It’s high time the upper house came tumbling down

DO you feel stimulated? It has been an electric week in politics.

Bang! Enda Kenny is to abolish that thing you don’t care about: the Seanad. Pow! Brendan Howlin has unveiled his package of “stimulus” which, even he admitted, in a slightly embarrassed voice, was “modest”.

Whack! The Government gets frisky, fresh blood with the addition of new junior minister, Tom ‘Who?’ Hayes, who excelled himself by falling flat on his face twice on his first day.

Sadly, Mr Kenny has not thought through Seanad abolition, particularly what will happen to these exotic creatures when they are turfed out of their €18m-a-year gilded cage and forced to return to life in the ‘real world’.

Prepare for bewildered, pompous types haranguing you at bus stops and demanding: “Don’t you know who I am?” — to which the only response would be: “Nope, and I never did, even when I was paying you €60 grand a year to do Seanad-all.”

Perhaps a more fitting analogy for our august second chamber would be: that Leinster House, old people’s day-room re-imagined through the prism of Fawlty Towers.

The elevation of people you have never heard of to a chamber that doesn’t do anything has always been one of the more peculiar quirks of Irish public life.

The Seanad is a rest home for loser TDs, a refuge for the befuddled, an incubator for the politically immature who have an eye on the Dáil playground, and a nice little earner for those who have served the Taoiseach well in the past.

Sometimes, a Cabinet minister, or, very occasionally, Mr Kenny, will bother to trundle down the ornate corridor from the Dáil chamber to the former Earl of Kildare’s ballroom to talk (down) to the senators in their natural habitat.

It is like the moment the happy trolley suddenly brings the retirement home to some sort of life, and a murmur of expectancy shuffles through the place as senators bask in the self-deluded glory of being the centrepiece of democracy.

They believe their own hype that they are the last of the Jedi, saving the old Republic from the would-be tyranny of Darth Vader’s ever-encroaching Dáil Empire.

Cabinet members, glorying in the self-worth of being elected by normal people rather than by the shadowy machinations of a bunch of county councillors and the agricultural panel (whatever that is), tend to shout at the senators in the ballroom like they were auld ones: “Oooo, it’s a bit nippy/warm outside isn’t it, dear?

“Yes, I’m the Taoiseach, No, really, I am! I’ve come to talk to you.”

“Yes, then, you can have your nap before Home & Away comes on. You like Home & Away, don’t you, dear? Yes, it’s one of your favourites...”

But the geriatric Jedi believe the force is with them and are determined not to go down without a fight. I know this, for I was there, in the ‘ballroom of irrelevance’, at the opening session of the 24th Seanad, in May, 2011, when Senator David ‘Chuck’ Norris unleashed his awesome rhetorical firepower and declared: “Like an army, the Seanad should be reorganised, drilled and disciplined, with us keeping ourselves honed in mind and body for the coming conflict.”

Blimey!

The Joycean scholar rallied the upper chamber to fight for its life, as he temporarily took the speaker’s chair on the first day of the new term.

Some hailed his call to arms as “presidential” — and it was clear that if he ever stood for president of the Oireachtas Amateur Dramatics Society, ‘Chuck’ would sweep all before him.

But ‘Chuck’ was clearly too much for the senators, for, after sitting for less than two and a half hours that first day, they took a week off to recover.

And that is the problem with the Seanad: all talk, no action.

Though, it must be said, Senator Norris again did his best to bring the upper house into our consciousness, last year, when he decided to give senators his review of TV3 tack-fest, Tallafornia — and Enda claims the Seanad does not speak for the people?

Showing the high-brow nature of the Seanad at its best, ‘Chuck’ breathlessly informed fellow senators about the “compulsive and repulsive” show.

“The last episode was obnoxious. There was simulated sexual activity, leading, apparently, to full sexual activity. I am not entirely familiar on a habitual basis, even in my neck of the woods, with the language used.”

And what neck of the wood would they be? Oh, yes, the upper house, where there were allegations, during the late-night emergency session to liquidise Anglo, that the most extreme four-letter word — no, not ‘work’ — was heard uttered on the floor of the chamber by a less linguistically gifted senator than the ever-delightful Mr Norris.

But, at least, Mr Kenny is actually keeping a manifesto pledge in trying to shaft the Seanad.

Shame it is not the promise about standing up to the banks, or creating 100,000 jobs, but, at least, it is something.

But some people might question the timing.

As the Seanad will run until the next general election, if it is abolished or not — and there is no guarantee voters will sign Mr Kenny’s death warrant for it — why not just hold the referendum on polling day 2016?

Oh, that’s right, because the Budget has been forced back to mid-October by our Eurozone overlords, this year, so all those endless hours on the airwaves, arguing over a political irrelevance like the Seanad, in the lead-up to the vote in early October, will soak up huge amounts of time that should be devoted to a discussion about the economic direction of this Government, and the fact that austerity has failed.

Instead of 100,000 jobs, Mr Howlin’s modest stimulus package will give us a couple of thousand temporary ones.

But, at least, new Junior Agriculture Minister, Mr Hayes, shows he has what it takes to join the top ranks — being slapped down twice on his first day for announcing government policies that had not yet been agreed. That level of on-the-ballness should see him go far in the coalition.

But the Seanad remains the focal point for deliberate distraction in the coming months, but, at least, abolition would be a minor victory for commonsense in a political wilderness of the obtuse.

Senators have never been good for Ireland. Not the ones in the US Congress, exposing our rather dodgy corporate tax deals, nor the ones at home, who are, just, well, rather dodgy.