Abolishing the Dáil and Seanad would save €100 million, which was the cost of about two days of social welfare payments, Fine Gael Senator Colm Burke said.

“At the moment, we are paying around €400 million a week in social welfare payments,’’ he said. “It is important we put the service that Oireachtas members provide, and the work they do, in perspective.’’

Mr Burke said it was easy to be critical, “but we are very slow to take credit where work is done, and a lot of good work is done by all members of the Oireachtas, of all parties and none’’.

Independent Senator David Norris said they should be realistic.

“We get a comparatively modest income in this House and any expenses are vouched,’’ he said. “I think the public should be satisfied with this.’’

Mr Norris said there should be an end to “this period of sackcloth and ashes for politicians’’. He added that Senators worked hard and took a reduction in income to serve the people.

“I am puzzled by the attitude in some political quarters of flaying ourselves as politicians,’’ he said.

Labour Senator John Gilroy said as public representatives they had a responsibility to explain their positions on different policy issues, particularly those which were controversial or could do with further explanation in the public domain.

Social media offered an opportunity to do that, he said. “It offers a huge number of positives for public representatives, but I am afraid it also offers one or two negatives.”

Meanwhile, Independent Senator John Crown called for a fresh debate on hospital waiting lists, which he called “the long-running wound in the healthcare system’’. It’s been an annual “ongoing disaster’’, he said, since his return to Ireland 22 years ago.