THE Oireachtas (Miscellaneous Provisions) and Parliamentary Offices Bill passed all stages last night.

Introducing the Bill, the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, said politicians had for too long lacked the courage to take the message to the public "that there is a price to pay for parliamentary democracy."

He said: "We and our families pay - and pay willingly - that price in terms of time, toil, tedium and disruption, but there is also a price that the public must be asked to pay."

The Bill, and the Electoral Bill dealing with the funding of parties, indicated what the price would be. "We believe that, in the true sense, it represents value for the public's money.

The present Bill provided a new basis for funding parliamentary parties by increasing the totality of funds available to support their parliamentary activity. It proposed a tapered system of allowances with an in-built bias towards smaller parties. The allowances would be paid to the leader of the party in the Dail, not to individual deputies.

There would be an element of advantage for parties in opposition with a one-third discount for parties in government. For the first time the Bill would give recognition to the role of independents by providing for the payment to each non-party deputy of £10,000 for parliamentary activities.

Under the Bill the secretarial assistants of deputies would have their employment put on a statutory basis. The payment of overnight allowances to deputies would be allowed on "final sitting days" of the Dail to cover deputies who carried out additional work in Leinster House after Dail sittings finished.

The Bill provided for the replacement of the present "cumbersome and difficult" arrangements for payment of deputies' telephone allowances of 75 per cent of telephone bills subject to an upper limit of £2,000 a year. The limit for senators was £1,000. The new arrangement would provide for payment of an annual unvouched allowance to members based on current upper limits. Payments would be made quarterly.

Mr Quinn condemned media criticism of politicians. "The method of attack is not the sudden coup or the putsch; it is not the bomb or the bullet. It is the soundbite loaded with innuendo, the headline crafted with subliminal messages. The impact is corrosive, not sudden, but no less pernicious for that.

"The message being conveyed is that we in this House, who are elected by the people to represent them and legislate for them, are corrupt, on the take, in it for the money. It is rarely put so crudely, but the overall impact of acres of print over a period conveys that impression.

"All of us accept that we are fallible; all of us appreciate that we, like others, may be tempted but despite our political and ideological differences we resent and are justified in resenting attempts to tarnish us with the sins, or alleged sins, of the few."

Politicians' lives, both public and private, were nowadays subject to a scrutiny which their predecessors would not accept. "All we ask is that comment on our actions or putative transgressions be accurate or couched in a form to which we as individuals can respond rather than have vague allegations directed at us as a group.

Funding of political parties exclusively by supporters involved a risk. Parties with wealthy supporters could more easily garner resources than a party which strove to represent the weak and vulnerable. The ease for finding parties was strong, but the present Bill concerned only one element, the parliamentary party which had to fight its corner in the Dail or Seanad throughout the lifetime of each House.

The Fianna Fail spokesman on finance, Mr Charlie McCreevy, said the alienation of the electorate was contributed to by a number of people who commented on affairs of the House. Yet most of them know quite well the reality of the situation.

The concentration by people, and the media at large, on the financial affairs of members of the Oireachtas, and the allowances they received, was uniquely Irish. "I know of no other democracy in Europe where this kind of concentration has gone on for as long a period."

It was, Mr McCreevy said, "a unique form of Irish begrudgery", and what it was doing to the body politic had to be seen to be believed. People inside the House had also contributed to the begrudgery, believing that the best way to get elected was to denigrate themselves.

People called on their TDs in the middle of the night, not to mind in the middle of the day, including Christmas Day. "It must mean that we are too available to the electorate. And I suggest that we are too available to the media at large as well."

TDs were constantly harried and told by their betters in the journalistic world that they should not be doing all the things they were doing, and not be so available to the electorate. "And, perhaps, they are right. But if you don't do it, you will not be elected."

The PD spokesman on finance, Mr Michael McDowell said that every measure in the Bill was sensible and overdue. The formula devised left the PDs "no worse off but not substantially better off" than they were before. The new system gave some recognition to the notion that every party had overhead expenses and that these were proportionately greater for smaller parties "because you can not have half a fax or half a press officer".

It was time for the Oireachtas to stand up to the executive and demand its right for resources. They should not be beholden to an official in the Department of Finance to do work which the people had sent them into the House to do. There was too much of a tradition of Government Ministers being backed up by resources while Opposition parties had to rely on charity or enthusiasm.

Mr Jim Mitchell (FG, Dublin Central) criticised The Irish Times. He said that one of its staff had interpreted a consultant's report on TDs' pay as "greedy TDs looking for an increase of £10,300."

In a recent article, the same reporter accused the Taoiseach of "wrongdoing" relating to funding for Fine Gael received from Mr Ben Dunne. This was insidious reporting, and a misrepresentation of the facts, because the Taoiseach had not admitted "wrongdoing" and was not guilty of any. Bill passed all stages.