Trinity graduates to elect three senators for last time

Trinity College Dublin graduates will elect three members of the Senate (Seanad), the upper house of the Irish Parliament (Oireachtas), for the final time at the end of this month; after that they will join graduates of all other Irish universities in a new constituency which will elect six senators.

Trinity, founded in 1592 when Ireland was under English rule, is the sole constituent college of the University of Dublin which was granted the right to elect two members of parliament to the Irish House of Commons by King James 1 of England in 1613.

It held on to direct parliamentary representation in various forms until now.

"The King’s intention was to pack the Irish House of Commons with protestant MPs and thereby dilute the Old English-Catholic influence which had hitherto predominated. It was the late 17th century before the Catholic influence was eliminated altogether from the lower house of the Irish Parliament,” Dr Jane Ohlmeyer, Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity and author of Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World told University World News.

Trinity was seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history, while limitations on Catholic attendance continued up to 1871.

Act of Union

When the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain were joined with the Act of Union in January 1801 the university sent one MP to Westminster and was given a second seat in 1832. It continued to elect two MPs until the establishment of the Irish Free State in December 1922.

Among those elected to Westminster was Dubliner and Trinity graduate Edward Carson, the unionist leader who helped ensure that six north eastern Irish counties remained in the union under a devolved parliament.

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 also provided for a parliament for the 26 counties to which Trinity elected four MPs or Teachta Dála (TDs). This continued until the new constitution of Ireland in 1937 which replaced the entitlement to elected TDs with a three-seat senate constituency.

The National University of Ireland also secured three seats for its graduates, and they will be entitled to vote with all other university alumni in the new higher education constituency in future.

Minority interests

Former senator Dr Sean Barrett told University World News that Trinity had a proud tradition of representing liberal and minority interests as well as Northern Ireland views. It had elected the first openly gay person to public office in Ireland – David Norris who served as a senator from 1987 to 2024.

Other senate luminaries elected by Trinity graduates included former Irish president Mary Robinson and former diplomat, government minister and writer Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Barrett, a prominent economist and Trinity academic, fears that minority candidates will find it hard to get elected in the new six-seat constituency for which the franchise has been extended to graduates of the other universities that have been excluded until now.

A referendum in 1979 mandated the Oireachtas to enact legislation to include other institutions of higher education. Successive governments did nothing to implement change, but the Supreme Court ruled, in a case taken by University of Limerick graduate Tomás Heneghan, that there was a constitutional imperative to implement reform.

Apart from the six university representatives, 11 members of the senate are nominated by the prime minister (Taoiseach), and 43 are elected from panels of candidates representing specific vocational interests.

The electorate for the 43 seats is just under 1,200 and consists of sitting city and county councillors along with members of the outgoing Senate and incoming Dail, the lower house of Parliament. They usually vote along political party lines.

It’s fair to say that the university senators have wielded disproportionate influence, often initiating public discussions on social and human rights issues.

They were strongly involved in opposition to a universities bill in 1996 which they claimed was too heavy handed and offered the state too much control. The government, which narrowly averted a rare defeat in the Senate, was forced to introduce more than 100 amendments to the bill before it was enacted.

The university senators, in particular Michael McDowell from the National University of Ireland constituency, were also to the fore in opposing a government attempt in 2013 to abolish the Senate. The proposal was rejected in a referendum.

The Seanad can initiate legislation. It can also delay government bills with which it disagrees by a total of 90 days, but it cannot stop them. It has no powers to delay a budget.