Seanad elections - So much for the promises of reform

ALMOST three years ago the Government asked a simple enough question: Do you want to abolish the Seanad or leave it as it is?

The option of remaking the institution, or the Upper House as some of its semi-fossilised grandees insist, was not offered.

In hindsight that refusal to propose remaking the Seanad was honest as the idea of institutional reform or the commitment to it, was and remains entirely illusory.