The High Court’s Divisional Court has rejected a challenge by Tomás Heneghan to the electorates for Seanad vocational and university seats, finding that neither election system was invalid under the Constitution. It also refused a declaration that the relevant Irish law was inconsistent with the State’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Heneghan established no entitlement to any of the reliefs he sought.
The judgment, delivered on 17 November 2021, followed a plenary hearing. The proceedings had started as judicial review in December 2019 and were converted by consent into plenary proceedings in July 2020. The hearing took place remotely on 2 and 3 March 2021. The court listed the matter for 8 December 2021 to deal with outstanding matters; the judgment did not state what those matters were.
Heneghan, a University of Limerick graduate, argued that he should be entitled to vote in elections for both the vocational and university seats. Under the legislation then in force, the vocational-panel electorate consisted mainly of incoming Dáil members, outgoing senators and local-authority members. The university seats were elected by graduates of the National University of Ireland and the University of Dublin. Heneghan challenged his exclusion from both electorates under the Constitution and, for the university seats, the ECHR.
On the 43 vocational seats, the court held that indirect election can be democratic and that the Constitution does not require universal suffrage for the Seanad. It rejected arguments that public perceptions, the Seanad’s alleged lack of independence or the result of the 2013 referendum made the existing system unconstitutional. The court said the evidence did not establish the political assessments about the Seanad’s operation that Heneghan asked it to make.
For the six university seats, the court read Article 18.4 as expressly permitting three seats to be elected by NUI graduates and three by University of Dublin graduates. The 1979 constitutional amendment allowed the Oireachtas to provide for other higher-education institutions to elect seats in substitution, but the court held that “may” did not impose a legal duty to legislate. It also rejected the argument that the original provision was merely transitional or could be displaced by the Constitution’s general equality guarantee.
The ECHR claim was limited to the university seats. The court upheld the State’s threshold objection: the 2003 European Convention on Human Rights Act could not override the Constitution’s express provision for the NUI and University of Dublin electorates. It therefore did not consider the remainder of Heneghan’s Convention arguments.