Sir – Eamon Delaney (September 9th) attacks Eamon Ryan and the Green Party for their suggestions on Seanad reform (Opinion, September 5th), calling them “woolly and dangerous”. Mr Ryan and his party can speak for themselves. But for Mr Delaney and his “One House” group to attack reform proposals because they will not preserve the “integrity” of our legislature, is truly risible.
The Government and the organisation for which Mr Delaney speaks, have themselves set out to smash the integrity of our legislature, based on nothing more than an urgent need by Enda Kenny in 2009 to keep his job as party leader and (according to reports at the weekend) a throwaway suggestion from a former Goldman Sachs banker. Hardly a good basis on which to trust them with the most fundamental rearranging of our constitutional safeguards since 1937. – Yours, etc,
HUGH TREACY,
Democracy Matters,
Creagh, Gorey,
Co Wexford.
A chara, – I notice that, on some of the Fine Gael referendum posters, we are urged to vote Yes so that there will be “fewer politicians”. The original idea of the Seanad as I understand it was that there would be few, if any, politicians in the Seanad. It was to be composed of people with no particular political axe to grind but representatives of the arts, education, sciences, etc, who would cast a cold eye on proposed legislation free of the constraints of political party obligations.
What the Seanad needs is reformation not abolition so that policies cease to be political footballs and the electorate have access to wider intellectual considerations and interpretations on important issues. – Is mise,
MAIRIN de BURCA,
Upper Fairview Avenue,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – William Butler Yeats, probably Ireland's most distinguished Senator ever, would have felt prophetically horrified by the argument that the Senate should be abolished to save €20 million per annum. Allowing for inflation, that line of accounting is fully in keeping with Yeats's verse in September 1913:
“What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the ha’pence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone; For men were born to pray and save?, Romantic Ireland is dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” – Yours, etc,
MAURICE BIGGAR,
Fairwood,
Tinahely,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Seamus McKenna (September 6th) describes the Senate as neither republican nor democratic, fossilised, both assuredly and happily redundant, having absolutely no power and decidedly unrepresentative. The idea of it having any positive value for the State or its people he therefore finds laughable. Then he goes on to eulogise “the impressive commentators of our relatively unfettered press”, which he deems “valuable as an organ of the State”.
Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha . . .! – Yours, etc,
FRANK FARRELL,
Lakelands Close,
Stillorgan, Co Dublin.
Sir, – Now, when thousands of our citizens will soon be told they must get rid of the second car, get a smaller house and, maybe, even cut down their food intake from three to two meals a day, we certainly do not require a second houseful of politicians. The Seanad retainers are offering the classic Irish solution to an Irish problem. If the first house isn’t working, we need a second one, they say. Whereas we all know, the proper answer is to fix the first one.
They talk of the need to have a bicameral political set-up. But what they are really looking for is a tricameral government. Conveniently, they forget that we already elect MEPs to a third chamber in Europe where a lot of the governance now occurs and will, increasingly, in the future.
Throughout the country, with despair, we see the closing down of rows of shops. This is no time for retaining talking shops. – Yours, etc,
LIAM MURRAY,
Kelston,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.