I support the comments of colleagues about councillors' pay and conditions. I do not know whether other Senators agree with my view on the body politic, which is that as politicians - I do not necessarily mean here in the Seanad - we have kind of degraded ourselves over the years.

Hear, hear.

We have made populist moves to try to endear ourselves to a public that has no interest in many of the moves in question. For example, I do not think we should have done away with ministerial cars. We get no gratitude for that kind of thing. It produces a nexus. If we are going to degrade ourselves, how is the public supposed to feel about us? I do not think this is party political. It has gone on for years. We hear it in the way people speak about the Seanad and the Dáil. The Seanad is seen as a crèche or a retirement home. I think we need to have a good look at this as a profession.

Councillors are professionals and they need to be treated as such. I do not know of any other profession in which someone would proudly issue a press release announcing that he or she is not going to accept expenses to go to meetings. It is a joke. This is happening across the board. Soon it will go back to the way it was at the beginning, when privileged people were involved in politics.

Exactly.

They were the only people who could afford to be in politics because they were independently wealthy. Do we want that? No, we do not. There is a consultative process and a review going on at the moment. I would be very hopeful. As Senators, we have a unique nexus to councillors. Obviously, we rely on them for votes. We appreciate them. We have a connection to them.

I am in contact with certain councillors all the time. It is very important. I do not want to go over the points that others have made about pensions and other things that we all take for granted. It has been said in here 100 or perhaps 1,000 times that councillors are overworked and underpaid. Something has to be done about it.

I will hear what the Leader says when he responds, but I assume we have no choice other than to wait for the Minister to come back to us. I hope that as a former councillor and two-term Senator, the Minister will come back with a positive result for us. He needs to set out what is going to be done to improve things.

When I was on the last Seanad campaign, I came across a number of councillors who were wondering why they were bothering. It was not an idle threat. They were genuinely questioning why they were doing this. In light of the amount of abuse we get, never mind the pay and conditions aspect of things, can any of us honestly say we would be involved in politics and the lifestyle associated with it if we were not afflicted with a form of madness that means we are addicted to the process of trying to do good for people? I could go on all day about it. I support what others have said. I understand that an amendment to the Order of Business, as opposed to a motion, has been tabled to address this issue. I have no doubt that we are all on the same page with regard to it.