Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 3 Jul 2001

Vol. 540 No. 1

Oireachtas (Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices) (Amendment) Bill, 2001: Committee and Remaining Stages.

SECTION 1.

Mr. J. Mitchell

I move amendment No. a1:

In page 5, to delete lines 43 to 48 and substitute the following:

"(11)(f2>a) As soon as may be, but not later than 120 days, after the end of the financial year in which an annual allowance has been paid under this section to either–

(i)a member of Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann referred to in subsection (3), or

(ii)a parliamentary leader of a qualifying party,

he or she shall prepare, or cause to be prepared, a statement of any expenditure from that allowance.".

I am very disappointed the Minister has indicated in his reply to Second Stage, that he is not accepting the proposal that the £22,000 proposed to be paid to each Independent Member of this House and the £12,500 to Independent Members of the Seanad, should be subject to audit. This is a tax free allowance. A sum of £22,000, tax free, is the equivalent of about £40,000 before tax. There are seven Independent Members in this House, for whom the allowance amounts to £154,000. The corresponding figure for the other House is £60,000. The combined total comes to over £200,000 tax free, or a pre-tax equivalent of over £400,000 going, unaudited, into the pockets of Independents without any accountability whatsoever.

This is the stuff of which scandals are made. Leaders of parties are, quite properly, required to submit an audited account of their expenditure, which will be open to scrutiny by the Public Offices Commission, but not so for Independents. I am proposing that we change that and it is my intention to press this amendment so that Independent Members who get this £22,000 tax free will have to be accountable for it in the same way as Leaders of parties. No other Member of this House will have £1,000 to spend personally. The Minister is wrong in his approach to this.

If this amendment is accepted, there will be two or three minor consequential amendments. In subsection (11)(e)(ii), after the words “parliamentary leader”, we would also have to insert “, or the Deputy or Senator, as the case may be”. In subsection (11)(f), we would have to delete the phrase “a parliamentary leader” and, in subsection (12)(a), to delete the words “to a parliamentary leader”. I urge the Minister to accept this amendment. I do so, not only as spokesman for my party on Finance but also as one who has been chairman of the Public Accounts Committee twice. It is wrong that moneys of the order involved in this regard should be completely unaccounted for.

Mr. McDowell

I feel strongly that an outrageous "Smartie" is being thrown to a few individual Members of this House. In reality, of course, there are very few, if any, Independent Members of the House. Nobody on the benches behind me decides, on a day-to-day basis, whether they will support a particular Bill or motion on the basis of what it actually represents. There are four Independents who are bought by the Government and have stayed bought from day one. There are a number of Opposition Independents, broadly defined, who always vote against the Government. None of them decides, on the basis of what a motion is about, or the content of a piece of legislation, whether they will vote for or against it. The word "Independent" is not appropriate in the first place. It just defies belief for the Minister to suggest that a figure of £22,000 per individual is so trivial that we should not bother about it. Let us posit the most extreme possibility. Let us allow our imagination—

Mr. McCreevy

For the money given in Party Leaders' allowances until now, there has been no audit at all for the last 63 years. Substantial amounts were paid out to Party Leaders—

Mr. McDowell

Why did the Minister deliberately decide to exempt certain chosen individuals from the audit? If we are introducing an audit which is good enough for the parties, it should be good enough for everybody receiving this public money. I have not heard any argument from the Minister to suggest that there is any good reason from exempting any Member from this particular audit.

Mr. McCreevy

Are Deputies suggesting that all the expenses we give to individual Deputies from the public purse for travel and subsistence, constituency allowances and secretarial allowances should also be audited? Deputies should be a little careful in pursuing this because if tempted I might go down that road and Deputies may not be as popular with their colleagues as they think they are now.

Mr. McDowell

This is a specific allowance which is being made available to parties and we are also giving it to individuals for reasons defined in the legislation. Most Members are being treated differently from those few. The Minister should either apply one rule to everybody or to nobody. The Minister is applying a totally different rule to some individuals who sit on the back benches. Let us allow ourselves a flight of fancy and assume there are some Inde pendent Deputies who might conceivably not spend a single penny of the allowance for the subheads prescribed in the Bill, and pocket it as salary. That is the equivalent of about £35,000 per year.

