Hypocritical of the media to support Seanad

The campaign of media and academia to reject the abolish-the-Seanad recommendation replicates the hypocrisy and stupidity of the bankrupting of the country during the Celtic Tiger.

Many of the former leading lights in government and the media opposed last week’s effort to streamline democracy — the Seanad is for hangers-on. The cynicism of those who made or supported the policies that bankrupted the country is breathtaking.

They decry austerity but advocate the retention of the expensive talking-shop Seanad.

Accusing them of hypocrisy is an understatement.

Many in academia, who sang dumb when the country was being bankrupted, advocate ‘reforming’ the Seanad by empowering it, at a time of gridlock in the US, as a consequence of a powerful senate.

To call that stupidity is being kind to those who profess to be more intelligent than the rest of us.

The behaviour of those in the media and in academia, in cheerleading the rejection of political reform, epitomises exactly their behaviour during the Celtic Tiger era.

Then, they either supported the decisions which bankrupted the country or they kept their heads down.

In either case, their behaviour is indefensible.

A. Leavy

Sutton

Dublin 13