This article is from page 1 of the 2011-02-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 1 JPG
A TD elected to the 31st Dáil from the Clare constituency can expect to pocket over three quarters of a million euro in salary and expenses for a five-year term in office, figures secured by The Clare People this week have revealed.
These figures have emerged thanks to a Clare People audit of expenses secured by the three outgoing TDs going before the electorate later this month – Deputies Pat Breen, Timmy Dooley and Joe Carey, during the four-year life span of the dramatic 30th Dáil.
Fine Gael deputy Pat Breen tops the expenses league in Clare, having claimed over € 280,000 in the past four years, while Deputies Joe Carey and Timmy Dooley have each claimed over € 220,000 in expenses since being elected to Dáil Éireann in 2007.
However, Deputy Breen’s higher rate of expenses over the past four years also takes into account the first half of 2007, which corresponded with the final months of his first Dáil term between 2002 and May 2007, while he also incurred significant expenses by being a member of the Council of Europe.
And, while Deputy Breen tops the expenses in Clare, earning € 622,141 in expenses since first being elected to Dáil Éireann in 2002, he is the only General Election candidate in the county and one of the few in the country to publish details of his expenses, doing so through his website ww.patbreen.ie.
Expenses figures relating to the three deputies seeking re-election have been secured through the Freedom of Information Act and the Oireachtas website which, since last March, has been statutorily obliged to publish the monthly expense claims of every TD.
Details of TDs’ expenses have been published this week, just as one General Election candidate has told The Clare People that “expenses should be abolished altogether.
Independent councillor, James Breen, a member of Dáil Éireann who claimed expenses from 2002 to 2007, said “we should reduce Dáil expenses and they should be abolished altogether and oblige TDs to live on their salary with no expenses”.
Currently TDs earn a salary of € 92,672 for being a member of Dáil Éireann.