ieExplains: How do you get elected to the Seanad?
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With the general election in the rear view mirror, attention within the political sphere will turn towards the 2025 Seanad election.
The upper house of the Oireachtas will not be filled until January 30, with voting taking 15 days between ballot papers being issued and votes being counted.
The Seanad is the second chamber of the Oireachtas, which is not directly elected by the general public like the Dáil. Its primary function is as a revising chamber for legislation, with bills requiring sign off there before they can go to the President to be signed into law.
It is not as powerful a chamber as the Dáil, with the Seanad only able to delay the passage of legislation rather than veto it outright.
The Seanad itself has a total of 60 seats, broken down into separate vocational panels, university constituencies, and taoiseach’s nominees. In total, 43 senators are on the vocational panels, six are elected through university constituencies and 11 are appointed directly by the sitting Taoiseach. A Seanad election must take place within 90 days of the dissolution of the Dáil.
These panels are essentially individual constituencies for the Seanad, but have a complicated system of voting with just TDs, local councillors and outgoing senators eligible to vote. It is the largest bloc of the Seanad’s seats and is dominated by political parties. These vocational panels were designed to be representative of interest groups, including organised labour, agriculture, education and culture as well as industry and administration.
The system of nomination is complicated, with candidates able to get onto the ballot by direct nomination by four members of the Oireachtas, or by an outside nominating body that is linked to a specific panel.
For example, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) is permitted to nominate candidates to the Labour Panel. Direct nomination by Oireachtas members is known as the ‘inside panel’, while nominating bodies are known as the ‘outside panel’.
Postal votes are used for all five of the panels, with ballots given to current councillors, TDs, and outgoing Seanad members. It is a PR-STV election, with each individual ballot counted as if it was 1,000 votes. This is due to the relatively small electorate and the potential impact that transfers have when candidates are elected or eliminated.
Each individual ballot is counted as 1,000 votes, due to the small electorate and potential impact that transfers have when candidates are either elected or eliminated.
There is a specific restriction, with a system in place to ensure that a minimum number of candidates come from each of the inside and outside panels. For example, the 11 seat Labour Panel must have a minimum of four senators elected from both the inside and outside panels.
There are currently two university constituencies, which have an electorate of graduates of specific higher education institutions. The National University of Ireland includes graduates from UCD, UCC, Galway, and Maynooth, while the University of Dublin is only for Trinity College graduates.
However, this will change in 2026, with the establishment of a single six-seat constituency that will allow anyone with a degree from a third-level institution to vote. This is formally introducing measures that were voted on in 1979, calling for the expansion of the Seanad voting franchise.
As part of the Seanad, the taoiseach of the day gets to appoint 11 senators. This is designed to give the government of the day more seats than opposition parties, to allow for legislation to be passed through the Seanad more easily.