The mythical sophisticated Irish Electorate

[Evander73]

The Seanad is a talking shop which produces not much more than bombast and bluster.
I think electoral reform of how the Dail is elected would serve us better than a sticking-plaster type elitist second house. This was also an item in the FG manifesto before the last election but was ignored in favour of the softer option of abolishing just the Seanad. There was talk of partial list systems etc but they stuck with our multi-seat constituencies with the single transferrable vote. That is the root cause of our parish-pump political focus. We have a great method for electing local councillors but we use it to elect our Parliament.
If all politics is local then none of it is national.

Spot on, Purple, re the glaring inadequacy of our electoral system to the Dail. This is at the heart of what's wrong with politics in Ireland. The Government runs the county in the general national interest, and the remainder of the backbenchers concern themselves with local issues, which in fairness to them in the current system they have to, if they are to have any hope of getting re-elected.

If 100 experts proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it would be in the best interest for everyone to close some local facility, and one gombeen got up to say, "no way will you close our local facility", you could bet you last euro that our local hero would top the polls at the next election. There has to be something wrong with a system that can produce such a result, but then again if our average voter was sophisticated enough, he wouldn't vote for the local gombeen!! You reap what you sow.

 

[Purple]

I'm not sure the government even does that. Ministers are selected as much based on whether they can boost the party in their constituency as on their ability or suitability for the post. This is particularly the case in the more junior roles.

 

[T McGibney]

Michael Lowry, Mick Wallace, The Healy Rea and Flynn dynasties are all a product of the SIE

OP
Rather unfortunate that you include the Healy Raes (who have never been implicated in any way in a tax or financial scandal) in the above list of shame.

 

[dam099]

There are 60 members of Seanad Eíreann.
11 are appointed by the Taoiseach.
43 are elected from the Vocational Panels by TD’s, sitting Senators and local councillors (about 1000 people in total). The vocational panels can only nominate, not elect. In practice these are the failed and aspiring TD’s and just about all of them are active members of political parties.
That’s 1000 people electing or appointing 90% of the Seanad.
Is anyone really going to say that is democratic?

I believe the Seanad is flawed and I voted yes to abolishing it but it's not quite as un-democratic as you suggest, most of those 1000 people are elected by the electorate in the local or general elections. The university panels are my biggest annoyance.

 

[Purple]

I believe the Seanad is flawed and I voted yes to abolishing it but it's not quite as un-democratic as you suggest, most of those 1000 people are elected by the electorate in the local or general elections. The university panels are my biggest annoyance.

Those 1000 people are not some US style electoral college. They are politicians elected to perform a job at a local and, supposedly, a national level.
I don’t think anyone chooses who to vote for based on how they will then vote in the Seanad elections. If they did they are foolish as every one of them votes along party lines, following the instructions of their party. In effect the party leaders appoint members of the Seanad in proportion to their party’s size. The notion that there are 1000 people freely casting their vote in accordance with what they believe is in the best interest of the people of Ireland is nonsense.

 

[Time]

The voting is done in secret even for these seanad elections.

 

[Purple]

The voting is done in secret even for these seanad elections.

Yea, that's why the composition of the Seanad members reflect the voting blocks of the political parties.
As if the voting system wasn't undemocratic enough the selection panels are completely undemocratic.

 

[Evander73]

Actually I did not state the a "sizeable" portion of the electorate ... swear-vote. In fact I would would be strongly of the opinion that that is usually a very small proportion, considerably smaller than the Don't Know. Perhaps I am more positive but based on any conversations I have had prior to this vote and others, it is rare the person who counts screw the government as a reason.



We will have to disagree on this one I think. The more a person understands a question, the more likely they are to answer the question put instead of responding with the voting equivalent of lashing out instinctively. A question which is difficult to understand is more likely to cause voter disengagement, voter discomfort and, if they vote, in a voting FU.



The margin is narrow, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of either a yes or a no, but until we have to start voting the way we were told to write English essays (i.e. back up your answer) we are only speculating on motive. Railing against a result we don't like by resorting to the schoolyard tactic and saying the winning side is stupid is not exactly grown up.

Maybe I don’t hang around with as positive, fair-minded and politically engaging people as you do, but unfortunately it is my experience that a significant proportion of the Irish electorate are swayed by a whole myriad of unrelated issues when it comes to voting on referenda. In this particular referendum on the Seanad, it is exactly the fact that people think the Seanad is irrelevant that allowed them to use their vote to kick the government. If it had been a referendum on a moral issue e.g. abortion, people are far more likely to vote on the ‘actual’ issue.

To suggest that the small difference in the outcome of the referendum could not have been swayed by these anti government sentiment votes just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, as a look at the voting pattern shows a direct correlation between areas where there has been a loss of government support (particularly labour voters), and the percentage of no votes, in the referendum. Leinster, and more decisively Dublin (due to the weight of numbers) voted no, whereas the biggest yes vote just happened to be in the Taoiseach’s County – party political politics in action, on a non party political issue.

