Elitism Prevails

 

Elitism Prevails

 

In 2013 the people of Ireland voted to retain our second house of democracy, Seanad Éireann; but it was a narrow victory and was predicated by a general understanding that the Irish electorate wanted to see this pathetic resemblance of democracy to be seriously reformed. Nine years later, that elitism that was promised to be rid from our flawed democracy is still thriving.

Next month, March 2022, we will see a by-election for a Seanad seat that was vacated by the Labour Party’s Ivana Bacik when she was elected to the only truly democratic house in the state, Dáil Éireann. But despite an electorate in the millions, only some 60,000 people will be granted the privilege of voting; graduates from Trinity College Dublin, an institute with a deep history of elitism and sectarianism.

Of the sixty seats in the Seanad, graduates of TCD have the privilege of voting for three of those Seanadóirí, and the combined institutes that form the National Universities of Ireland elect another three. Eleven are hand-picked by the Taoiseach of the day, and the remaining forty-three are elected by serving politicians.

I am a second-class graduate, without the privilege of partaking in a part of our democratic process, because I decided to attend the second-class university, the University of Limerick.

But why should someone have to graduate from a certain university in order to have a vote? A barrister who studied law at Trinity College is represented by not one, not two, but three Seanadóirí; while an engineer who studied at Limerick IT ( now TUS), has zero representation.

There has been talks since the 2013 referendum of extending this privilege to graduates of all universities, but that is merely a slightly expanded elitism; reminiscent of elite, wealthy Catholics being allowed to take a seat in Westminster, so long as they swore allegiance to a foreign monarchy and behaved themselves. Granting me and my fellow graduates of UL a vote, isn’t going to fix the problem, nor will it make me any less eager to seek democracy in our second house of parliament.

We live in a country where only those who went to a prestigious university are allowed to vote in our Seanad, while most Gardaí, nurses, soldiers, builders, carpenters, plumbers, retail workers, drivers, civil servants, are denied that opportunity to vote in the Seanad.

Now I will say, and it’s likely no secret to you, that I put my name forward for convention to the Seanad, and as a politician I did have a vote in the 2016 Seanad election. That doesn’t change my opinion of the institution, or anything that I have said above. Had I made it to the chamber, one of the first things I would have spoken about is exactly what I have said above.

The Seanad was meticulously designed to be this way, to prevent ordinary people from ever gaining power, or at the very least acting as a serious disruptor to change. This could come true if there is a General Election before the next Local Elections; should Sinn Féin (currently set to be the largest party), comes into government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will still control the Seanad and be able to seriously disrupt Sinn Féin’s plan for government. In that scenario, on a good day at the polls, Sinn Féin would be lucky to come away with 20 out of the 60 seats, despite being the largest party in the Dáil.

I truly hope that this Seanad by-election for Trinity College is the last of it’s kind, and that some form of democracy will be brought to that institution that is supposed to be democratic. Now is the opportunity to talk about turning voting from a privilege into a right, and ensure that true reform that was promised by the Fine Gael- Labour government in 2013 is finally delivered.