SF campaigned for its abolition.
They never took their seats in Westminister just the money and they could have done the same with the Seanad if they really thought it as
"an affront to democracy"
But no lets get on the gravy train and smile for the cameras outside the Seanad as we go in to collect our money.
Sinn Féin: How could we as Republicans stand over the Seanad in its current form?
The party is calling for a Yes vote in the 4 October referendum as it launched its campaign today.
Sep 3rd 2013,
Pearse Doherty is leading Sinn Féin's Seanad abolition campaign along with senator David Cullinane .
Image: Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland
SINN FÉIN HAS today launched its campaign for a Yes vote in the forthcoming Seanad abolition referendum with the party’s own senators describing the second chamber as “elitist” and “undemocratic”.
Director of Elections Pearse Doherty said today that the “cronyism and elitism that are synonymous” with the upper house has “fostered the type of politics that has brought this State to its knees”.
The party is campaigning for the abolition of the Seanad despite having opposed the legislation which gave effect to the referendum during the summer.
Doherty said the party’s position has always been clear in that it wanted the future of the Seanad to go to the Constitutional Convention for consideration but that in the wake of the government’s decision to bypass this option it is supporting abolition given the straight choice before the electorate.
He dismissed any talk of Seanad reform saying “it is a false debate” and that opponents of abolition are “talking about a mythical chamber that does not exist”.
Doherty, the party’s finance spokesperson, was joined in launching the campaign today by two of Sinn Féin’s three senators, Kathryn Reilly and David Cullinane.
Both of them played down any suggestion of a contradiction in them supporting the scrapping of a house they speak and debate in.
“The Seanad represents a very blatant inequality at the very heart of our political system,” Reilly said while Cullinane said the upper house “in its current form should be abolished”.
He later said that “our participating in the Seanad is not the issue” saying that as Republicans the party was not going to “stand over that second chamber”.
