A plague on both our houses

WHETHER Enda Kenny succeeds in tipping the Seanad into the dustbin of political history or not, Ireland will remain one of the most centralised democracies in the Western world.

To call the Taoiseach’s attempt to pour the upper house down the drain a power grab is inaccurate as the Seanad has been deliberately starved of any real power by successive administrations.

It would be more fitting to see it as a crude attempt to solidify the dominance of the executive expressed via a docile Dáil.