Misrepresenting what someone says is “not exactly grown up” either – I never said those who voted No were ‘stupid’. I said the Irish electorate is generally unsophisticated, which is not a euphemism for stupid. Some of my peers, who I freely acknowledge are intellectually superior to me, voted no, on the basis of several unrelated issues – that doesn’t make them stupid, but it does call into question their motivation for voting no. You seem to be operating on the naïve assumption that the vast vast majority of people who voted no, did so on the basis of some deep thinking ideology – I would content it’s far more visceral than that.

 

[Evander73]

OP
Rather unfortunate that you include the Healy Raes (who have never been implicated in any way in a tax or financial scandal) in the above list of shame.

For the sake of clarification, I wasn't inferring the Healy Raes are in any way corrupt. I included them in the list to illustrate the parochial nature of Irish politics. The Healy Rae's and the people who elect them are concerned with what happens in Kerry and not the national interest.

I don't know what the people of Wexford were thinking when they voted in a tax dodging bankrupt developer top of the poll - after all that has happened, it's just mind boggling what some of the unsophisticated Irish electorate will vote for.

 

[Time]

It is the gombeen nature of Irish politics outside the pale.

You could elect a murderer if you pinned a FF badge on it.

 

[Deiseblue]

It is the gombeen nature of Irish politics outside the pale.

You could elect a murderer if you pinned a FF badge on it.

Ah Jayz , let's not exempt the " Pale " from gombeenism.

After all Bertie Ahern , Rambo Burke & the late Liam Lawlor would be mortally offended at being omitted from that list

 

[Purple]

It is the gombeen nature of Irish politics outside the pale.

You could elect a murderer if you pinned a FF badge on it.

I don't think that's fair; Bertie Ahearn was elected and re-elected in North Dublin. Shane Ross was elected in South Dublin and, despite showing himself to be a total opportunist and populist he will be re-elected next time.

When parties can swing from over 20% support to 6% support, as has happened with Labour, it shows that sound-bites and wishful thinking garners votes and reality and hard facts lose votes. There's no way Labour deserve to have lost so much support as their ministers have done quite well (with the notable exception of Brendan Howlan).

 

[MrMan]

Evander, I'm sure that there was plenty of No votes put forward to stick it to Enda, but there would have been plenty of yes votes given just to support him and FG. The only thing that we do know for sure is that Ireland has voted No through the democratic process, everything else is redundant.

 

[T McGibney]

The Healy Rae's and the people who elect them are concerned with what happens in Kerry and not the national interest.

Oddly enough, Michael Healy Rae is regularly on radio talking about national & general societal issues. The same can't be said of the majority of party backbenchers, urban and rural.

 

[Purple]

Oddly enough, Michael Healy Rae is regularly on radio talking about national & general societal issues. The same can't be said of the majority of party backbenchers, urban and rural.

I agree. Despite the local rhetoric he comes out with he does hold very detailed views on national issues and is very well able to articulate them.

 

[ontour]

Personally i see a place in politics for the likes of Fergal Quinn, Prof. Crown, Ivana Bacik etc. who can debate issues and propose bills/ legislation. The Seanad has the opportunity to represent a range of views that are not based on the individual's ability to sort out a planning application, a student grant, a medical card or a local dispute.

It has the ability to represent groups of society that will never be represented by local geographic based constituencies.

The reasons that people voted Yes or No do not fit well in to media soundbites as many in the Yes camp represent fundamentally opposing political views, the same being true for the No side. Some people voted Yes to give politicians a kicking, others voted No to give the government a kicking.

 

[DerKaiser]

You seem to be operating on the naïve assumption that the vast vast majority of people who voted no, did so on the basis of some deep thinking ideology – I would content it’s far more visceral than that.

You're only looking at one side of the equation. Did those voting 'yes' all do so on ideological grounds?

I could make an educated guess and emphatically state that those voting yes were largely swayed by cost savings, a disdain for the fact they don't actually have a vote and cynicism towards politics in general as opposed to an ideological belief that an upper house has no role in a democracy such as ours. I could complain that such reasons were not a valid way of deciding on what way to vote.

I don't believe that I have any business in telling people how they should think though. I certainly don't believe in labelling them in a condescending way.

 

[Purple]

Personally i see a place in politics for the likes of Fergal Quinn, Prof. Crown, Ivana Bacik etc. who can debate issues and propose bills/ legislation.

I agree. We should therefore reform the way we elect TD's so that such people have a chance of being members of the Dail. The solution is not to have then in an upper house with no democratic mandate from the people.

 

[TarfHead]

Listening to some podcasts of post-referendum analysis, one suggestion appealed to me.

Before an election, candidates should declare for either the Dáil or the Seanad. Unelected Dáil candidates could not then be a candidate for election to the Seanad. It could address the creche / retirement home criticism.

 

[Time]

But it would not stop the Taoiseach of the day from appointing failed Dáil candidates as part of his 11 appointees.