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POLITICIANS WHO DO not pay their bar tab will soon have their unpaid debts automatically deducted from their salary.
All TDs and senators have received a letter from the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission outlining a new credit policy for use of the Dáil bar and restaurant.
The letter states that as of the 23 April, politicians will not be able to make any purchases “on credit” without having returned their direct debit form.
It outlines that any debt incurred by TDs or senators will be deducted from their salary at the end of the month.
The change in policy comes after it emerged last year that unpaid Dáil bar and restaurant bills were being written off, with some tabs dating back many years.
A recent Houses of the Oireachtas Commission report disclosed that almost €5,500 in unpaid Dáil bar and restaurant tabs was written off.
There are two bars in Leinster House – one that is open to visitors and one that is only for use by TDs and senators.
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There are also a member’s restaurant in Leinster House, which members of the both Houses can dine in, and where visitors can be invited. There is also a cafeteria, which is open to all. Food is also available in the bars.
“There is a separation between the role of the Oireachtas and the role of the government and I don’t want to be accused of interfering in the role of the Oireachtas. It is absolutely my view that members and former members pay their bills and I would encourage the Oireachtas Commission to look at mechanisms of deducting that money from people’s salaries or pensions,” he said.
At the time, the Taoiseach indicated that it would be more difficult to get the money from TDs and senators who are no longer in office.
“I imagine it is possible to deduct it from people’s salaries, it probably isn’t possible to deduct it from people’s pensions for reasons you’ll understand.
“But I would encourage the Oireachtas Commission to examine that. Everyone should pay their bills, particularly politicians,” he said at the time.
The Houses of the Oireachtas said a “series of efforts had been made to recover the sums due”. The roll out of the new system is the latest effort to get politicians to pay up.
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Minsters have it made huge salary,expenses very generous allowances,
for example €3000 a year for dry cleaning.
To top that off big cash payment when they retire and pension the rest of us can only dream of.
They are so out of touch it’s …..
The problem is not just limited to politicians, civil servants etc. as listed here.
It is every institution with any kind of public interest remit – church, Garda, charities, lawyers – you name it and they have shown themselves to be spectacularly self-serving.
Perhaps we should not be surprised because these top few percent classes in income and wealth have very close social and family ties that spread across all these institutions’ senior executives’ positions.
Ordinary citizens’ interests do not get a look in, as we’ve seen both in the causes of the Financial Crisis itself, and subsequent policies designed to protect wealth interests, not those of majority citizens, who are forced to bear the costs, totally unjustifiably.
And it’s not just in Ireland, this situation pertains right across Europe, in the US & much everywhere.
The world has stumbled along, in denial of this, for decades. Even whilst the rich were getting fabulously richer, whilst ordinary citizens could still feel some gain by unsustainable exploitation of cheap resources and labour from 3rd world countries particularly, the reality of plutocracy – not democracy – remained hidden.
As the saying goes, we find out who our friends really are in the hard times, not the easy boom time euphoria.
The world is now creaking under the triple whammy of increasingly dangerous and costly pollution and their effects, still growing population, and diminishing non-renewable (one-off) resources, especially in vital raw energy, but also in other key commodities too.
Unless we find another planet, identical to this one & some radically easier means of migrating there, this ‘model’ of devil-take-the-hindmost, rule by privileged elites in the exclusive interests of Capital ownership (as opposed to Labour), whilst spinning the illusion of ‘democracy’, only means one result for the masses of ordinary citizens. That is, we are to become increasingly ‘disposable’ – surplus to the needs of the rich.
In essence this is a return to the morality of the 19th century, or even earlier.
Irish citizens should know what this means – and not, in the 21st century, I hope remain stupid enough to ‘blame’ another ‘nationality’, as the elites would have us do, to deflect attention from the real culprits.
I’m talking about the ‘famine’, of course, and the morality of denying food when there was plenty to go round, taken overall in Europe at the time.
This was a deliberate policy decision taken by elites & the British were no worse in this than the Irish or any other elites in the world.
Well, guess what, despite decades of relative abundance for all – hard fought and died for +remember+ by the early social justice and Labour campaigners, never ‘gifted’ by elites – the ruling classes, as I say, most easily distinguished by their reliance not on their labour, rather the renting of money or other Capital assets, underneath the modern veneer of MSM spin are just as self-serving and callous as they always have been.
