THIS MORNING, THE Irish Mail on Sunday reports that President Michael D Higgins declined to answer questions as to whether or not pay for his advisers had been topped up using the €317,000 annual Presidential allowance that dominated headlines last week.

It was revealed before the Public Accounts Committee last week that the same allowance, first introduced in the 1930s, is entirely free of oversight by the State’s public finances watchdog the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Presidency is currently exempt from Freedom of Information legislation, with the issue of transparency becoming one of the key battlegrounds in the month-long campaign ahead of the election on 26 October. Higgins, meanwhile, has said he is open to the creation of a ‘mechanism’ to provide transparency, once it complies with the Constitution.

But what do you think?

We’re asking: Do Presidential expenses require greater scrutiny?