I spoke about sections 2 and 3 on Second Stage and I made the point very clearly that this Bill should not be before the House. There are a number of provisions in the Bill which are necessary to protect the interests of the Irish members of the European Parliament. Section 5 deals with disqualification of Irish representatives for membership of certain boards. I presume the boards listed are the same as those which apply to Members of this House and the Seanad. This will hit one European MP fairly hard. I think he is a member of at least two of those boards.
I oppose sections 2 and 3 because they put a charge on the Irish taxpayer which should be borne by the European Parliament. As I said on Second Stage, this Bill has come before this House because the British Foreign Secretary had a hang up about the levels of pay mentioned in the press for members of the European Parliament. He said that over his dead body—or some equally strong language—members would be paid those inflated salaries. This became a point of honour and it was a significant plank in the election platform of the last British Government.
Everybody knows that there is a sort of club atmosphere. There is a superstition that member Governments should look after each other coming up to election time. A member Government may be in danger and if they all look after that Government, they will rally round the next time. When it was obvious for 18 months that the British Government would have to face an election, this became a point of principle almost, or a point of honour. A significant number of the British Labour Party were anti-European. The referendum earlier in the year was carried by the Government. One of the sops they offered was that they would not allow the European gravy to be spread thickly among members of the European Parliament. At the Bremen conference last July it was agreed that the British Prime Minister could go home and say European MPs would not be paid excessive salaries and that each national Parliament would fix the rate of pay for its own members.
That is why we have this Bill which attempts—illegally, I hold—to limit the rates of pay for European MPs elected from the Republic of Ireland to the rates of pay offered to Members of Dáil Éireann. This is a budgetary matter for members of the European Parliament who will assemble in two or three weeks' time. It can only be decided by the members of the European Parliament tion with the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers may decide this is what they want, but there is no chance that the members of the Parliament will agree. They will want to decide the levels of pay which will obtain for themselves.
This Bill is wasting the time of this House. I know the Minister will say that unless we pass this Bill—because this principle was agreed at the summit by the Council of Ministers last December—we will be depriving members who were elected to the European Parliament of their pay for the first few months. When they come to strike the level of payment for themselves they will have the payments made from the date of the election in the same way as members of Dáil Éirean are paid. Their levels of pay and expenses will operate from the dates of the election, namely 7 to 10 June. The Minister may say that will not be so, but he has no way of knowing because the Parliament has not yet met. The Bill provides that they will be paid only from the date on which the Parliament first meets. That may be what the Council of Ministers say, but I believe they will be paid from the dates of the election.