1925

Senate elections

It is somewhat curious commentary upon the forthcoming elections for the Free State Senate that one could scarcely move around the enclosure of Galway racecourse last week without having a senatorial election card thrust upon one.

The truth is that the great majority of the seventy-six candidates who are going forward for the nineteen vacancies to be filled by the votes of people on September 17 mean little more than a name to the electors. Many of them are practically unknown, most of them are the merest mediocrities.

Yet in order that nineteen senators may be selected from amongst them, a poor country struggling against an adverse trade balance must undergo all the expense of a national election in little more than a month’s time.

The Senators will get free travelling facilities and they will get more money proportionately than the Irish Part got for going to London and spending six months of the year there. Yet voices that were perpetually raised against the £400 a year (a considerable portion of which was contributed to the national fighting fund) are silent to-day.

The Senate ought really to be compromised of men capable of living without the salary and emoluments the position carries. Moreover, the Constitution lays it down that candidates nominated should have done some distinguished service for their country.

1950

Powering ahead

The remarkable manner in which the work of rural electrification has been accelerated is shown in the recently issued summary of the twenty-third annual report of the Electricity Supply Board covering the year up to the end of March last.

Within that year 13,668 consumers were connected up with the Board’s system compared with 9,262 in the previous year 2,203 in the year ending March 31st, 1948. Already there are over 25,000 consumers under the rural electrification scheme.

By the end of March last, £2,266,000 had been invested in local distribution networks under the scheme. The report points out that the revenue earned from the sale of 13,669,000 units in rural areas was £198,000 and it includes the comment that this revenue represents a very low return on the capital invested in local distribution.

That, of course, is something to be easily appreciated by everyone and possibly many years will pass before rural electrification can be justified on a purely financial plane.

Pictured: HIGH AND MIGHTY – Keeping an eye on High Street during Galway International Arts festival in July 1999.