Mr. McGrath

It is more – it is £42,000.

Mr. McDowell

It is an extraordinary amount of money to give to individual Deputies without any requirement for them to show what they are spending it on, particularly when everybody else in the House is required to show how it is spent.

Mr. McGrath

It gives them a full ministerial salary.

Mr. McCreevy

The original purpose of the Bill was the audit of the leaders' allowances. Section 1 refers to payment of annual allowances to parliamentary leaders of qualifying parties. The idea of having an audit arose from events at the tribunal relating to a party leader and the accusation that the money given to the party leader for parliamentary purposes was spent on activities for which it was not meant. I am not making any judgment as to whether that is right or wrong, but arising from that it was decided to have an audit of party leaders' allowances.

We did not have such an audit since the allowance was introduced in 1938. By stealth the principles outlined in 1938 were the correct ones, and I would prefer not to have to introduce this legislation – my view is that party leaders should decide themselves what to do with their money; everybody knows what they were supposed to do with it. Due to the climate which has ensued arising from certain items which came out at the tribunals we have gone down this road. It is for party leaders of qualifying political parties. An Independent per se is an Independent not attaching to any party, but due to constitutional reasons and the need to have equilibrium between all Members of the House, in recent years we have been forced to make sure all Deputies are treated equally so we do not run foul of the Constitution, and that is what I am trying to do.

I did not start the principle of giving money to Independent Deputies. This was started by Deputy Quinn when he was Minister for Finance. Until then no money was given to Independent Deputies. Deputy Quinn decided, for the same legal reasons that arose following the McKenna judgment, that there would be difficulties, and the figure began at an average of £10,000. Now, due to an increase in the allowances, the average figure is £22,000. I did not start giving allowances to individual Deputies.

Mr. McDowell

We know why they have to get the money. It is a matter of whether they account for it.

Mr. McCreevy

Deputy Quinn did not feel there should be an audit.

Mr. J. Mitchell

I completely reject the Minister's stance on this. He talks about Deputies being treated equally, but we are not treated equally. The seven Independent Deputies can pocket the money, invest it, drink it or do what they like with it. They can buy posters and leaflets and rent offices in their constituencies, which none of the rest of us can do. Parliamentary leaders' allowances are to help in the performance of parliamentary business. We all know the seven Independent Deputies – Deputy Joe Higgins is not an Independent Deputy – play virtually no role in shadowing legislation. They are never at committee meetings or in the House late at night. They are in their constituencies where we cannot be because we are here doing our job; if the bells ring we have to be here for a vote.

The more I hear about this and the Referendum Commission the more I believe the Constitution needs very radical amendment.

Mr. McCreevy

On that we agree.

Mr. J. Mitchell

The same can be said about the courts ridiculously interfering in parliamentary affairs.

Mr. McCreevy

On that I definitely agree.

Mr. J. Mitchell

The point is that we are now extending the requirement for audit of parliamentary leaders' allowance, and rightly so, but we are not treating Independent Deputies equally as they will not have to have their allowances audited. It is certainly not fair and I question whether it is constitutional. I urge the Minister to accept the amendment. Why should Deputy Gildea, Deputy Gregory and Deputy Fox be paid the equivalent of a Minister?

Mr. McCreevy

Or Deputy Lowry. These matters were considered by Deputy Quinn when he introduced this in 1996. Until then the leaders' allowance was just given to leaders. Deputy Quinn decided on a new basis for giving the leaders' allowance by linking it to the parliamentary strength of each party. It was a fairly rational way of doing it. He further decided, for legal and constitutional reasons, that Independent Deputies should also receive the allowance. It comes under the heading of the parliamentary leaders' allowance.

Mr. J. Mitchell

They should be audited also.

Mr. McCreevy

There is a big difference between giving £1.5 million to the two major parties, the best part of £1 million to the Labour Party and having an audit requirement, and saying there has to be an audit requirement for the £22,000 given to the Independents. I do not think an audit is justified.

