A high-profile former attorney general has said abolishing the Seanad would create a “new entrenched elite” in the Dáil and criticised Enda Kenny for avoiding a TV debate.

The Government suffered its first embarrassing defeat in the Seanad last night as Labour senators failed to turn up for a vote on proposed changes to upward-only rents.

It is outrageous that, as people up and down the country prepare to cast their votes in tomorrow’s referenda on abolishing the Seanad and establishing a court of appeal, the electorate is in the dark on why Taoiseach Enda Kenny wants to get rid of the Upper House.

‘WE will radically overhaul the way Irish politics and government work. The failures of the political system over the past decade were a key contributor to the financial crisis and the system must now learn those lessons urgently. Government is too centralised and unaccountable.” — Programme for Government 2011.

THE celebrated 19th-century commentator on the British constitution, Walter Bagehot, reached a negative verdict on bicameralism: “with a perfect lower house it is certain that an upper house would be scarcely of any value”.

WHETHER Enda Kenny succeeds in tipping the Seanad into the dustbin of political history or not, Ireland will remain one of the most centralised democracies in the Western world.

Can we trust them? That is the question that voters need to ask themselves as they consider their vote in the Seanad referendum.

HOW will the brave new world look? If the opinion polls are correct, the Seanad will be voted out of existence on Friday.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has promised if the Irish people vote to abolish one half of the Houses of the Oireachtas this coming Friday, the “radical” Dáil reforms he has initiated will more than make up for the future lack of debate following the “Silence of the Seanad”.

The failure of Taoiseach Enda Kenny to appear on tonight’s Prime Time Seanad abolition debate has resulted in a war of words between political parties with Fine Gael accusing RTÉ of “trying to artificially manufacture a leaders’ debate.”

IT LOOKS as if as many as nine out of 10 Irish people are considering voting this Friday in the Seanad abolition referendum. Just one in 10 say they are definitely not going to vote, according to the latest national opinion polls, while a clear two to one majority support abolition.