The scandal of the Seanad elections

The election process for Ireland’s upper house of parliament, Seanad Éireann, has been slammed as extremely biased and ridiculously outdated. The criticisms follow the revelation that several hundred dead people are still registered to vote!

According to a new report by Experian, the world’s largest data management company, there are 680 deceased members still on the University Panel register. One particular graduate on the Trinity register, having graduated from Trinity College in 1911, is estimated to be 118 years old – seven years older than the man recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as being the oldest person in the world!
Out of a total of 60 Senate positions, 43 are elected by the tiny elite of less than 1,000 county councillors. 11 are appointed by the Taoiseach. The remaining six positions are voted for in a postal ballot by graduates of Trinity College and the NUI. In total, 155,000 ballot papers were sent out on June 19 and they must be returned by 11am on July 24.
Trinity candidate Seán O’Connor, a grandson of the legendary Taoiseach Seán Lemass, says this system clearly discriminates against graduates from the likes of Dublin City University, the University of Limerick and the various technology institutes.
“The fact that only TCD and NUI graduates are entitled to vote is extremely biased against other graduates,” O’Connor told hotpress. “In the 1930’s, TCD and NUI covered all Irish graduates, but today this covers less than half of them. In 1979, the Irish people voted by way of a constitutional amendment to give the Government the power to change the law and to include other graduates. It is now approaching 30 years since the people voted yes for reform – yet successive Governments have done nothing.”
O’Connor, who studied for a Masters in Political Communication at DCU, is running in the election on a reform platform, which includes a call to open up the election process. “The majority of Irish people have little or no interest in the Senate. To rectify this, the election should be open to the general public,” he said.

WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY
University candidates are elected exclusively by postal vote. In the last election, in the NUI constituency an astonishing 18,000 ballot papers were returned as being “undeliverable”. Even more alarmingly, the report released this week by Experian also reveals that the NUI register is 67% incorrect, while the Trinity register of voters is 57% incorrect.
In the 2002 Senate elections, the NUI contained four registered voters who had graduated between 1897 and 1899, while Trinity has no less than 29 who graduated in the year 1900!
The State funds certain costs incurred by candidates, for example issuing one canvas letter per candidate to every graduate voter on the register. With 11 candidates on the Trinity panel and 24 on the NUI panel, over 1.8 million wasted letters may be posted during this campaign, according to Experian’s findings.
O’Connor, who commissioned the report, believes this will lead to the waste of approximately €600,000 of public money. “This is a shambles,” O’Connor said. “I have been seeking Senate reform for some time now, and I hope that this new information will shock the Government into taking action.
“We also need to question whether Trinity and NUI are properly fulfilling their oversight role in respect of maintaining the register and, indeed, whether they will refund this waste of public money to the taxpayer.”
O’Connor has written to the new Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, who has responsibility for elections, to propose that the State takes on the management of the electoral register for graduate voters. He has also provided the Minister with the Experian report and has sought an urgent meeting with him.

HORRID KIND OF ELITISM
USI President Colm Hamrogue also blasted the denial of voting rights to graduates of DCU, University of Limerick and ITs as ‘anti-democratic’.
“I’m elected to lead the national union of students,” he said, “but ironically I can’t vote in elections to the Seanad because I graduated from IT Sligo. A horrid kind of elitism is the issue. The criteria that establish franchise entitlements should not be built on ‘college apartheid’.
“The democratic legitimacy of the University Panel is compromised because only graduates of favoured colleges have the franchise. An urgent priority for the new government must be to legislate for graduate equality in respect of Seanad elections.”
DCU’s Graduate Research Director, Dr Gary Murphy, is also in favour of change. Writing in DCU’s alumni magazine, he stated: “This (situation) is nothing short of a disgrace. It deprives DCU graduates of their constitutional right to vote in Seanad elections. As it stands, the members of Seanad Eireann do not represent a wide cross-section of Irish politics. The best way to make it happen is to use your Seanad vote to support candidates who will strive to see Seanad reform enacted.”
But those hoping for reform should not hold their breath. During the past 70 years, no less than 12 Senate reform reports have been drawn up by the Oireachtas.
They still lie gathering dust in Leinster House.