Seanad General Election 2025 - University Panels

As a counterpoint,I am a UCD graduate and was registered for the Seanad elections automatically and have voted in 6 or 7 of them 😩

Your post box is inundated with election literature in the weeks beforehand and your vote comes by registered post which you also send off in a pre paid registered post envelope

Unless I'm mistaken the literature that is subsidised only covers the postage, the candidates still need to print their own stuff themselves.

What's wrong with setting up a charity btw?

I think they should have retained the constituencies - added extra ones for the other universities. Dont like the idea of one constituency of 6. Likely end up like the rest of the Seanad i.e. members of mainstream parties.

The Trinity constituency has returned a great variety parlimentarians of various parts of the political spectrum over the years - mainly independents - shame this is the last time for it.

NUI one has always been uninspiring e.g. Mullen etc.

This isn't really the thread to get into the incredible cluster-f**k the Irish charity industry is

The subsidised/free(?) literature is an A4 sheet folded into three, name and address printed on outside, no envelope

Just had a look at his website: https://www.aubreymccarthy.com/

It reveals that he's one of the most modest and unassuming Seanad candidates that I have ever encountered!

Sadly, as a NUI graduate, I won't be able to help this man in his noble mission to nobble the insufferable Mrs. Patrick Costello, but I wish him the very best of luck!

One person, one vote…

We should not have only a small subset of the population voting in Seanad elections.

Strange to see Zappone popping back up again, after being off the radar for three years, seems very unlikely that she'd get over the line.

You'll get to pick your position against the wall, comrade. That will be your only privilege.

yes I’d be amazed if she was competitive in this , not due to her politics but more so she has no Trinity ‘presence or history’ that many would be familiar with , compared to Bacik for example in the past.

The failed Dáil candidates end up going for the panels instead sure. Well the party ones do anyway…

Jesus. Really don't want to get callers to the door over this 😶

even stranger perhaps for her to be a candidate on a panel for a university from which she does not hold a degree although I guess she taught there.

No politician, ever, considers No Junk Mail to apply to them. They won't stop so unless going out makes you feel good, it's probably a waste of time.

I've heard of people spending their own money to post stuff back with notes about the signs though, so this isn't even vaguely excessive

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).