We all have a role to play in the way we debate the retention of the Seanad and its reform. There is probably not a single person in this room who does not agree that we need to reform the way we do business and the way we are elected. We all have an individual responsibility towards this. I have organised a debate on this issue which will take place next Wednesday at 6.30 p.m. in the European Parliament office. I have invited former politicians only on the grounds that they at least have experience and knowledge of how the Houses of the Oireachtas actually operate. Speakers will include Gemma Hussey and Mary O'Rourke, both former Leaders of this House and former Ministers, as well as a former leader of the Progressive Democrats and a former Minister, Des O'Malley. I am trying to allow an opportunity for these people who have real experience over many years and in many ways to give their forthright but mixed views on the value of the Seanad and the need for political reform.

I wish to address a question to the Leader. It was wonderful in Sligo and Leitrim this summer to see the area effectively turned into a film set with the last film being made by the renowned film-maker, Ken Loach, with many local people being involved in the way he makes films. He loves to invite local people who have no history of acting to be involved. It was wonderful to see that. The reason I am raising this matter is to thank him for choosing Ireland to make his last film. Many Members will know his film "The Wind that Shakes the Barley". It was wonderful that he saw in Leitrim a story that he thought was worth telling. I would like to have a debate on the value of the creative sector, particularly in the west. An initiative, the Creative Edge, is being operated by the Western Development Commission. Anybody who has a interest in creative businesses in the west has two days remaining to apply for a talent voucher worth €2,000 to assist them with their business. This is an initiative of which some creative businesses may still not be aware. It is a cross-Border initiative and it is being run in conjunction with Finland and Sweden. Given that it has a cross-Border element, it is being run in a peripheral region and has an international dimension, I ask the Leader to arrange for a debate on the value of the creative industries in the west and in the Ireland as a whole. It would be a valuable exercise as there are many unexploited opportunities.

I still feel a little like a tourist when I am in the corridors of Government and Parliament and still take an outsider's perspective and have a sense of wonder at some of the opportunities it gives somebody who has a different day job. I had an interesting experience last week. I got to address a meeting held by the London Irish Lawyers Association and the National University of Ireland Graduates Association of the UK in the Liberal Club in Whitehall in London and it was a very interesting experience. The topic of the debate was the abolition of the Seanad. There were about 80 folks present in the audience, most of whom, I suspect, in our quasi-democractic Seanad electoral system currently have votes and all of whom will lose their votes if the abolition of the Seanad goes through.

I debated against a Government Deputy, a Fine Gael Deputy, who honestly admitted on the floor during the debate that the €20 million figure was absurd.

Will he be sacked?

I do not know if he will be sacked but he admitted that it was an absurd figure. The vote for those who might be interested in such things went 75 to nil against abolition. I am sorry that we cannot have the referendum among the Irish Diaspora. They were very taken by the point that this was the only forum in which members of the Irish Diaspora, who had been forced through circumstances not of their own choice in many cases to emigrate, had some little say in the halls of Parliament.

Let me make one or two brief points as I am troubled by these matters. I would like the Leader to use the offices of his parliamentary party to ask the Taoiseach and the director and co-director of the referendum campaign, Deputies Bruton and Doherty, to retract formally something which at least one of them admitted was fundamentally inaccurate, namely, the €20 million makey-up figure which is now emblazoned on tens of thousands of posters around the country. Not only is it inaccurate but it contains within it an incredible bit of subversion of democracy. They admit that the direct costs are about €6 million and part of the makey-up costs are the costs of processing citizens' questions. Will citizens stop asking questions of the Government, the Civil Service and the bureaucracy if Seanad Éireann ceases to exist? Is it a good thing that an avenue for people to ask questions of those who should be answerable and accountable to them will disappear? I am not so sure that it is.

I also ask that the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, clarify something he has said three times, once in an Oireachtas committee, once on RTE and once to me personally, namely, that the money that will be saved - it probably is a pretty neat fit for the €6 million figure, not the €20 million figure - is not going to be spent taking children off waiting lists for Crumlin hospital or on employing extra special needs assistants, but will be redeployed within the Leinster House bureaucracy to fund the activities of the new committees.

Parenthetically, instead of the imperfect quasi-democracy that gives us our Senators, these committees will consist of a cohort of people who are entirely appointed by the Taoiseach. This is the same Taoiseach whose bona fides for appointing experts to committees are evident from the fact that he ejected the Dáil's only senior banking and financial consultant, Deputy Mathews, from a committee on which the Deputy's expertise might have been relevant because he disagreed with the Taoiseach on abortion. The Taoiseach also kicked the only Member who had conducted doctoral studies of food safety and food science off the health committee which has primary responsibility for food safety because he had disagreed with him on whether the Roscommon emergency department should be kept open. It is important that we get clarity from the Leader's party which has paid for referendum posters that contain a big fat inaccuracy.

In passing, I wish to comment on our colleagues from Sinn Féin who are not present today. They have criticised the Seanad as being elitist.

They are never here.

Some will comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of Fine Gael - perhaps we should call them Shinne Gael, now that they are working together on the abolition campaign - to comment on anyone's elitism.

The Senator's time has concluded.

For a group of people who would not acknowledge the legitimacy of Dáil elections from the 3rd to the 27th Dáil, who believed that the Government of Ireland was Mr. Tom Maguire, the last survivor of the 2nd Dáil who was sitting in a retirement home in Mayo, or seven guys in a shebeen in Belfast called the army council, and who thought that everyone else in the country who had voted in 31 Dáil elections was wrong to accuse others in this Chamber of elitism is a little rich.