It’s in the national interest to scrap the Presidency

THE Presidential election is a costly distraction for our State now in receivership and with a daily escalating fiscal problem, massive unemployment and major social problems created by the failures of Dáil Eireann to govern in the national interest.

The office of President is constitutional ornamental nonsense that any peace commissioner down in Ballydehob or Tagoat or Tang could do in between filling potholes on our roads, or saving turf in the local bogs in Galway, Roscommon and Mayo.

The excessive aggression of some interviewers towards those Presidential candidates, who uphold national and Christian values, leaves serious questions about balance and fair play to be dealt with in the aftermath of this election. The opportunities to a President, no matter how innovative, to achieve even minimum change, or directly or indirectly create anything of material significance in the everyday lives of the people of the State, are nil. The most positive thing in the national interest the successful candidate can do if allowed, is campaign for the immediate abolition of the post and its trappings. If the president of the USA can also be chief executive of government of the most powerful nation in the world, so can Enda Kenny fill the dual role of Taoiseach and President of a state of four million people, without any pay increase.