In a Seanad debate on 24 April 2002 on the 7th report of the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, I said:

The meat in this report is in the chapter on the Seanad. Most of the other recommendations are more concerned with technical matters. It is gratifying that there now seems to be a strong political consensus that the Seanad should stay. I am delighted to hear Senator Quill speak about it and to learn that even the Progressive Democrats are having a rethink about it.

On the last occasion we discussed reform of the Seanad I put forward a possible role for the Seanad as a forum in which legislation could be discussed, even before a Bill was written. What I sought was to bring back to where it belongs the consultative part of the legislative process. I am concerned that there are too many done deals. A deal is struck and all the consultative work is done before something is brought to the Seanad. This is an ideal role for the Seanad and would be possible without any change to the Constitution.

The value of such a change would be seriously diluted if we did not first address the fundamental task of establishing democratic legitimacy for ourselves. To go straight to the heart of the issue, why should university graduates have a vote when others do not have one? There may have been a solid reason in 1937 but that does not stand up now. I cannot defend it and cannot explain why a constitutional amendment of 20 years ago, which enabled a widening of the university vote, has not been covered. Whatever justification there was in the past we cannot guarantee justification for those university seats any longer.

Our six seats are not the only ones lacking democratic legitimacy. The eleven Members appointed by the Taoiseach also lack democratic legitimacy but there are solid reasons for having those appointees. The Seanad has benefited from having a Government majority on most occasions, although Senator Ryan often refers to the three exciting years when it did not.

As this report makes clear, the lack of democratic legitimacy applies not just to the six university seats and the eleven Taoiseach's appointees but to the other 43 seats also. We are all in the same boat. The vocational panels that ostensibly nominate candidates are just a sham - Senator Norris gave a good example earlier. The idea that this House represents a cross-section of vocational interests, as defined by the panels, is fiction. If the nominating panels are fiction then the electorate which then votes for them fails to add legitimacy to the result. To say that members on those panels are democratically legitimate because they have been chosen by people who were elected by the public is stretching democracy too far. I am not trying to defend or offend anybody and I would not envy anybody the task of having to get elected to one of those 43 seats. Despite the work involved, the process does not gain the legitimacy it needs if the people are to take this House seriously as a democratic institution of the State.

The recommendation of the committee is that both university and vocational seats be abolished and that the 49 seats concerned be thrown open to the full electorate on a list basis. As I understand it, the proposal is that, at the same time as voting for the Dáil, voters would mark their Seanad preferences. However, instead of voting for a specific candidate they would vote for a list. The seats would be allocated among the lists in proportion to the votes they actually achieved. There would obviously be a Fianna Fáil list, a Fine Gael list, a Labour list and also a Senator Norris list, a Senator O'Toole list and a Senator Quinn list etc. It would obviously be a rare independent who would command a high enough proportion of the vote to claim more than one seat but independents could be elected under the system just as candidates from political parties.

This proposal is particularly attractive because it provides all the democratic legitimacy that the House lacks at present without putting in place a duplicate constituency-based system like that of the Dáil. I am now convinced of the merits of this suggestion. I hope the next Government will be concerned about the way democracy is going in this country and will take this on board. It could be the catalyst for the process of reviving public interest and engagement with the political process. We need this and if we ignore it we do so at our peril.

There is a great deal to be said for the report, particularly where it speaks of the Seanad. Let us make sure we give it the attention it deserves.