Seanad Elections: 141 Candidates Battle for a Seat while Criticism towards the Upper House of the Oireachtas is Raised Once Again

Image Credit: Aaron Ó'Muircheartaigh

News Reporter Juan Carlos Luque López provides details for the upcoming Seanad elections and addresses the criticism and controversy surrounding them.

The 27th election of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas as regulated by the Irish Constitution, is now underway, following the general election that took place on November 29 for Dáil Eireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas. 

141 candidates are currently competing for one of the 49 available seats across seven different panels – National University of Ireland (3 seats), the Dublin University / Trinity College (3 seats), Cultural and Educational (5 seats), Agricultural (11 seats), Industrial and Commercial (9 seats), Administrative (7 seats), and Labour (11 seats). 

Among the wide selection of contenders, ranging from Independents to well-known campaign group representatives, there are several former TDs who lost their seats in the recent general election, as well as important Irish personalities such as former Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone and Northern Ireland’s Minister for the Economy Conor Murphy. 

The vote for the university panels is reserved for some university graduates, while the vote for the vocational panels is reserved for TDs, councillors, and outgoing senators. The remaining 11 seats out of the total 60 of the Seanad will be nominated by the Taoiseach, as the constitutional procedure indicates. Due to these voting limitations, candidates have focused on targeted postal and social media campaigns as their preferred advertisement tools.

The arrival of the election period has not come without controversy. Many citizens use these key dates to express their discontent over the process of the election of senators, which is often criticised as complicated, illogical, or even undemocratic, due to the ambiguous voting requirements that allow only certain sectors of Irish society to take part in the vote. Also criticised is the functionally dubious nature of a bicameral parliamentary system in Ireland, meaning there are two chambers of parliament, once subject to an abolitionary referendum in 2013 which did not pass. 

The Government, in an effort to stave off criticism, approved new legislation in September 2024 that aims, by the next Seanad election in 2030, to replace the National University of Ireland and the Dublin University panels with a six-seat ‘Higher Education’ constituency, and to allow graduates of any designated institution of higher education in Ireland aged over 18 years to be eligible to be electors. However, government actions have proved insufficient to clear the air, as these modifications still require the voter to be a university graduate and only concern the election of 6 out of the total 60 Seanad seats, while the remaining 54 senators are either voted in by politicians or nominated by the Taoiseach.

The polls for the university panels will close at 11am on January 29, while the polls for the vocational panels close at 11am on January 30. The counting of votes will begin shortly after polls close.