Shut the Seanad and put health of the nation first

Last week in Clonmel Hospital 20 people lay on trolleys in the corridors while 60 members of the Seanad are paid to be on holidays.

The proposed referendum on the abolition of the Seanad as promised in the programme for Government is being constantly deferred. The Labour senators, including our own local senator, are fighting to retain the Seanad. The Seanad consists mostly of politicians who failed to get elected to the Dáil, and 43 are elected by TDs and councillors and senators, and 11 Government nominees and four university representatives. It costs approx. €50m a year to keep those people in highly paid positions while our health service is falling to pieces.

We bailed out the banks, paid the bond holders and suffered the cuts. Households have been sucked dry and our young people have been forced to emigrate. Businesses have gone belly-up. Our helping hand to the less fortunate and the sick is being pulled back all the time. Families have been broken up, towns and villages left drab and empty. Parents lie awake at night worried about their jobs and how the mortgage will be paid. Yet we have gone with the flow, happy to get the pat on the head from the troika.