Seanad General Election 2025 - University Panels

The general rule is to ignore No Junk Mail signs, however No Political Leaflets/Canvassing signs are usually adhered to.

To be fair I don't really think political literature from candidates is junk mail. This stuff is important.

www.seanadvoter.ie

Junk mail is anything which is not personally addressed to an occupant of the premises.

Get yourself a no political literature sign and you won't have to have this argument anymore.

Will Dundalk IT have a vote next time? Or is it only TUs?

Is it only graduates of level 8 programmes from IoTs / TUs?

What about level 7 ordinary degrees?

Or level 6?

Presumably there would have been some people with votes in two Seanad Constituencies previously? For example, a student who went to Trinity and then for whatever reason scored the bottom of their class and had to do a postgrad out in UCD later. Will they only get one vote now in the new single constituency?

The idea of having one panel of 3 for Trinity Graduates and then one other panel of 3 for the NUI graduates was ridiculous anyway. Could they not have made it into a panel of 5 for the Trinity Graduates and then let all the others vote in one as a consolation prize?

(CAO admission in the main depends on nothing more than examination results. Snobbery tends to exist more in the lower ranked universities such as UCD)

Anyway, point being now that when amalgamated, such a hypothetical person can now only vote in one constituency

Shane Ross, who held a Trinity seat for 29 years, excoriates the Seanad electoral process. He doesn't exempt the University seats

I benefited from a process that is shamelessly anachronistic. The university seats were dismissed by detractors as a “rotten borough” — with some justification. The same constituencies will operate in the current election, but they will, supposedly, be reformed in future to include other third-level graduates.

Is Seanad Éireann the most undemocratic Chamber of Parliament in the European Union? Certainly so, if measured by the size of the electorate for most of its seats. Not to mention the 11 Senators who are elected by no one.

After promising reform when threatened with abolition by referendum in 2013, nothing was done until this year and then only because the Supreme Court put a gun to the Government's head over the University seats and another referendum whose result had been studiously ignored for 45(!) years. The Government passed up another opportunity for wider reform and simply threw open the six University seats to all graduates. Who knows what nutters will get elected by the tiny minority of all graduates who will bother to vote next time?

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/shane-ross-secret-scheming-back-stabbing-and-flattery-help-fill-those-senate-seats/a1275882412.html

The people who promised reform:

a: never intended to or

b: never had the power to

It was never going to happen; they lied to retain the status quo as that was the only thing on the table

Barring revolution, the Dáil would never cede enough power to make the Seanad in any way useful, it would be political suicide, but we missed our chance to get rid of it to give the government of the time a black eye.

If it becomes more representative, it just becomes a mini-Dáil which would have the same proportions and whip systems and thus be a rubber-stamping ground. If somehow it did have power and wasn't representative it would cause even less legislation to go through (we have seen in the US that there is very little desire for today's politicians to take a bi-partisan approach, voters don't vote them back in).

Reform wasn't on the ballot sheet and it can only provide checks and balances by being less representative than the Dáil. No party in power would scupper their term with a change there.

By adding it back with the reformed policies, which will never happen (as was pointed out repeatedly at the time of the referendum).

If it were reformed, would you go the less representative route with more power or more representative with less power? (Or go for a US style senate with 2 per county and just freeze all existing legislation or give it meaningless powers like the president).

Checks and balances only work if it isn't a smaller Dáil without a whip, realpolitick means that never occurs bar in a history and politics lecture.

Longer terms for senators that takes them out of the general election cycles. Maybe a 10 year term but not renewable? And you could have staggered elections so there's always a bit of change in the chamber.

Let everybody have a vote for the seanad, but in a different way to the dail. Maybe stick with similar panels to what we have now, and people can self select which panel they want to vote towards.

I'd like to see the seanad as a representative body, but with a different flavour to the dail. But with senators that are quite different to the people who go for the dail. It shouldn't be a training ground or a consolation prize...

The abolition referendum failed to focus on the key issue - why should the Oireachtas be bi-cameral?

The British Parliament is because Britain was a class-based society and their aristocracy held sway over the Commons until the 20th. Century. The Americans (and many others) have bicameral Parliaments because it is a Federal Republic. A small, unitary State has no obvious need of a second Chamber. We have one because the British wanted to reassure Southern Unionists and fetter Sinn Féin. Dev abolished the Free State Seanad but included a new Seanad in our Constitution as reassurance to those who feared an FF power-grab.

During the abolition referendum, the main argument for our bi-cameral Parliament was that the Seanad could improve the Bills which had passed the Dáil but which had technical flaws. What an extraordinary indictment of our elected politicians! And what a weak case for Seanad Eireann which had been a rubber stamp and a talking shop.

In recent times the Seanad has shown some independent thinking e.g. putting the kybosh on the Hate Speech Bill and starting the debate on the Family and Carers amendments. The University Senators have traditionally been the most prominent and independent voices because all the other Senators were beholden either to their party or to the Taoiseach personally. Now the University Senators will be elected by a single, weird franchise - a million graduates of every recognised institution of higher education who will have no particular connection to the candidates and who will be heavily skewed against older people - the overwhelming majority will be under 50 because only a small minority of older people went to third-level.

Close of Poll 29 January 2025 at 11:00am

https://www.tcd.ie/seanad/seanad-eireann-election-2025/