When the Bill was on Second Stage, the Government assured us that these issues of Seanad reform would be dealt with through the creation of the Electoral Commission, yet when the Electoral Reform Act to establish the Electoral Commission rolled along, there was a very clear and glaring omission. The Clerk of the Seanad being a member of the commission will create a potential conflict of interest for the Clerk in being both the returning officer for Seanad elections and a member of the commission, as its remit includes reporting on the administration of electoral events, including Seanad elections.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 5,393 words from 12 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Alice-Mary Higgins and Eileen Flynn; Níl, Senators Robbie Gallagher and Joe O'Reilly.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2023-05-10, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.