For 'Elite' read 'Emigrant'

I wonder why the government hasn’t learned from the Nice and Lisbon referendums? Nobody wants to see even more money wasted by having to give the right answer next time. The electorate doesn’t like being told what to do; and we have good reason not to trust government in general. The supposed saving of €20m is nothing compared to the amount that will be spent on the new privately appointed committee experts, as proposed by Richard Bruton TD recently.

The chronically insulting aspect of the Seanad Abolition Referendum is the Yes/No option. A reduced and reformed second house of actual experts, as opposed to failed TDs is an alternative. But the Taoiseach won’t engage or debate an alternative proposal.

There’s a lot of talk of ‘elitism’ about the Seanad, yet the unions have nomination and voting rights, almost twice that of the universities. The Socialist Party launched their Yes campaign recently, citing figures for graduates eligible to vote in particular Postal Zones. As you’d expect, Dublin 4, a densely populated area including Irishtown and Ringsend and many rural migrants, has markedly more university panel votes than Dublin 10. Dublin 4 is also twice the size. Similarly, the numbers in Rochestown, Cork, outweigh those of Ballyvolane.

What’s disingenuous about this extrapolation is the suggestion that everyone who has a vote is ‘elite’. Any graduate of UCD, UCC, TCD, NUIM, NUI Galway can be one of the six candidates and vote. Or simply, anyone who worked hard to get into college, took a part-time job or two, paid their way, somehow studied and passed exams. Does that make every social worker, nurse, secondary teacher an elite? The architects who’ve studied for at least five years and have lost their jobs? Not every graduate is the offspring of an affluent dynasty.

It’s easy to slap the label on all graduates, easy to demark society by people’s earnings, by those who try but can’t find work and those who claim benefits. But the main problem with the Seanad is the political appointees; all candidates should be drawn from a broader category base. Why are there eleven senators on the Agricultural Panel and eleven on the Labour Panel, with only five on the Culture and Education panel? Why isn’t there a computer science panel, a medical and legal panel?

The Seanad simply requires reduction and reform. As does the Dáil and, if anything, the Dáil needs more so called ‘elite’, professionally qualified practitioners, industrialists, thinkers and do-ers and less school teachers on long term leave.

I took a straw poll of fifty people on my email list, equally divided between men and women, most are sole traders, some are doing something different to their ‘celtic tiger’ job, some are retraining or planning to emigrate.

Within a day I had twenty replies: Yes to Abolition: 4; Unsure: 1;   No: 15

The fifteen who will vote No were very clear why; the alternative is non-transparent, unsafe, wide open to corruption and ultimately jobs for the boys.

I was a first-time graduate at thirty-three, with two small children and a part-time job. I didn’t bother with Seanad elections, there was too much paperwork and I didn’t know any of the candidates, there were other things to worry about. It wasn’t until the last election, when my children were old enough to do my research that I voted. I asked my sons to go through the list and choose someone. On the basis he was well qualified as a cancer surgeon, ie. he might know a thing or two about medicine and he was donating his Seanad salary to cancer research, we picked Professor John Crown, who has since drafted a reasonably sensible Reform Bill. Both of my sons have now finished college, the youngest has a Seanad vote, the eldest does not. Does that make one penniless son elite and the other one, with a Cork girlfriend who has a vote from UCC, bitterly cynical?

The reality is that our ‘elite’ university graduates won’t be here to vote, they will all have emigrated.