How many more lessons in the truth of this do we need?
We are all facing a very new phase in Human habitation on planet Earth. If we are to avoid unprecedented levels of increasing levels of brutal repression and/or mass die offs from collapse, we need to radically change the way we organise ourselves – to co-operate and share. Actually value every human life in the way we daily bullsh1t to ourselves that we actually do, but then act otherwise.
The existing systems and structures of ‘public’ interest representation are completely dysfunctional.
Few, if any, of their senior executives should remain in office.
The ‘technical’ answers and alternative structures are all available to us – nothing needs be ‘invented’.
It only remains for a critical mass of ordinary citizens to demand that the process begin.
I think I would start by a mass boycott of any and all further Elections for public office.
None of the mainstream parties are fit for office. Most if not all of the alternative candidates are untried, massively under resourced intellectually, or offer policies that simply have not been able to have the proper public education, discussion, selection and refinement they need to become reliable and coherent policy.
So, let’s send the only message we can at this point that will really hit home – do not go to the polling booth, all of us!
If we do not go to the polling stations, no candidates can claim any legitimacy – let the national debate for real reform then begin properly.
Ahippo you have shown yourself on these threads to be susceptable to whatever propaganda is issued from the unelected Brussels mob.Stauncly defending unelected bureaucrats with no accountability while repeatedly demeaning and slurring posters who are anti EU.
Your a hypocrite.
Too right, Look no further than the Gemma Doherty debacle. She questioned something that wasn’t supposed to be questioned and was suddenly fired. Only the delusional would believe that this was coincidence. It was the work of Denis O’ Brien and, by proxy, Fine Gael. We have a servile media in this country; RTE is a government mouthpiece and the majority of “independent” media is owned by Denis O’ Brien, a man who owes the bulk of his fortune to shady dealings with the Fine Gael party.
She doorstepped the Garda Commissioner to enquire why he’d had penalty points wiped from his licence. She was then made redundant by Denis O’Briens INM.
Sure enough, it was first reported in an English newspaper, just like the GSOC bugging.
The IT was never great but since Geraldine Kennedy left it has become little more than a rag, it’s certainly not worthy of the title newspaper of record. The Guardian has it’s flaws but is in a different league when it comes to reporting standards. The only Irish paper that comes anyway close is the Examiner, which is a very poor reflection on the state of Irish print media.
Oh yes, Mick Clifford…. Anybody notice how he seems to vary his level of Garda criticism depending on which way the wind seems to blow? It’s a common trait among crime correspondents and perhaps it’s something Ian Baileys counsel pointed out to the High Court… I should have included the media on my (s)hitlist above.
I was at a liquidation auction last Saturday, Garda squad car sat outside all day with a female Garda sitting in the passenger seat, older (senior male) Garda inside bidding all day.
A fine days work done by two members of the boys in blue..
Amazed 20% still trust our so called leaders. We’ve a governement to lied their way to power on the back of a goverment who destroyed our economy (the second time FF have destroyed our economy in my lifetime, and I’m not that old), propped up by a labour party who sold out the ordinary working class which replaced a Green party who sold out themselves to stay in power.
Roll on May. SF and left leaning independents all the way……
We didnt need a poll to tell us that, i wonder why we dont trust them..Im looking forward to the next Elections, change is on the way and badly needed!!
If you want to trust a man who took 6 months to apologise to two people he publicly defamed under Dail privilege and is spoofing his way from one controversy to the next, then thats your own business.
Cause they’re all dirty liars and all have their own agenda. Look at the 2 fake smiles by those 2 idiots in the picture above. Liars. They don’t care about all the people of Ireland. Only the rich ones.
Haha this is no suprise, the likes of scambridge makes people despise these muppets, Obviously designed so they could bring in slave labour for the benefit of their wealthy buddies. No amount of bill cullen-isms would make me work for free. Everyone deserves honest pay for honest work. These vultures have made their bed, hopefully the Irish citizens will have the sense to act accordingly come next month.
