Take a gentleman who has already had 20 years in the Senate with all the pay and perks that involves . . . anyone willing to do the sum? . . . and now seeks another term. He was previously sponsored by Fianna Fail but now, it seems, is sponsored by his pals. Mr Don Lydon. "Don who?" Kevin Rafter wrote in this paper not long ago, assuming that most readers had never heard of this senator . . . no more than they've ever heard of most senators. But I didn't say 'Don who?' because as far as I know this is the man who, back during the 'pro-life' extravaganzas, took an exceptionally highminded and holy line on the matter of women and abortion.

Kevin Rafter's piece touched on problems Senator Lydon had with an internal Fianna Fail inquiry into money its councillors received from property developers. This senator, when a councillor, was active in rezoning.

He voted, for example, for the rezoning of lands owned by Chris Jones and coincidentally, as it were, Jones gave him �7,000. The senator forgot this, and therefore didn't tell the party inquiry about it.

His commitment when it comes to instructing women to carry every pregnancy to term is in striking contrast to his insouciant attitude to donations from developers. Lots of councillors proffered the same kind of excuses to the Flood/Mahon tribunal as he did about monies they took. But his tone was unique. At one point he said that "he saw nothing the slightest bit wrong in accepting the money. He said he needed itf" When asked another time by Judge Mahon if he thought there may be an issue of "perception" about these payments, he replied that the "reality was different to the perception, " and added: "Mr Jones was a very kind and generous man who gave money at different times to various councillors." He also said that "Mr Jones was a Fianna Fail supporter who might have given him the money even if he had not supported the rezoning, because he is such a beautiful man."

Other than these memorable remarks, I cannot recall a single statement of Mr Lydon's in all the years my taxes have been keeping him in office. His service in our second legislative chamber doesn't seem to have made much difference to anything . . . including, by the way, attitudes to abortion. The same is true of nearly all the senators of course, but they didn't show up as silky ironists at a tribunal.

And senators don't come cheap. A minister of state costs about half-a-million a year to run, but that is a job where the incumbent works very, very hard on substantive issues.

And yet we pay Don Lydon and his peers, to give an example . . . in his case for 20 years . . . a constituency telephone allowance of no less than 4,761 a year for one phone. Which can be, of course, their home phone.

The basic take-home senatorial pay, for someone who's been around as long as Senator Lydon has, is 71,013, plus an office and an allowance for secretarial assistance, and mileage at 1.16 a kilometre and an overnight allowance of 139.67, though I don't know whether you qualifiy for that if you come in from Stillorgan. And free parking at Leinster House.

Don Lydon is, according to his entry in Wikipedia, "a Knight of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and of Malta and in 1987 was awarded the Order of Malta Cross of Merit, pro merito milenstii and in the same year the Bronze Medal of the Irish Association of the Order of Malta.

"He is a Knight Grand Cross of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and has been a member of the Council of the Irish Lieutenancy of the Order since 1993.

"He is a Knight Commander with Star of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of Pope St Gregory the Great and is President of the Association of Papal Orders in Ireland. He is a Knight Commander with Star of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Francis I and served as Vice Delegate and Chancellor of the British and Irish Delegation of the two dynastic orders.

"He is a Knight commander of the Order of Merit (Republic of Poland), Knight of the Order of St Maurice and Lazarus and a Grand Officer of the Order of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem."

It's not every day, let me remark in passing, that one comes across such a rollcall of woman-excluding institutions. But the point is: up to his ears in Catholic carry-on like that, Don Lydon can hardly be motivated by desire for the humble title 'Senator'.

So I'm driven to the conclusion that he wants to stay in the Senate because he likes and values what he does in the Senate, even if no ordinary person has a clue what that is.

Because he's not interested in the money.

Little things like money don't bother him.

He told the Mahon enquiry, when questions were asked about his forgetting large donations from developers that he "just floated through life, and did not remember these things."