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.

When X is not a Kiss

Suicide Blonde

On Monday I joined the paid employment people on the Luas into town.  Cheered on by the fact I’d got free parking and my return fare was 3.70. So far, so budget. The tram glides through the backlands, the more fascinating underbelly of Victorian Dublin, built the year of the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, a British law under which Ireland still operates.

For a change, I immersed myself in the world of digital wizardry and got some savvy ideas from Helen Shaw at Athena Media. There are so many free and clever things you can do with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now that I’ve discovered Tumblr, Dublinlandlady will be on the move with dynamic content – that’s the idea anyway.

So, I missed the morning presentation by psychiatrists at the Seanad, a woman in the public gallery told me Dr Tony McCarthy, resident psychiatrist at Holles Street, made her cry. I remember attending him once for an hour after losing my twins, it cost 180 euro, I decided I couldn’t afford to be depressed. In fact, it took so long to get an appointment with him that by then I had started my masters in UCD architecture school and I was so consumed by the amount of study ahead, I didn’t have time to be depressed.

Anyway, the Health Committee hearings are all about that, depression and suicidal ideation in pregnancy rather than after pregnancy. And that, I can assure you, is very depressing to listen to over and over, cogent arguments by experts and extremely held ideological views by well funded lobbyists.

I felt nobody in the room really understand the human side of the story, yes the doctors might be familiar with patients in tragic circumstances, but it is quite another thing to go to a strange hospital in another country grieving the loss of a wanted baby.

A woman sitting beside me in the gallery asked if I was a journalist, as I was making notes on my ipad. 'No', I said, 'I took the D v Ireland case.'

'Oh, wasn’t she very brave, I read all about her.'

'No, I mean, I am D,' I said.

We both laughed, she nearly fell off her chair and nudged the women beside her, Nora Owen and Gemma Hussey - the early sisterhood, I suppose. From that moment I felt fine, protected. They took me for coffee and I got to see the famous Dáil bar. Not a bad place to work, Leinster House, very plush and lovely ceilings.

I wonder if X, at 34, is married with other children and how she remembers an experience that is relentlessly exercising the individuals in this chamber, the people on the street, the media, the clergy and the members of this House. I wonder if we heard from her would it clarify the question at the centre of the debate, that termination is not a 'treatment' for suicide. I’d like to know how she thinks the legislation should be framed for victims of rape and incest, as serious crimes that would surely provide a compelling case to give that woman a choice.

Wherever you are X, I hope you are bearing up.

Semantics Ricochet in the Seanad

More than a Question of eggs

It must be a grand place to work, Leinster House, plush and hallowed corridors of containment. Handy for Grafton Street, our once premier street can no longer claim that distinction, whoever allowed the proliferation of mobile phone shops and convenience stores should be sacked. But then, the custodians of our environment can't be sacked, only promoted.

The custodians of our laws, if they were rugby players would be expert at kicking to touch. Twenty years it has taken, one Supreme Court ruling, two European Court of Human Rights cases, five referenda and one dead woman we know about, to get to yesterday when the proposed legislation on the X case was reviewed by the Health Committee with leaders in the medical profession. 
I don't say Experts, as I am inclined to think the prime expert in a woman's body is herself.

I’ve never been in the Seanad chamber before, and thanks to Mary Mitchell O'Connor I was seated in the elegant barrel vaulted, neo-classical room, for six hours in what is basically a dining room chair. The committee, in fairness, sat for twelve hours with very short breaks.

Someone was going ballistic as I arrived, it turns out they'd all been having a go at the chairman, Jerry Buttimer, since Minister Reilly scarpered as soon as he introduced the bill, leaving two lieutenants to, apparently, inexpertly field questions. Own goal there by the sounds of it.

The chamber was flooded with alien sunshine from tall windows on three sides, it's a wonder there weren't more getting hot under the collar. I don't know what's happened to Peter Matthews but anyone watching will have seen him invoke the holocaust in the debate, and continues to go on about his wife, can he not just tell her himself that he values her. We don't all need to hear it repeated on TV.

Sitting beside me was Gina Menzies, who lectures in medical ethics at the College of Surgeons, then there was Nora Owen and Gemma Hussey, a great row of women. At the far side on the press gallery was Geraldine Kennedy, all women who've seen this debate rage since the 1980's. So glad I wasn't sitting beside the old man who roared 'Rubbish' when Peter Boylan spoke of the case where a woman died needlessly in Galway.

I took an awful lot of notes, just in case any inspiring nuggets were mined, but much of what we heard was repetitious and cautious. Even Senator Bacik who first came to notice as a student campaigning for women’s reproductive rights, was restrained. Some senators and deputies asked considered and intelligent questions, others could have got their answers in a good dictionary. It seemed to me the message was to stay on-message. There was a lot of semantic ricochets.

The afternoon session was given over to two maternity hospital masters and a former master, the deliverers of babies and caretakers of expectant mothers, pretty much expert in their vocation and one in particular an outstanding expert in actual pregnancy and labour, having produced four children. It was the master of the Coombe that had least favour with the Heads of Bill but it was difficult to assess his concern as his figures were calibrated on the 5000 women who travel to the UK annually, rather than the low figures of women who's lives are at risk each year in Ireland.

In the twelve hours of debate that took place yesterday, one question hushed the room.

'Can anybody here say for certain that X would not have committed suicide?'

Silence.

'I can't', said Rhona Mahony.

The legislation ignores the tragedy of wanted babies with lethal abnormalities, but when we want to be, we are a very cautious country, if only the Government had exercised such caution and restraint in the Noughties, we wouldn't have the catastrophic increase in adult suicide. 

So much for the Protection of Life during Hard Times.