A Green Party TD has described the salaries and benefits that deputies enjoy as a "urination" on the less well-off in society who are facing further cuts in the Estimates. Marie O'Halloran reports.
Mr Paul Gogarty, a Dublin Mid-West TD called on the Minister for Finance to freeze TDs' pay and asked who was monitoring deputies and their Dáil attendance.
"Dublin TDs are paid more than €61 for turning up. Who is watching? Who says a TD is turning up? One can just walk in and walk out without anybody knowing," said Mr Gogarty.
"Unless we tighten up our procedures within this House and are seen to be setting an example, this urination on the less well-off in our society will cause long-term damage."
One of the youngest TDs in the Dáil, Mr Gogarty last year called for deputies to forgo their 4 per cent pay rise which brought their salaries to €71,813. "I was castigated about the subsidies in this House," he said last night during the Estimates debate.
The "most vulnerable in our society have been hit once again in this Estimates and will no doubt be hit again when the Budget comes out, for example those who suffer from coeliac disease."
It required special food which was very expensive. "A person on social welfare who finds the dietary allowance is being phased out will be hit hard. It will not hit TDs, who will shortly be receiving another pay increase," he said and called for a TDs' pay freeze.
His Fianna Fáil constituency colleague Mr John Curran said, however, that many members of the House "have given up other employment to be here. I have spoken to several who have taken cuts in their salaries. They are not double-jobbing. They do not have a second source of income."
The Minister of State for Finance, Mr Tom Parlon said "we do not all have multimillion euro portfolios either".
Mr Curran said: "They are married people with commitments to mortgages and so on. There are real constraints on people's lifestyles based on when they arrived here. It is unreasonable to say otherwise. Deputy Gogarty should try it himself and report back at next year's Estimates."
Earlier the Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, had achieved a six-year-old objective in the Estimates, through stopping the rent allowance to lone parents. During the 1997 election campaign she said she would stop the allowance but Mr Ahern as Fianna Fáil leader, "disabused her of that notion", but now the "PDs have got their way".
However, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Ms Coughlan said that for every €3 spent by the Government €1 would go to social welfare recipients.
Some €58 million in social welfare benefits will be cut but the Minister said that for the most part "these measures will not affect existing claimants but will apply to new claimants from various dates in 2004".