A vocational panel (Irish: rolla gairm bheatha[1]) is any of five lists of candidates from which are elected a total of 43 of the 60[n 1] senators in Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of Ireland.
Each panel corresponds to a grouping of "interests and services" (professions or vocations) of which candidates are required to have "knowledge and practical experience".
From each panel, between five and eleven senators are elected indirectly, by Oireachtas members and local councillors, using the single transferable vote.
Some bodies are very small — the minimum annual subscription of €317.43[n 4] has not increased since 1947 — and "it is even alleged that some ... exist for no other purpose than to make Seanad nominations".
[9] Bodies refused registration can appeal to a board comprising the Ceann Comhairle and Cathaoirleach (Dáil and Seanad speakers), their deputies, and a senior judge.
[10] In October 2018 separate meetings elected rival officer boards to the Irish Greyhound Owners and Breeders' Federation, a nominating body on the Agricultural Panel.
[13] Parties generally try to distribute their most popular candidates across both panels to avoid falling foul of the minimum-elected-per-subpanel rules.
[citation needed] There is no statutory definition of what constitutes a sufficient degree of "knowledge and practical experience" of an interest or service to be eligible for nomination to the relevant panel.
[19] The question is decided by the clerk of the Seanad, but may be referred by him, or appealed by the candidate, to a judge of the High Court appointed as "judicial referee".
[19] Before the 1969 Seanad election, outgoing Labour-Panel senators John Ormonde and Séamus Dolan sought a pre-emptive High Court declaration that they were qualified, being members of a union (the INTO) affiliated to the ICTU.
[23] Sinnott rejected a suggestion that she chose the Labour Panel because its returning 11 rather than 7 senators increased her chances of winning.
The IMMA nomination was seen as an attempt to bolster McNulty's tenuous qualifications, and the ensuing controversy impelled him to withdraw his candidacy.
[39] The processing of nominations and the posting out, receiving back, and counting of ballot papers requires close to the constitutional maximum of 90 days to complete.
[48][17][49] In 1980 Roy C. Geary described as "ludicrous" the fact that the Royal Irish Academy routinely nominated its president for the time being onto the outside panel, despite knowing he would receive few votes, sometimes none at all.
[51] In the 2007 election from the Cultural and Educational Panel, because of the minimum-seats-per-subpanel rule, Fine Gael's Terence Slowey was eliminated despite having more votes than Ann Ormonde of Fianna Fáil; the Irish Independent commented on the "arcane rules" and Fine Gael's "poor planning and failure to anticipate the strategy of the opposition".
[57] John Counihan in 1942 tried unsuccessfully to organise a meeting of Agricultural Panel senators, which Basil Chubb noted as a unique event.
Prior to this, only a handful of independent vocational senators were elected under the 1947 act, the most recent being Seán Brosnahan of the INTO on the Labour Panel in 1973.
[59] The vocational aspect of the Seanad's constitution was a reflection of the influence of corporatism on Catholic social teaching of the 1930s, as outlined in the encyclical Quadragesimo anno.
[61] Article 45 and 56 of the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State had made provision for delegating power to "Functional or Vocational Councils representing branches of the social and economic life of the Nation", which was never utilised.
[66] Martin O'Donoghue argues that senators before the 1947 act often showed a genuine vocational orientation, but this was undermined by the corruption allegations.
[73] The Local Government Reform Act 2014 changed the number of councillors on each city and county council, to be somewhat more aligned with each area's population.
Those in the former group typically suggest abolishing the vocational aspect of the Seanad as ineffectual and based on outdated political thinking.