The pigtroughery of Irish politicians hidden in transparency backwoods

When Paul Gogarty (who? former Green Party TD who brought the bawling baby to that news conference) stood up in the Dail in December 2009 – pictured here in full voice – and uttered those peculiar words “with all due respect, in the most unparliamentary language, fuck you Deputy Stagg. Fuck you”, it was a revelation that the expletive was not one of those words banned in the chamber. Nor is the interjection “Hey!” which was immediately used by the lease Ceann Comhairle (equivalent to Speaker or chairman in other parliaments) as in “Hey! Excuse me, Deputy Gogarty, that is most unparliamentary language”. Nor indeed is the word “screwed” which Deputy Gogarty used a moment later when he said “the point is, we are screwed as a country because of the wrongdoing of others” None of these words apparently appear on an 83-page Dail document called “Salient Rulings of the Chair” – I say “apparently” because the document is not available online or indeed in hardcopy to the public, but somehow TDs are expected to know about its contents. It does reportedly forbid the use of the following words when addressing fellow TDs : “brat”, “buffoon”, “chancer”, “communist”, “corner boy”, “coward”, “fascist”, “fatty”, “gurrier”, “guttersnipe”, “handbagging”, “hypocrite”, “rat”, “scumbag”, “scurrilous speaker” or “yahoo” The refusal of the Oireachtas to make public this document is a small yet curious indicator of the secrecy which still surrounds our very expensive national parliament.

Of more interest than parliamentary protocol though, is the cost of the place. During the week, we learned that Independent TDs received €42,000 per year on top of their €92,000 basic salary. Remember that €42,000 per year would pay the household charge for 420 households which typically have 2.7 people each inIreland and given the 20% exemption rate for ghost estates and those in receipt of mortgage supplement, €42,000 would pay the household charge for well over 1,000 people.

In addition they get paid a so-called Parliamentary Standard Allowance of up to €27,000 per annum (unvouched, meaning TDs can claim the allowance without submitting receipts) and in the past when vouched expenses, which seem to average about €4-5,000 per month, have been disclosed they have included training courses and even college degree course.. It is not exactly clear how much TDs’ pension benefits are worth and how much it would cost to buy them in the private sector. It is not clear how expenses for constituency offices and assistants are handled and we certainly know very little about friends and relatives employed by TDs, We also learned during the week that TDs were able to send 200,000 2011 Christmas cards from the Dail using cards custom-printed at a cost of €10,000 plus probably over €100,000 for envelopes and postage. Ah sure what mammy wouldn’t appreciate receiving a Christmas card showing how well their nearest and dearest were doing having bagged the life of an Irish TD. This was a relatively small sum, but I recall that in the expenses scandal in our neighbour’s parliament, it was the can of dog food and Mars bar that was claimed on expenses that incited as much outrage as  the plasma TVs and home improvements.

But the gravy train doesn’t stop there. Once a year we get a listing of the Register of Members Interests. This shows the headings under which other income is earned by the TD, though not the amount. So we learn for 2010 that “other income” included that for speaking engagements, property rental, accountancy, farming, auctioneering, architectural services, legal services, directorships of commercial companies, funeral services, insurance and financial services, newspaper column-writing, plant hire, road haulage, hardware stores, pubs and bars. Ned O’Keeffe declared occupational income from “growing grass” but that was probably in a livestock agricultural context. Where do they get the time you might ask, isn’t the job of public representative demanding enough? And on top of that, those on leave of absence from public sector jobs may not receive “remuneration” from their original role, but they do receive pension entitlements, and some TDs even get ministerial pensions and severances. But three things about the Republic’s register of interests – one, it doesn’t show the amount of income earned outside the Dail, two, it doesn’t show hospitality though it is supposed to show travel facilities and gifts and three, it is produced once a year three months after the year end. In Northern Ireland, a similar register is updated almost monthly and contrast the information given in Northern Ireland with that in the transparency backwoods of the Republic – income details, hospitality and even family members benefiting from their position.

Of course in Northern Ireland they also give details of pension arrangements for its Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). Anyone care to guess what someone in the private sector would pay in the Republic to get a pension package similar to a TD’s? And in the North, they also show you what each MLA is costing you.

During the week, the TD Sean Fleming referred to senators’ allowances as “the best kept secret in a long number of years”. For a country with an ample presence of political journalists, you might ask why this is so. Indeed you might ask why there isn’t reporting of TDs’ other income, pension benefits, expenses, hiring of relatives and other allowances. Or is it because our journalists have for the most part changed careers and become stenographers?

For a country in receipt of a colossal IMF/EU bailout and for which many decisions need comply with a bailout Memorandum of Understanding, a small neutral conventionally-powered country with one TD per 30,000 people, a country with 14% unemployment, debt:GDPN rising to 120%, these salaries and allowances and perks look obscene. There was an open letter on here last week to the British prime minister which was tongue-in-cheek and was intended to highlight the country’s subordination by our neighbour who is bailing us out, to highlight some very high salaries in the higher echelons of the law enforcement/judicial/legislative sectors with poor laws on the ground and an abundance of law-breaking. It was also intended to highlight commercial distortions in our economy which has yet to be allowed naturally adjust to the economic collapse. So the letter was tongue-in-cheek, but I wonder is it time for having well-placed questions asked in our neighbour’s parliament about the pigtroughery in this country which is massively insolvent and which faces a vista of a further three years of ever more constricting austerity? After all, not all British MPs were supportive of bailing out any EuroZone country.

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