€3,000 hike for TDs as workers' pay is cut - Indo

[Django_Returns]

Mods: I know this is not property, but I don’t want it to get lost in the piston. It is banana republic related!!

independent.ie/national-news … 69838.html

€3,000 hike for TDs as workers’ pay is cut

A LARGE group of TDs will get a €3,000 pay rise in eight weeks time – just as ordinary workers are getting used to tax hikes in the emergency Budget.
The following month, bonus payments will be made to one in every six TDs in the Dail simply because they held on to their seats in the general election.
Some 26 TDs from across all the political parties, elected for the first time in 2002, will pick up the lucrative increase on their permanent pay.
The bonus is payable after seven years’ service and will boost the basic pay of those TDs from €100,191 to €103,389.
And 12 senators will get a rise of more than €2,200, seeing their basic salaries go from €70,134 to €72,371.

Green Party leader John Gormley said at the weekend that it was time for “all of the political parties in Dail Eireann to play their part”.
“They need to lead by example and show those people currently feeling the pain that the political class will play its part,” he said.
But Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has no plans at the moment to stop the extra payments being made.

The Department of Finance and the Houses of the Oireachtas confirmed last night that the pay rises would go ahead.
"We consider LSI’s to be part of the basic pay. TDs are linked to principal officers.
“They will get the LSI based on their pay, once you have the seven years,” a department spokesman said.

Suprised??

The bonus system was introduced by then finance minister Charlie McCreevy in 2001.

Maybe FG will stand up and be counted?

Fine Gael yesterday called for an end to minister pensions being paid to sitting TDs and senators and scrapping the €1m in payments to holders of positions on Oireachtas committees.

No.

But Mr Kenny said the TDs’ basic pay was linked to the rank of Principal Officer in the civil service and was subject to the same levies as other workers.