The failure to address the 1972 referendum is quite symbolic of the overall attitude though – It seems to me that the Seanad is only seen as a safe pasture that can tide over those unlucky enough to falter in their Dail career or who have put in enough time with the political establishment to warrant some sort of reward rather than fulfilling the role of a second house with an alternatively distributed franchise and (hopefully) mandate.

I’d prefer to see a much more radical overhaul – take the Education and vocational panels of the Seanad and lump them together add in a generic “other” panel that anyone who does not qualify for one of the existing panels can get to vote in. Set some fairly basic criteria for being allowed to vote on a panel:
Education: Any graduate of a body funded through the HEA.
Labour: Any member of a registered Trade Union
Business & Commercial: Any director\owner of any business.
Agriculture: Anyone in the farming business.
Cultural: Anyone in a recognised cultural,artistic, sporting organisation.
Administrative: Anyone in the public sector or a registered charity\NGO.
Everybody: Any registered voter.
Voters get to pick where the emphasis of their second house vote goes and if they aren’t lucky enough to be part of one of the limited vocational panels they still get a vote for the Everyone panel.

And, as you say, run the elections in line with the Dail elections. I’ve major concerns about the senators nominated by the Taoiseach but I think there is still merit there, and I do have some sympathy to the general concept that it should be hard for the Seanad to have a majority contrary to that of the Dail.