This afternoon I attended a meeting at Kilmainham of the National Economic and Social Forum, of which I am a member, where there was a report on the most recent plenary session held at the end of January, the theme of which was the national anti-poverty strategy. Over 300 people attended and the main point of consensus that arose among a very disparate group – from those representing the elderly to the hard of hearing to mentally and physically handicapped people – was a sense of disconnection from the centre of power, despite the architecture put in place, both from the perspective of locally elected representatives who meet voters daily, to national legislators who hold clinics on a variety of levels, to all of the social partnership structures put in place. In spite of this many in society feel disconnected and do not vote, because of which democracy is the poorer.