Can anyone tell me what a basic salary and expenses of our TD's, Ministers and Council representives is:
In cork south east at moment there is a county council and urban council seat to be filled due to Sean Sherlocks election result. There is a bit of an arguement at present within labour who will take the county council seat as I assume there is a lot more money in it than the urban seat.
:
You may find thisuseful.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
TDs get approximately 90,000
Ministers get a "bonus" of approximately 120,000 on top so 210,000
Bertie Ahern last time I read his salary (bout a yr ago) was 252,000
And then obviously significant expenses on top.
Also if your interested, an MEP gets the exact same salary as a TD, but their expenses etc are worked out differently.
Thanks for all your help
Ahem - details available on ratemytd...Originally Posted by johnfás
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
That site must not be accurate, because it has Ahern earning less than 200,000 a year. Independent last year put him at 252,000.Ahem - details available on ratemytd...
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...ist-97017.html
[quote=johnfás]That site must not be accurate, because it has Ahern earning less than 200,000 a year. Independent last year put him at 252,000.Ahem - details available on ratemytd...
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...ist-97017.html[/quote:1qdlj40k]
It has him at €258,730:
Salary, Taoiseach €162,170
Salary, TD €96,560
Total Salary from all political positions €258,730
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
T.D's are paid the same salary as a senior civil servant, a Principal Officer I think. This saves them the political embarassement of having to vote themselves pay increases from time to time. Obviously every time civil servants get an increase in pay, so do T.D's. It follows that published figures for salaries are quickly out of date.
There's an excellent episode of Yes Minister explaining how this works
Ireland has 166 members (TDs) in the lower parliament chamber Dáil Éireann who represent some 4.2 million people. With one TD for every 25,000 persons, the people are over-represented in parliament, and their representatives are, by international comparison, overpaid as national legislators.
However, following the latest census of population, Ireland may even get more.
Joseph O'Malley, Ex-Political Correspondent of the Sunday Independent recently wrote that IreIand has far more TDs than Britain has MPs: four times as many in proportional terms. The TD in Leinster House is now better paid than his or her counterpart at Westminster. The TD also enjoys superior pension benefits, and for a much lower pension contribution: 6 per cent of a TD's salary, while the MP pays 10 per cent.
O'Malley says that for the TD, the transformation from being underpaid to being overpaid represents a remarkable turnaround in a short time. The TDs, however, are not complaining. Within a decade, few sectors of society have done better in pay terms than the political class at Leinster House.
In 1997, the Westminster member was paid a quarter more than the TD, who then earned €44,067. Nine years later the TD/MP pay gap has not just been closed, it has been reversed. Today, the Dáil deputy earns €96,650 and the MP earns 11 per cent less, at €87,132.
O'Malley writes: Few can seriously dispute that the TD has less onerous national responsibilities than his British counterpart. The Dail sits less often than the Commons, and parliamentary life is much less demanding in Leinster House than at Westminster. Never mind that Britain's population is 15 times larger. And its economy is 11 times the size of the Irish economy. The TD represents fewer people in a much smaller country. Nevertheless, Dail deputies are now paid more than MPs to do a less challenging job.
The key to the current high salary status of TDs has been the conjunction of some remarkable series of developments on the pay front.
First, in 1999 the Buckley pay review awarded TDs a special pay increase of some 18 per cent. Buckley also recommended that Dáil deputies' pay should be linked to that of a principal officer in the civil service. Second, in 2002 the benchmarking review recommended a 12 per cent pay rise for principal officers. And because TDs were linked to principal officers, they also benefited from that award. Since 1997, the 30 per cent from the special pay awards, when added to the normal partnership pay rises, has meant that the pay of Dail deputies has more than doubled. It is up 119 per cent, or twice as rapidly as the average industrial wage.
Stephen Collins in The Irish Times reported last July that politicians received their fourth pay rise in a year at the beginning of June, bringing the basic salary of a TD to €96,560 before special allowances and expenses are taken into account.
For the Taoiseach and his Ministers, it was the sixth pay rise over the past 12 months. Mr Ahern's salary is now €258,730 a year, including his TD's salary, while the Tánaiste earns €222,256 and other members of the Cabinet get €204,020.
Each Government minister has got 2 benchmarking awards, even though everyone knows that the system has been an absolute scam.
A comparable country to Ireland, such as New Zealand, which is similar in population size (4.1m) and economic scale and performance to Ireland, manages with 121 MPs, one chamber, and no upper house compared with our Oireachtas of 216 members.
Indeed in 1999, in a non-binding referendum, the New Zealand people voted to reduce the number of MPs to 99: some 84 per cent voted in favour. Even more remarkable: the Kiwi MP is paid just €56,730, under two thirds the Irish rate.
Joseph O'Malley in The Sunday Independent, says that a contribution of only 6 per cent of salary entitles TDs to a full pension after just 20 years, based on half their final salary, and with a lump sum payment of one and a half times that salary. But what the TD pays for his pension bears no relation to the real economic cost of providing his retirement benefits. The taxpayer pays that extra, unquantified, cost.
In a damning indictment of the current wide gap between many of the governed and their legislators, O'Malley writes: Many private sector companies are closing their defined benefit (final salary) schemes to new entrants, while others raise contributions to close the funding deficit, which the law passed by the Oireachtas requires. Remarkably, however, little echo of this great debate on pensions can be heard in the national parliament.
To cap it all, part-time local councillors are seeking public occupational pensions even though most private sector workers beyond the foreign-owned sector and large Irish-owned companies, such as banks and public companies, have none!!
