peers” instead. Sir Keir Starmer, reportedly, wants to go further, and abolish the few remaining hereditary Dukes and Earls, and fill the UK’s entire second chamber with political appointments. To most people, I think, this seems entirely fair and good: Why would you have a chamber of people making decisions who have inherited their seats from Daddy by virtue of an accident of birth?
But is that really as awful as you might think, compared to the alternative? Say what you want about hereditary peers, but they didn’t owe their position to the Government of the day or the political party in power. Nor did they earn their title of earl or duke by virtue of sucking up to a Prime Minister. Given that the Lords and the Seanad respectively only really have the power to raise questions and propose amendments to Government legislation, there’s a real advantage to having those chambers filled with people who do not owe their loyalty to a particular party, and who have the time and skills to interrogate laws on the more basic test of whether the laws are any good.
I am not arguing here, obviously, that we should make Senators McDowell and Mullen hereditary Lords of the Realm (though I’ve heard worse ideas) – I am simply suggesting that if a system is producing good results, it’s a very foolish person who would change that system simply to make it more fair. Fairness does not always equate to good outcomes.
Indeed, the larger you make the University constituencies, the less likely you are to have good outcomes. The simple reason for this is that the more voters there are, the more likely it becomes that partisan political candidates start getting elected to those seats. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have the resources to campaign to all of the few million graduates of third level in Ireland. Would former Senator John Crown have been able to do the same? I’m not so sure.
What we have right now is a system that elects six Senators who don’t have any real power to set the direction of the country, but who do have – and have used – their power to embarrass and expose Governments of different stripes, on different issues. That’s a pretty good thing, I think. Fiddling with it is stupid. If they want to offer every other graduate a vote, they should abolish the Taoiseach’s nominees, and give those seats to the other colleges instead. Then we might get even better outcomes.