Mr. McDowell

This is all about equality of treatment. The Minister is right in saying Deputy Quinn made that provision and was advised that provision had also to be made for Independent Deputies, advice he accepted for reasons we all know and appreciate. However, that is not what we are talking about. We accept that an allowance has to be given for research and parliamentary purposes to Independent Deputies. What I and Deputy Mitchell do not accept is that they should be entitled to take this money and not account for it in any way. There is no guarantee that Deputy Lowry, Deputy Gregory or any of the other Deputies do not also like Charvet shirts, and they might equally be inclined to spend the money in the way the former leader of the Minister's party did. The Minister has not given us an explanation and I cannot understand why he does not want to treat the seven Independent Deputies in the same way as every other Deputy will be treated.

Mr. McCreevy

When I came to the conclusion that we had to have an audit of the parliamentary leaders' allowance, I had more consultations with the leaders of all political parties than ever before. I sent all the material to them, asked them what they wanted and gave them all sorts of advice. The parties, including Sinn Féin, Deputy Higgins's party, the Labour Party, Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats, sent back their expert opinions. I have correspondence on this, and nobody raised this question until now. In that six months, with all the toing and froing, including more recently, this is the first occasion that anybody has raised this matter.

Mr. J. Mitchell

I raised it privately. This is the first time we have discussed it.

Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."

Tá

Ahern, Michael.Ahern, Noel.Aylward, Liam.Brady, Martin.Brennan, Matt.Brennan, Séamus.Byrne, Hugh.Carey, Pat.Collins, Michael.Coughlan, Mary.

Cullen, Martin.Daly, Brendan.Davern, Noel.Dennehy, John.Doherty, Seán.Ellis, John.Fahey, Frank.Fleming, Seán.Flood, Chris. Gildea, Thomas.

Tá–continued

Hanafin, Mary.Haughey, Seán.Healy-Rae, Jackie.Jacob, Joe.Keaveney, Cecilia.Kelleher, Billy.Kenneally, Brendan.Killeen, Tony.Kirk, Séamus.Kitt, Michael P.Kitt, Tom.Lawlor, Liam.Lenihan, Brian.Lenihan, Conor.McCreevy, Charlie.McDaid, James.McGennis, Marian.McGuinness, John J.Martin, Micheál.

Moffatt, Thomas.Molloy, Robert.Moloney, John.Moynihan, Donal.Moynihan, Michael.Ó Cuív, Éamon.O'Dea, Willie.O'Flynn, Noel.O'Hanlon, Rory.O'Keeffe, Batt.Roche, Dick.Ryan, Eoin.Smith, Brendan.Smith, Michael.Treacy, Noel.Wade, Eddie.Woods, Michael.Wright, G. V.

Níl

Belton, Louis J.Boylan, Andrew.Bradford, Paul.Browne, John (Carlow-Kilkenny).Burke, Ulick.Carey, Donal.Clune, Deirdre.Connaughton, Paul.Coveney, Simon.Crawford, Seymour.Deasy, Austin.Deenihan, Jimmy.Durkan, Bernard.Enright, Thomas.Farrelly, John.Finucane, Michael.Gilmore, Éamon.Higgins, Jim.Hogan, Philip.Kenny, Enda.

McCormack, Pádraic.McDowell, Derek.McGahon, Brendan.McGinley, Dinny.McGrath, Paul.Mitchell, Jim.Mitchell, Olivia.Naughten, Denis.Neville, Dan.Noonan, Michael.O'Shea, Brian.O'Sullivan, Jan.Owen, Nora.Penrose, William.Quinn, Ruairí.Ring, Michael.Sheehan, Patrick.Stanton, David.Timmins, Billy.Wall, Jack.

Tellers: Tá, Deputies M. Ahern and S. Brennan; Níl, Deputies Bradford and Gilmore.

Question declared carried.

Amendment declared lost.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am now required to put the following question in accordance with an order of the Dáil of this day: "That in respect of each of the sections not disposed of, the section is hereby agreed to in Committee, the Title is hereby agreed to in Committee and the Bill is accordingly reported to the House, Fourth Stage is hereby completed and the Bill is hereby passed."

Question put and declared carried.