Inflated: Senator Terry Leyden, a highlighter of topics of grave importance to the nation

Last Wednesday, apropos of George Lee's declaration as a candidate in the Dublin South byelection, Senator Terry Leyden, a former junior minister who lost his Dáil seat 17 years ago and has not been returned since, declared: "It was biased reporting of the previous government that damaged this economy and this state."

Those who decry the Seanad as an expensive retirement home for failed politicians ought to wash their mouths out. But for it, we would still be under the delusion that Fianna Fáil's cosying up to builders and bankers had played no part in eroding both the economy and democracy.

When he was re-elected to the Seanad in 2007 with 57 first-preference votes, Leyden was asked by his local paper what he would say to those who espouse the abolition of the upper house of the Oireachtas. His defence was that the chamber is an essential forum for highlighting topics of grave importance to the nation. Our doughty democrat went on to prove his point in the Seanad last March when he raised the matter of two flat tyres his car had sustained and the dearth of services to re-inflate them anywhere between Dublin's south quays and Palmerstown. To his high-dudgeon demands that the Tánaiste come into the house and explain what the National Consumer Agency was doing about this scandalous neglect, his colleagues provided a giddy chorus of puffing and blowing.

Now that's democracy and money well spent.