The Seanad resumes - A rest room for has-beens and wannabes

IT IS possible that you missed the fact that the Seanad resumed its deliberations yesterday. Do not feel alarmed.

There have been many ardent and articulate advocates for the “upper house” but none have refuted the charge that it is redundant, undemocratic and an anachronism of the most indulgent and impotent kind.

You will hear phrases like “counter balance” and “another viewpoint” but do not be confused.

They are no more than vainglorious arguments used to sustain the rest home for failed politicians, first-time greenhorns on job placement training for the real thing or others far too tender to try their luck in the coarse melee of a general election.

Many of the senators are in a kind of political deep freeze, put there by a political leader hoping they might be of some sort of use if they can effect a Lazarus-like rejuvenation at the next general election.

Others, with their chests stuck out like a little wren on top of a five-bar gate, revel in the grandeur of it all. More, in that particular pathos of the law library or college common room, patronise us as if we were errant little children desperately in need of correction.

The reality is that it is a joke, one that brings discredit on our already overpopulated political process and it is well past the time to close it down.