Ireland is voting on a potentially money-saving proposal on Friday to abolish the upper house of the country’s parliament. 

The chamber in question has relatively weak power, says Austin Hughes, chief economist at KBC Bank. The amount of money that would be saved is quite limited — about 10-20 million euros a year — and Hughes says the savings would just cause a small dent in the country’s deficit. 

“In the context of a government deficit that this year is around 12 billion euros, arguments about 20 million euros seem very, very unimportant.”

Austin Hughes, chief economist at KBC Bank, joins Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio to discuss.