Jacob Dunlop | Staff Writer
A couple of weeks ago UT spoke to Senator David Norris as the fate of the Seanad was unknown. The Irish people were on the brink of making a decision that could leave a stark Seanad shaped hole in the national constitution and many indications suggested that they would.
However, it didn’t turn out quite like that, this interview therefore was to be a postmortem of the referendum and not the Seanad. Before I’d finished congratulating the Senator on a successful campaign he couldn’t contain himself
“I think it was the intelligence of the Irish people number one and number two there were a small collection of groups and individuals who really fought hard for it.”
He notes Sean Barrett and John Crown as two of the most instrumental figures in the success of the ‘No’ campaign, particularly the latter ‘wiping the floor’ with Leo Varadkar on Late Date.
He also credits his close friend Muireann Noonan, who operated his Twitter account during the lead up to the referendum, with the highly effective galvanisation of the No vote online.
He believes the “multiplier effect of Tweets and Retweets” was “immensely important” and at one stage he claims it reached up to “1.2 million people”. Despite acknowledging he doesn’t have the technological capacity himself to operate Social Media effectively, he still believes it was a crucial tool for presenting the arguments that the Government didn’t want to give voice to.
This government is just as arrogant as Fianna Fáil was in their own way
“Cynicism” and “Dishonesty” is how he describes the attitude of the Government and to this he attributes their own failures in the referendum and he doesn’t stop there;
“This whole 20 million thing, which is rubbish, and then they spent 15 million on the referendum! They squandered money on posters all over the place, which were lies, just absolute lies… I wonder how safe the country is in the hands of people who are so hopeless at elementary arithmetic. They say 1% of people have the vote. The combined Universities have 200,000. If that is 1% of the Irish people I want to know where the missing 15 million are!”
This is classic Norris; both fiery, witty and on the ball whilst speaking unaided by anything other than memory.
“The other thing is, it was a grab for power. They’re basically decent people, but when you have 4 people running the country and the rest of them satellites and rubber stamps, then you have a situation where it’s easy for power to go to their heads and for them to become arrogant, and this government is just as arrogant as Fianna Fáil was in their own way.”
The Senator then talks about the intense economic pressure that the most vulnerable people in society are under, not only in Ireland but in Spain, Portugal and England too. He talks about meeting with Nurses and Gardaí who were in tears because of the immense financial pressure they were under. He calls for more ‘European Solidarity’ and a ‘real look at the way the economic institutions are run’ and he says the lot of the vulnerable in society will not improve until this is addressed.
I asked him if he thought this was exploited in any way during the Referendum campaign;
“Yes, I do. Because everybody is feeling pinched, they made the extraordinary decision of attacking politicians. Fewer politicians. Well what does Enda Kenny think he is? A vet? He’s a politician. If there’s something lousy about politicians he should address that. Not just hand out the Senate as a sacrificial lamb. And also there was a complete misrepresentation of what the Senate is supposed to do.
The second Senate, established by Dev, was there to be in an advisory capacity to bring in expertise. Then they attacked us for elitism! I wish it was more elite! You know I wish more people had the vote, but if they mean by elitisim that people like Sean Barrett, John Crown, Ivana Bacik are in the Seanad then I want more of it. These are people who can bring knowledge and experience and expertise, through their professional careers to bear on legislation.
Our function is to persuade, and we’ve done that very effectively. This was another misrepresentation and I think the public could smell the dishonesty.”
I tried to bring things back onto more collegiate matters. I mentioned to the Senator that a poll taken within Trinity just prior to the National Referendum indicated that the majority of voting
Trinity Students not only wanted to keep the Seanad but to reform it also. I asked if he could outline the reforms he supported and how he would go about delivering them.
The kind of reforms I’ve been suggesting for 30 years, some could be done without a referendum but if a referendum was needed it would fly, there’d be no difficulty.
“Well I was elected to the Seanad nearly 26 years ago on a Campaign which included reform. I came up with the slogan that (the Seanad) was an intensive care unit at one end and a crèche at the other. And I heard these arguments used against me by the very people that defied me on this!”
Pressed for more specifics on reform the Senator indicated that Universal Suffrage was fundamental to the reform he envisaged for the Seanad.
“The kind of reforms I’ve been suggesting for 30 years, some could be done without a referendum but if a referendum was needed it would fly, there’d be no difficulty.
The difficulty is the Seanad was set up to include expertise, but that was 1937. So you have an agricultural panel and so on and so forth. You need in my opinion to re-examine the whole panel system to make sure that every aspect of Irish life is reflected.
This would include men and women who stay at home to look after the family, widows, the unemployed, architects, lawyers and engineers. All kinds of expertise. What needs to change is that the ordinary members of these nomination constituencies have the vote.
You could then have an extra constituency for anyone in Ireland who falls outside of any of these groups. In this way the expertise of every enclave of Irish society would be better represented.”
I asked Senator Norris what he suggested Trinity students could do to campaign for Reform on campus.
It’s wrong and the government know it’s wrong and if they really believe it they’ll support its reform.
“Keep it on the agenda! Use the organisations and structures. Get speakers into the debating societies and keep it on the agenda. Every time Seanad reform has been looked at, a report would be produced and swiftly thrown into the Taoiseach’s bin. The people didn’t understand what we did. This is the very first time the Senate has been central in popular political life. I believe an unintended consequence of what Enda Kenny did is to put Seanad Reform on the agenda.”
The Senator then spoke about the arguments used against the Seanad such as the disproportionate representation of the Alcohol Industry and so on. He argues that these are in fact the arguments of reform. He talked about party control over the Seanad and how it needs to be relinquished in favor of the general public as members of nominating committees. He says:
“It’s wrong and the government know it’s wrong and if they really believe it they’ll support its reform.”
He argues that people in Ireland are selling their clothes in car-boot sales to feed their children, they aren’t going to agonize over the fate of the Senate. If the Seanad can be reformed and its members can act on behalf of the most vulnerable he argues;
“We will be demonstrated to be relevant. I don’t want a stronger Senate politically. I want a stronger Senate representatively.”
Despite the ‘very big operation’ the Senator has to undergo in the coming months he expressed his desire to be standing at the next Senate election.
“I did say defiantly that I will be standing at the next election when they were all gloating that they were getting rid of it, and there is a sort of malicious pleasure in triumphing over that. I expect I will be able to. But if not, you have to keep on, you have to persevere.
The Senate needs more voices. “
