GREEN PARTY chairman Senator Dan Boyle has underlined further fractured relations between the coalition parties, saying he doesn’t think it likely that the Seanad will allow for a referendum on its abolition to be held alongside the general election.
Boyle’s insistence – published this afternoon on Twitter, in response to queries from members of his party – comes despite defence minister Tony Killeen saying the government was likely to allow a referendum to be held, given the policies of the opposition parties which want the upper house abolished.
Asked if the parliamentary party would be facilitating a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad – a move that would be contrary to the party’s policy on reform of the Oireachtas – Boyle said:
I don’t see it happening. I don’t see The Seanad supporting it.
Asked by others to clarify what he meant, he went on:
I think it’s unlikely. I don’t think time allows for it to happen. [...] I don’t believe it’s being fully thought out. Should only happen in the context of wider reform.
The Green Party policy, he went on to clarify, was to seek reform of the chamber so that it be publicly elected.
The current speculation about the possibility of a referendum being held alongside the election, now expected for late March, had come about because Killeen had failed to answer a question put to him on yesterday’s The Week in Politics, he added.
Having a referendum on a Constitutional amendment abolishing the Seanad – a position favoured by Fine Gael and Labour – put to the public alongside the general election would require a Bill to that effect being put through the Oireachtas before the Dáil is dissolved, a prospect Boyle obviously considers unlikely.
That assent would not require the Seanad to give the bill its blessing, and the Seanad only rarely clashes with a decision of the Dáil.
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