Seanad’s future - Abolition an admission of failure

At a moment when the capacity of politics to deliver, lead or even describe the kind of social change and economic rejuvenation we urgently need is in question, the future of an institution as detached and as apparently irrelevant as the Seanad may seem unimportant but, as anyone who does not live in an active, participatory democracy will confirm, it is not.

At a moment when politicians’ venalities provoke a far greater stir than their achievements it is difficult to generate the interest needed to defend a hard-won arm of our democracy, especially as it has become comatose, sidelined and utterly unrepresentative of Ireland 2013.

That all political parties have, once in power, demeaned the Seanad, making it a holding pen for Dáil deputies whose ambition still outweighs the electorate’s appetite for their talents, makes it even more difficult to provoke the kind of passion that was needed to establish these entities in the first place.