Jurisdiction Ireland Members 60 Leas-Chathaoirleach Paul Coghlan | Meeting place Leinster House Cathaoirleach Denis O'Donovan Leader of the
Seanad Jerry Buttimer | |
This is a list of the members of the 25th Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (legislature) of Ireland. These Senators were elected in April 2016 when postal voting closed. The Taoiseach's nominees were selected in May 2016. The Seanad election takes place after the 2016 general election for the Dáil Éireann.
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Electoral system
There are 60 seats in the Seanad: 43 Senators are elected by the Vocational Panels, 6 elected by the two University constituencies, and 11 are nominated by the Taoiseach. Three seats are elected by graduates of the National University of Ireland and three seats are elected by graduates and scholars of the University of Dublin (Trinity College).
Article 18.8 of the Constitution requires that an election for Seanad Éireann must take place not later than 90 days after a dissolution of the Dáil. On 9 February, Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government Alan Kelly signed the orders for the Seanad Election.
Nominations for the 43 Vocational Panel Seats closed at noon on 21 March 2016 and the full list of panel nominees was published in Iris Oifigiúil on 1 April 2016. Polls for these two university constituencies closed at 11.00 a.m. on Tuesday 26 April 2016.
Forty-three Vocational Panel seats in the Seanad are filled by an electorate of public representatives, comprising the incoming 32nd Dáil, the outgoing 24the Seanad, and members of city and county councils, each of whom has one vote in each of the five panels. The total electorate was 1,155. Polling closed at 11 a.m. on Monday 25 April 2016, with the count beginning immediately afterwards. A total of 1,124 of the electorate voted. Each panel is subdivided into an Oireachtas ("inside") subpanel and Nominating Bodies ("outside") subpanel, and a portion of seats must be filled from each subpanel; John Dolan was elected despite having fewer votes than Tom Sheahan and Thomas Welby when they were eliminated, because they were on the inside panel and all remaining seats were reserved for the outside panel.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny nominated 11 seantors on 27 May 2016.
The 25th Seanad first met at Leinster House on 8 June 2016 when Denis O'Donovan was elected as the new Cathaoirleach of the Seanad.
The Government of the 32nd Dáil is a minority government of Fine Gael and several independent TDs, supported by Fianna Fáil. However, Fine Gael do not hold a majority in the Seanad: even if all 19 Fine Gael Senators vote in favour of a motion, and all 14 Fianna Fáil Senators abstain, four more votes from independent or opposition Senators are required to pass a motion. There have thus been several very close votes. This is unusual, as the Taoiseach-nominated Senators usually give the Government an easy majority.
Composition of the 25th Seanad
There are two technical groups in the 25th Seanad: