A MAJORITY OF members of the Seanad will be directly elected by the public, under radical overhaul plans unveiled today.
A government-backed working group has recommended a major change to the way Senators are elected - including giving votes to Irish citizens based in Northern Ireland, and Irish passport-holders overseas.
The changes, if enacted, would give citizens a direct say in the election of over half of all members - giving the average voter more influence over the Seanad than at any time since the 1930s.
The changes would mean that 36 of the 60 members are directly elected by the public.
However the changes to the voting system will not be in place before the next Seanad election, which is due before April or May 2016.
This is because the group says the State would need to be given time to get a practical election system up and running, and the system would not be fit and ready to conduct an election.
This means that if the current and next Dáil both serve their full five-year term, the public would not get to vote in a full Seanad election until the latter half of the year 2021.
However, the group has begun the task of drafting its own bill, to give legal effect to its proposals. A full version of the bill should be ready within a month, the group says.
The group's report was published by the Department of the Taoiseach this morning, after months of work behind the scenes. The group was told to recommend any changes that would not require a referendum - as Taoiseach Enda Kenny has ruled out another referendum on the future of the Seanad, in the wake of the defeat of the 2013 ballot on scrapping it entirely.
Kenny has welcomed the report and says he will discuss its findings with the leaders of the opposition parties, and with the Seanad's procedural committee.
Voting changes
Currently 11 members of the Seanad are appointed by the Taoiseach, with six elected by graduates of specific universities. The other 43 are elected through five 'vocational panels' where, at present, only TDs and county/city councillors are given a vote.
A referendum would be needed to change this panel system, but not to change the electorate - and so the working group has decided that 30 of those 43 seats should be directly elected by the public, with TDs and councillors electing the remaining 13.
This is intended to make sure that the Seanad's make-up does not look too similar to that of the Dáil - which has always been a fear if the entire Seanad was elected by the public.
But in other to protect the idea of 'one person one vote', anyone who qualifies for the Universities panels, who chooses to vote in the vocational panels instead, will lose their vote in the University constituency.
Separate laws are already in the works to extend the franchise within the University constituencies - where currently only graduates of Trinity College (three seats) and the National University of Ireland (three seats) are given a vote.
The group has also called for the Seanad to be given a direct role in scrutinising North-South and European affairs, and for relevant outside bodies to be heard in the Seanad chamber when draft bills are making their way through the House.
This is not currently the case in either the Dail or Seanad, and outsiders are only ever heard in the midst of Committee Stage debates in the Dáil.
