ELECTION fever is upon us.

Commence the quintennial carnival of the banal as, at every turn, the elect look down upon me. I see these smug mugs on the posters and I think, 'why not me?'

The Dail is out. Too much like hard work. But a stint in the Seanad would be a great gig, wouldn't it? You get 112,000 to turn up two days a week. I wouldn't have to give up my day job as business editor of a Sunday newspaper. My job could even be made easier. As an editor and columnist, I have to wear an extra layer to ward off the chilling effect of Ireland's tailormade-for-vestedinterests defamation law. If I forget myself, there are lawyers to remind me.

Expensive lawyers.

The new Defamation and Privacy bills, backed by the active collusion of the newspaper industry in adding restrictions to speech, are not likely to improve things.

In Ireland, courage in the service of the public is no virtue; timorous mediocrity is no vice. Unless you're a member of the Club of 226.

In the Seanad, I would be, with TDs, among the just 226 people in the Republic who cannot be sued for defamation . . . for the things said in the Oireachtas. These 226 champions of the public good, saintly servants all, clearly make the most they can with the privilege of free speech. Yet I flatter myself to think we could do better.

I promise to introduce the We're All in It Together Act of 2007. No more lawyerproof free speech in the Oireachtas until the rest of the population has the same.

No salary increases until a proportional improvement of median household income has been proven and certified by the CSO. Close the Dail bar until every child in Ireland has a laptop and broadband. A TD and Senator pension scheme and health insurance cover no more generous than that now available to members of the lowest quintile of Irish households not currently in prison. And the only place that Oireachtas members shall be allowed to receive medical care at state expense . . . including paid for by salary from the state . . . is the lowest-ranked A&E ward in the state. (None of these provisions shall have effect until I leave office. ) With my populist credentials in place, I'm sure I'd be a hit. But how would I get elected? I didn't attend Trinity or the NUI . . . that rules out six seats . . . but that just puts me in the same boat as graduates of DCU, Limerick or a future university in the southeast, not to mention the majority of Irish people who didn't get a baccalaureate in basket-weaving.

The remaining seats notionally represent organised labour, culturecrats, bureaucrats, fisheries, agriculture (farmers clearly having been chronically short of political power in this state . . . why am I sleepdeprived by Daylight Savings again? ), banking and commerce. An aside: if this seems daft, like it's designed to get the most powerful interests in the state colluding in backroom deals rather than representatives of the people competing for power in a checks-and-balances system, that's because it's designed to be precisely that, its origin being in the same 1930s Catholic social theories that so impressed Mussolini, crossed with the House of Lords. So the "vocational panels" seats seem out. There are 11 Senators appointed by the Taoiseach, but Bertie hasn't returned my calls.

Then there is the minor requirement that I be a citizen.

So to the future environment minister Trevor Sargent, may I humbly propose you get the new taoiseach to add me to his list of appointees. The justice department will have to grant me citizenship first, of course. When in the Seanad, I will speak for the 10% of our population who, according to the census data released last Thursday, currently have no voice in national politics.

After this election, it's possible that there will be more foreign-born local councillors who make up the Seanad electorate, which may suggest candidates for six Seanad seats set aside for my fellow New Irish as a first step towards its reform or abolition.

Does this sound crazy?

Not half as ridiculous as the higgledy-piggledy system we have now.

So vote for . . . or rather appoint . . . me.