Sir, – I have just read a half-baked article by your guru Fintan O'Toole (Culture Shock, December 3rd) about the Seanad's temporary move to a lecture theatre in the National Museum. I don't propose to correct every little bit of tittle tattle but Mr O'Toole's statement that "one of the key institutions on which an Irish identity is founded is being disrupted for the convenience of an arm of the State so lacking in legitimacy that it was saved from abolition only by promises that it would be radically reformed" calls out for comment.
Apart from being insulting this is completely untrue. I am surprised that Mr O’Toole feels entitled to challenge the Constitution of Ireland so radically and so petulantly to dismiss the wishes of the Irish people, clearly expressed in the referendum.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny made it quite clear during the contest that he did not contemplate reform.
One of the difficulties with Seanad Éireann is that journalists like Mr O’Toole so rarely refer to it except in disparaging terms.
A week or two ago, within the space of about one week, the Senate among other things passed a complex motion on the Canadian Trade Agreement, thereby defeating the Government, and passed both the Corporate Manslaughter Bill and a Bill recognising Irish Sign Language for the first time. These matters were of great concern to the Irish people but they were carried neither in any newspaper nor [screened] on Oireachtas Report.
The arrogance displayed by Mr O’Toole in this affair suggests that the near-death experience of one of our great political institutions, namely Seanad Éireann, has taught him nothing. – Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS
Seanad Éireann.