I refer to the communication I mentioned to the Cathaoirleach yesterday. It is addressed "To the Governors and the subject people of the island of Ireland". Sirs, it is nigh three hundred years since my last epistle. I then had lifted my pen to warn the people of the calamity about to befall the nation from the imposition of a debased currency on the citizenry to their grave disadvantage and peril. I little thought that the employment of a goose's quill would again become necessary after such an interval. It has of late come under my observation that a new punishment has been devised upon the population to their infinite despair and misery by our imperial rulers - to wit, the wanton destruction of 3,000 million of their bank notes- a nice amount and by act of providence as if in warning an exact image of that sum recently diverted from their purse by the Government's proposed budget. Mr. Woods produced at least a currency, though of negligible value. He did not attempt, as is now proposed, to turn real money into a phantasm, a task one had thought only to be engaged in by the academicians of the flying island of Laputa.

It might be thought by some ignorant persons that this matter does not touch the ordering of business but surely it is indeed a central point for this august Chamber, namely, the ordering of the business and the welfare, not just of the Parliament but of the land itself. It is a right universally acknowledged to be expedient, both as a moral necessity and a physical practicality, that those about to be subject to the operation of the thumbscrew and the rack be present on the occasion of their degradation. We, it seems, are to be deprived even of this. I am brought to mind of old Mr. Aesop and his fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper.

In the current case, a reversal of the fable is encountered for it is manifest that the Grasshopper, acting in infamy, hath commenced to devour ourselves, the Ants. We see in our land a dereliction of buildings and businesses and an impoverishment of the citizenry-----

Senator Norris, are you getting to the point?

I am. The question is coming and is addressed to the Cathaoirleach. I refer to an impoverishment of the citizenry, the establishment of soup kitchens for the destitute, eviction of those in arrears of debt, rack-renting for those with the temerity to improve their properties and the recreation of the memories of hedge schools for our children.

And all this to pay for the Grasshopper's party, to which but a select and unrepresentative group was invited at the first instance. It is now proposed to reimburse the Grasshopper by charging to the great mass of the uninvited and the disenfranchised the expense of his frolickings. The grasshopper clique, it transpires, has issued the providers of the entertainment with promissory notes, which we the humble citizenry are presently to be enforced to discharge. Nor is there to be an end to the affront, as with a nonchalance unparalleled since the epoch of the Emperor Nero, the Grasshopper intends-----

A question for the Deputy Leader.

----- to render the real money bled from the plain people useless by destruction; this to be done in the course of a further extravagance taking the form of a pyrotechnic display during which the furnaces of the Central Bank will be employed to the withering of our substance.

Is it not appropriate that though not invited, and indeed not even cognisant of the original party, the people of Ireland should at the minimum be present as witnesses to the prime cause of their distress? I therefore respectfully request information concerning the day and the hour of this obscenity and that this information be made public to that people so that in their hordes they may attend, and by their silent witness reprove our masters. Signed, J.S. Drapier of Dublin this day, the 12th day of the 12th month in the year of Our Lord, 2012.

Hear, hear.

Could Senator Norris repeat that?

Yes.

That was completely out of order.

Perhaps you could shed some light, a Chathaoirligh, on what Senator Norris graced us with. Perhaps for the first time I am totally at a loss. Normally, Senator Norris is erudite-----

History is repeating itself.