Seanad abolition is far from reform

Whatever the merits of the Government’s prospectus for procedural reform of the Dáil, assuming it were fully implemented as promised, any of the individual measures could be dropped or changed in future, and many of them are clearly experimental.

They are a poor substitute for an institutional safeguard that is constitutionally entrenched and that can only be abolished by the people, which is Seanad Eireann.

Longer sitting hours are only meaningful, where in principle all deputies are required to be present. If only a handful of deputies need be present, and the rest only need be around from mid-afternoon on Tuesday to mid-morning or early afternoon on Thursday, that is no real change to the existing pattern, which gives priority to constituency work over the parliamentary role.