The two main political parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the ones to blame for turning the Presidential election into the drab farce it now is. They have patronised the office and patronised President Higgins by offering their backing of him instead of invoking the right of their parliamentarians to select a candidate of their own to legitimately and democratically challenge him in the polls.

They have demeaned the office of President by not bothering their heads to do so. If it was to save money for the bigger ticket events, then why not go the whole hog and just scrap the position altogether?

And Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil county councillors who had to endure hours of inane prattling by preening egotists and nobodies seeking nominations over the past few weeks deserved every last minute of that hardship. That is because they sat back and allowed Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin shy away from contesting the election.

It’s all about the cost and better keep the coffers under lock and key until next year instead. In other words, in terms of priority, the Presidency sits behind TDs, county councillors and MEPs in terms of importance. On many fronts in terms of legislative powers and relevance, that is probably about right. So is it time to look at the role of the President?

Debate

And what are the candidates going to debate in the run up to election day seeing as we are told that the President has damn all powers to do anything? Instead, it will be another dirty personal mudslinging contest as it was in 1990, 1997 and 2011. We won’t have to worry about it for another seven years, but in the meantime there needs to be an overhaul of the nomination process. Yes, it is fair to say that in any democracy all citizens are as entitled to run for office as each other.

But surely there is a better way than having Bunty Twuntington McFluff as a potential candidate. Of course we know that it was a joke, a bit of satire and not for real. However, Mrs McFluff did us all a service in achieving what she set out to achieve – which was to shine a light on the farcical process of seeking a nomination to run for the so-called highest office in the land.

We sit here sniggering and take the high moral ground wondering how the United States of America manages to find some of the turkeys running for the White House

Two of the last three presidents did not come directly from parliament to land the job of President. Yet the two Marys were arguably our two finest Presidents. So it is certainly not the prize of politicians only.

That said, it must be killing some of the better-known wannabes in both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that they have been effectively banned from seeking a nomination while looking on at the shenanigans of the past few weeks.

That is two Presidential contests in a row where Fine Gael in particular has made a dogs dinner of contesting the position – not that they ever seemed to make much of an effort in elections previous to that either.

The two Marys were arguably our two finest Presidents. So it is certainly not the prize of politicians only

And yet we sit here sniggering and take the high moral ground wondering how the United States of America manages to find some of the turkeys running for the White House.

Vote pattern

Northern Ireland secretary of state Karen Bradley recently admitted, amazingly, that it was news to her that nationalists vote nationalist and unionist vote unionist there. And 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement little has changed.

Even with Brexit, northerners took direction from their political masters when it came to the way they voted. Unionists in the main voted to leave. Nationalists voted to remain despite the exceptional circumstances of Brexit for everybody living there, regardless of religion.