The president glides through her duties with considerable grace and style and no little empathy.

(Unless you're a journalist, of course, in which case the smile of welcome becomes a rictus grin of contempt and impatience). The Senate members, meanwhile, huff and puff to be heard over the deafening silence of public apathy. McAleese is a household name; many Fianna Fail senators could barely claim that even in their own households.

Last week, however, both President McAleese and the Fianna Fail senators united to shame the country they purport to love. And they all did so in slavish service to commerce, economics and money-making. By dint of her very public role, the importance of her job and the symbolism of her office, President McAleese's behaviour was the more outlandish. But that of the Fianna Fail senators is worth noting too, for the way in which it exposed how Irish politics has mostly become an unprincipled, knee-jerk supporter of business interests, wherever and whatever they happen to be.

What happened was this:

before Christmas, independent senators suggested that a Seanad committee be set up to investigate claims that US planes were transporting prisoners through Shannon to be tortured elsewhere.

Fianna Fail's Mary O'Rourke who, to her credit, shared the concerns of the independents, set up a provisional committee. The other members were John Minihan of the PDs, Paul Bradford of Fine Gael, Labour's Brendan Ryan and David Norris, the independent senator. Before it could get its inquiries underway, a motion had to be passed in the Senate.

Last week, however, Fianna Fail senators told O'Rourke that if such a motion was moved, they would vote against it. They were worried, the Irish Times reported, that "the creation of a Seanad inquiry would be seen as an unfriendly act by the United States, and possibly threaten the military's increasingly important use of Shannon International Airport". As a result of this opposition, O'Rourke was forced to drop her proposal to establish the committee.

What craven, cowardly, ridiculous people they are.

What servile, pathetic behaviour. The Upper House of our parliament, as it is ironically called, is now prevented from discussing and investigating one of the most important issues of the last 12 months because members of the laughingly styled Republican Party are afraid that the US government will get cross with us. The Senate is often referred to as a mere talking shop. Now the Fianna Fail senators have outlawed talk as well, leaving only a shop in which debate and argument have been sold out. If ever there was an argument for abolishing the Senate, those highly-paid senators made it last week.

Nothing better can be expected from them, I suppose, something which cannot be said of Mary McAleese. In years to come, her decision to travel to Saudi Arabia and kow-tow with one of the world's most evil regimes will be seen as perhaps the worst of her presidency. That she agreed to speak at a conference where Saudi women were forced to sit out of public view behind a perspex screen defies belief. That she then compounded that decision by purporting to condemn the publication of the Mohammad cartoons on behalf of the entire country was astonishing.

What was she thinking?

Has she reached the levels of delusion suffered by Eamon de Valera who, if he wished to know what the people of Ireland thought, believed that it was enough to look into his own heart?

President McAleese does not speak for Ireland or the Irish people on the cartoon issue, but that obvious point fades into irrelevance set against the question of what she was doing in Saudi Arabia in the first place.

Although she defended her visit in breezily unconcerned terms, following sharp criticism from the Labour Party, the fact remains that she sat down with leaders who oversee one of the most oppressive Muslim regimes in the world and reserved her sharpest criticisms for European newspapers who had published some cartoons.

She appears to believe that engaging with these people will force them to embrace the kind of western freedoms she supports despite evidence from South Africa two decades ago that if you want to dismantle an apartheid regime, you avoid it, isolate it and ignore it.

But these are different times. Just as the Fianna Fail senators refused last week to do their democratic duty lest Shannon airport sell fewer bottles of Jameson to American soldiers, there was, as Tuesday's Irish Times reported, a big economic reason for McAleese's Saudi visit.

"The return of Irish chilled beef exports to Saudi Arabia appeared a little closer yesterday when President McAleese, Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland combined in a charm offensive, " wrote Kathy Sheridan, one of the female reporters on the trip who had to wear a veil and abaya (a neck-toankle robe) in the hot Jeddah sun. She went on to report a breakfast attended by 40 Irish companies and what were described as some of Saudi's top decision-makers.

Sheridan's report was interesting because it picked up on talk at the breakfast about the collapse of the market for Danish dairy products since the cartoon controversy and about the opportunities for Irish companies to fill the vacuum.

Looked at in that light, the president's decision to announce that Ireland abhorred the cartoons takes on a slightly sinister hue, as though she had been manipulated by business interests to tell her hosts what they wanted to hear about the controversy in a bid to secure a bigger market for Irish products. It's the kind of behaviour you'd expect from Fianna Fail senators.

But Mary McAleese is better than that.