Eamon Gilmore
Question:98 Mr. Gilmore asked the Minister for Finance the registered employer for the secretarial assistants to members of the Oireachtas.
Written Answers. - Oireachtas Secretarial Assistants.
The employers of the secretarial assistants employed under the scheme of secretarial assistance for Members of the Oireachtas are the political parties or individual parliamentarians with whom the secretarial assistants have contracts of employment.
Payments are made to secretarial staff from the Vote for the Houses of the Oireachtas by the Accounts Branch of my Department which acts as the Accounts Branch for a number of State services which do not have their own Accounts Branch but are accounted for by Accounting Officers other than the Accounting Officer for the Vote for the Department of Finance. These services include the Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas.
Since, under the Income Tax Acts an employer is defined as the person who pays any emolument, the Department of Finance is registered as the employer under Regulation 8 of the Income Tax (Employments) Regulations 1960. The purpose of these Regulations is to ensure compliance with deduction requirements under the Income Tax code and does not have significance in relation to the contractual relationship between parliamentarians and political parties and their secretarial staff.