Irish cabinet expenses scandal

[athlonedub]

This was in relation to the fact that neither Lenny nor anyone in his department are aware that O'Rourke has opted to not receive (one of) her pension(s).

This is her ministerial one if I judge correctly from previous coverage.

Is she \ others in receipt of other Oireachtas pensions while sitting in the Dail? (Just the use of the plural had me interested)

[ang]

Why don't we send all our td's, senators, councillors, etc. etc. on a nice little fact finding trip to Zimbabwe for example. Then refuse to let them all back in on the grounds that they are the biggest SECURITY THREAT TO THE NATIONAL ECONOMY THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER FACED. I for one am sick of the whole lot of them. The local td's in my area claimed 50k+ for travel subsistence etc. for 2007. This ofcourse excludes their wages, tax free allowances and secretarial wages. I'm also sick of councillors getting 6k a pop for attending confrences etc. People I speak to don't honestly seem to be aware that they get these sort of expenses for something like 96 days a year. It's a National disgrace. Just because it's legal doesn't make it fair. Would be interesting to see if any other country could afford to take them when we refuse to take them back. We just can't afford them and if the media are not going to start highlighting these things then they need to go with them too. I'm quite sure we could get much better people to run this country in a fair and sustainable manner. In fact I would say at this stage the local primary school could do a better job.