Whynotme, pet, why not you indeed? Rachel’s point is well made and I suspect she’s a tax-paying worker, contributing to society in other ways. Her tax allows the organs of state to have paid employees who work full time ‘for’ the Community. I pay a huge amount of tax and stress a lot about how to keep the show on the road. I’m happy though that the tax I pay can help those who have fallen on hard times, as I have myself in the past, and would go so far as to say that unemployment benefit should be higher but strictly for those that deserve it, want to work and who spend 9-5 trying to find taxable employment. Equally, I am not happy that my tax is used to help pay the bloated salaries of the likes of Angela Kerins. I believe that very few employees are worth €150k + per year. You want to make that sort of cash, you should make it yourself and certainly not have it courtesy of the tax payer. Your condescending comment suggests that you are not working and can’t be bothered doing so.
Greg ,pet ,why not me ? I do contribute with my taxes ,and like you ,an awful lot ! Rachel is a wannabe troll ! My comment wasn’t condescending ,but yours was !
Rachel, then with your proposal- free labour- there will be no jobs for anyone else to get paid from.
Each country has the ability to create its own money- so why not do it and pay every citizen enough for all their human needs and if people want more, then “work” at what they love doing. This would bring plenty of money into our economy- local shops etc.
Dr Wrennell, criminologist devised such a plan under social justice, eliminate all the civil servants engaged in dole, etc.
Not 1 of them in our government have any integrity. A bunch of people addicted to power and money. Like most junkies others pay the cost of their bad behaviour. To think they are paid higher salaries than those in the Whitehouse or Downing Street is immoral. They are stealing money from the vulnerable to pay their high salaries. Food poverty at its highest in Ireland and these guys are like pigs at a troff. Our local councils are more corrupt than most others in civilised society. The purchasing of services and materials – most of which are a luxury – when people need housing is scandalous. Brown envelopes for all the above.
Looking forward to 2016: The Second Rising – when we kick these jokers out for good and start again. Time to replace the banana republic with a real republic.
Why wait until 2016. Ireland needs a nationalist revolution to focus on protecting Irish peoples interests and dismantle the get rich quick Uber Irish group of politicians, senior civil servants, Business, Gardai and Revenue who are using the country as a blank canvas for their own greed and immunity from any consequences. Few in Ireland have ever voted to see Irish people emigrate while low pay workers and benefit tourists flock to the country, few in Ireland support the idea of our taxes being used to evict Irish families while any deadbeat can arrive to our shores with ‘a story’ and be housed free of charge, few in Ireland support the idea of selling off our assets and increasing taxes to breaking point to pay the debts of failed private banks. FFS there is hardly a ‘charity’ in Ireland which has not been proven to be simply another get rich quick scheme for someone connected to power..
For good reason we dont trust politicians the last bunch screwed the country and the current bunch lied through their teeth to get into power and screwed us even more while telling us things are better.
I seen a man in a shopping Center handing out leaflets for a ff,re , I really think these fellas have a neck like a jockeys @@@@@@ at the grand national
There are very few peoole you can trust in this life. You would want to be crazy to trust politicians and business leaders. They only care about number 1. Which is probably normal and more of us should do this “always ask yourself what’s in this for me”
Why would anyone trust the FF and FG/ Lab shower of cants in Leinster House.
They treat the people of this country like mushrooms.
Keep us in the dark and feed us sh1te!
With all the talk about 100 years since the 1916 rising it really makes me think was it worth it and would those who took part have bothered if they foresaw what we choose to lead us we from what we put into power in this country are not fit to govern ourselves
no doubt we will get soundbites and spin from ppoltical leaders saying how they need to regain the public confidence etc etc based on the poll findings… yet according to bruton and kenny they pay no attention to any polls as they come and go…
I an saddened that Fine Gael Party whom I thought was a party of integrity, honesty and courage would get involved in telling “untruths” to the electorate!
Why was Bailey “setup”,
Who set him up?
What action has the Minister for Justice taken to disclose the truth!
Why has the Minister not made full disclosure after 2 years in Government?
Time for full disclosure and honesty!
NAMA is still paying “corrupt” developers T the expense of Irish innocent Taxpayers.
Enda has “bowed” to Merchel!
Enda has forgot the the Irish Electorate who elected him!
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