The following pompous/patronising statement was delivered by Senator David Norris in May 2011 during the first session of the current Senate.
It is our responsibility by reason of our privileged position not to encourage the notion that we are a special class. Politicians are merely ordinary people who have taken on an extra burden of responsibility on behalf of the wider community. We should not see ourselves or behave as if we were an elite.
On the same occasion Senator Norris pompously compared the parochial, elitist club that is Seanad Eireann with the Roman Republic and its senate.
As if there was even the remotest link between the greatness of ancient Rome and the activities of a crowd of gombeen bog trotters labouring under the delusion that they live in an accountable democracy.