The Sunday Independent has reported that thirteen Government ministers have benefited from tax breaks, averaging almost €5,000 each on second homes in the capital, just weeks after the Taoiseach's brother Noel Ahern, said property speculators should be "taxed out of existence".
The break designed exclusively for members of the Government, allows ministers to claim relief on second homes and for overnight accommodation in Dublin. Latest figures reveal that 13 ministers availed of the perk, claiming €63,477 between them.
The "dual abode allowance" allows rural TDs to claim up to 100 per cent mortgage relief, and they can claim back the stamp duty on their city homes.
Ministers who qualify can write off much of their mortgage repayments on second homes against tax, and are allowed to cash in on the Dublin property boom tax free.
The latest figures on the ministerial tax breaks come just weeks after Noel Ahern, the junior housing minister, called for a tax to put property speculators out of business.
The Revenue Commissioners refused to name the ministers and junior ministers who availed of the scheme in 2004, citing "confidentiality".
More than half of the 23 senior and junior ministers who represent constituencies outside of Dublin have applied for the breaks.
And finally on one of many legislative perks...an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General's office has found that a pint costs as little as €3.70 in the Dáil visitors' bar, more than 50 cent cheaper than elsewhere in Dublin.
The audit has also reportedly raised concerns about the slow rate at which TDs pay off their bar tabs and the falling profit margins at the four bars and restaurants in Leinster House.
Do more pay and perks increase the likelihood of a better standard of public representatives?
No!
Clientism and Gombeenism
When Dáil Éireann was established, its members were called Teachtaí Dála, which means messenger and the concentration on providing perceived favours for constituents has been dominant to this day. The system has been reinforced by the proportional representation system in multi-seat constituencies.
At the top of the pile, are the Taoiseach and Tánaiste who between them, have 16 full-time constituency individuals on the public payroll, scouring newspapers to identify constituents for letters of condolence on a death of a relative and doing a pale imitation of a citizens' bureau by forwarding queries on such issues as planning to public agencies, which everyone in the know knows that it's a sham exercise but it produces an acknowledgement letter that can usefully be forwarded on to the constituent.
It's an industry in itself and Bertie Ahern is reported to have 30,000 letters issued from his constituency office annually.
The Irish Times has reported that Ministers are entitled to have between five and six full-time constituency staff working on their constituency business. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste are entitled to a number of extra staff on top of this figure.
These normally include two staff who are political appointees, and who are usually based in the Minister's constituency. They are employed for the duration of the Minister's term in office and include a personal assistant, who is paid about €56,000, and who normally accepts and makes representations on behalf of the Minister. A constituency secretary, earning about €40,000, is also usually employed in the constituency office. In addition, a number of full-time departmental staff are assigned to constituency work in the Minister's private office. They are mostly at the clerical officer grade.
Various expenses relating to the operation of the constituency office of a Minister are also paid for by the department, including overtime and travel.
According to figures supplied in parliamentary questions last week, the 15 Cabinet members employed 84 staff between them for constituency work.
The highest number of staff, nine in total, were in Mr Ahern's office at an annual cost of €290,000. Tánaiste Michael McDowell has seven staff in his constituency office, while the remaining Ministers employ between four and six staff each on constituency matters.
The total cost of the constituency staff for the Cabinet is about €2.7 million. The 17 Ministers of State employ 145 constituency staff between them, at a cost of €2.4 million. Most junior ministers employ a personal assistant, a secretarial assistant, and between one and two clerical staff, who are full-time civil servants.
The newspaper says that resources that TDs have for constituency work have also increased significantly in recent years. Many TDs now employ both a secretarial assistant and a parliamentary assistant, paid for by the Oireachtas. Many TDs have chosen to locate these staff in their constituency office to work mainly on constituency issues.
Such TDs do not see themselves as national legislators.
TDs pay has risen 120% since 1997 compared with a 60% rise in the average industrial wage. Politicians get 50% of salary as a pension after 20 years while most private sector workers have no occupational pensions.
The Sunday Independent says in respect of 2006 expenses, topping the list was Fianna Fail Tipperary South Deputy Noel Davern, with €85,998.41 for the year; followed closely by two Fine Gael TDs Dinny McGinley (Donegal North West), who claimed €85,961.91, and John Deasy (Waterford), who took home €85,954.66.
Davern has uttered fewer than 300 words, the equivalent of 90 seconds’ speech, in the Dáil since 2002, according to a study carried out by The Sunday Times.
Some 18 Dublin-based members of the Dail claimed more than €20,000 in travel expenses, easily eclipsing many of their country counterparts.
The highest claimant in Dublin was former Fianna Fail TD Jim Glennon, who claimed €38,139 (20% above the average industrial wage) in travel allowances during the 12-month period, meaning he earned more than many of his country colleagues.
He said: "I have the highest because I live the furthest from the Dail of the Dublin TDs [Glennon lives in Skerries]. Some of that amount comes from expenses left over from last year.
"To counter that, I have amounted a high deficit of almost €16,000 on rent for my constituency office and almost €10,000 on my phone, which I have to look at covering myself."
One of those topping the Dublin list is FF's Charlie O'Connor, who, according to the released figures, received €28,602 for travel and subsistence expenses over the 12-month period.
All Dublin TDs receive €8,227 in a constituency travel allowance and miscellaneous expense allowances, and all claimed additional travel expenses and subsistence during the year, including for trips abroad.
Some of those taking home tidy sums in expenses include members of FG's front bench as well as the leader of the Green Party Trevor Sargent who took home €20,900 despite living in Balbriggan - basically a payment for getting into one's place of work whether via train or bicycle.
Believe those who search for truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it -André Gide (1869-1951) Nobel Laureate 1947
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