The Cultural and Educational Panel (Irish: An Rolla Saíochta agus Oideachais) is one of five Vocational Panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the legislature of Ireland). The Cultural and Educational panel elects 5 Senators, at least 2 of whom must come from the Oireachtas members' nominees and another three must come from the nominating bodies' nominees.
Contents
Senators
Note: The columns in this table are used only for presentational purposes, and no significance should be attached to the order of columns.
Elections
While Oireachtas members and city and county council members have a franchise for general elections for the Seanad, in bye-elections it is confined to Oireachtas members.
2014 by-election
Fine Gael's Deirdre Clune resigned from the Seanad upon being returned to the European Parliament for the South constituency in the May 2014 elections. The by-election to fill the casual vacancy had 225 Oireachtas members as voters, and nomination by 9 members required to be added to the ballot.
Gerard Craughwell, former president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, put himself forward in August 2014 as an independent candidate, initially a symbolic gesture to protest against the usual practice of the government using its parliamentary majority to secure the election of its chosen candidate. Craughwell secured nomination from members of the technical group and Fianna Fáil.
On 12 September 2014, Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht wrote to John McNulty, a businessman who had run unsuccessfully for Donegal County Council in the 2014 local elections, offering him a place on the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA); on 15 September he accepted, and before nominations closed on 18 September Fine Gael nominated him for the by-election to fill the Seanad vacancy. Opposition politicians protested that McNulty's IMMA appointment was abusive and had been made solely to bolster his eligibility for the Cultural and Educational Panel; Humphreys took responsibility for the appointment and refused to state whether others had pressed her to make it. McNulty resigned from the IMMA board on 25 September, stating its rules prohibited board members from running for election. On 23 February 2016, in a televised debate before the 2016 general election, Enda Kenny appeared to concede for the first time that it was his decision to nominate McNulty to IMMA, later backtracking somewhat.
On 30 September, McNulty unofficially withdrew from the by-election, stating that "to contest the election would be an ongoing distraction from the critical work of Government"; although his name remained on the ballot paper he requested that electors not vote for him. Although many Fine Gael members voted for McNulty regardless, Craughwell won the election on 10 October 2014.