The president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, is to address the Seanad next week. Sen Fiach Mac Conghail welcomed the visit as “an excellent opportunity for the Seanad to engage with a senior politician from the European Parliament”.
However, Mac Conghail wondered how the house was getting on with arrangements “to engage directly with well-informed citizens”. He was keen, he said, to see “an appropriate leader of civil society in the house” before the summer recess. (Inappropriate leaders of civil society need not apply.)
There is still time. “July is a long month,” Mac Conghail said. “For the first time in 823 years it has five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. I look forward to seeing a member of civil society in the house before we rise for the summer.”
Sen Colm Burke, of Fine Gael, was also delighted at the news of Buzek’s visit: “I had the privilege of sitting beside him for two years in the European Parliament, where, as people may not be aware, we sit in alphabetical order.”
Between Mac Conghail and Burke the Seanad was a mine of information on Wednesday. But Fine Gael’s Tom Sheahan took the biscuit. “We have a pyromaniac in the Dáil,” declared the former TD for Kerry South, referring to Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin, “who stands up every second day and calls on the Government to burn the bondholders”.
Sheahan said that this course of action could ruin credit unions. His colleague, Sen Jim D’Arcy, of Louth, then added his own take on the bondholder question: “Following on from what Sen Tom Sheahan said, there was a postman in Haggardstown one Christmas who got fed up and burned his three sacks of mail. He thought that would solve his problems and he went to the pub, but it created more problems.”
Bet David McWilliams wished he’d thought of that.