Some of them wouldn’t get a job with salary’s of €120,000 in a real world job never mind the €170,000 they are on now. How about pay them for the level of qualification and real world experience they have that relates to the position they are in. Private sector wouldn’t hire an uneducated and inexperienced person for a position with a salary of €170,000, they’d soon go out of business if they did. Our overpaid and inexperienced politicians is what’s ruining the country at the moment.

Proper order

Please, please, please make this happen. After the Mahon report this would be the perfect gesture from the political elite to gain back the trust of the electorate, do this and people might be willing to pay household charges. Don’t do it and don’t expect us to take any more cuts.

No member of the cabinet should be receiving anything on top of their ordinary TD salary, until we see two consecutive quarters of GNP growth.

When they have the country doing well again, then it can be reviewed.

If this happens before Friday, I would even pay the household charge. Realistically , chances of either are slim.

With the amount of people emigrating again displaying that Irish Politicians do not need the voters then 120,000 per year is way too much.

If they are paid intern-ship wages then they might be realistic.

To think that waste of space Brian Hayes is on €130,000 a year, just to be an arrogant little twat!

About time, but hey they’ll always find ways to boost their salary.

Committees for this and that shite so they can fleece us for more god dam money.

Self serving bunch of W**K**S

Great idea will never happen unfortunately

Where do I sign this petition!!!!!

Aarum, is right unfortunately. We don’t do good ideas in this country. This will be let whither on the vine, rest assured.

This runs into a problem at Taoiseach level- CEO of a company with a pretty phenomenal revenue albeit a very high operating loss- like general motors except their CEO is paid $9,000,000. I am not for one second suggesting Enda get this but you cant compare them to the real world as they don’t live there.

There isn’t a snowballs chance of this happening. The environment of entitlement in Leinster House/Government has been there since the foundation of The State.
All you have to do is look at episodes of ‘Reeling in The Years’ from the 60′s to see the proof.
Politicians in this country of ours have had difficulty with the real world for years and there’s no way they’re gonna change that now.
Sure as Bertie, the great swindler himself once pointed out…he might have been getting paid more than the pres of America, but sure-didn’t have the White House.

I’m open to correction but don’t all TDs and Ministers have expenses over and above the salaries? Ministers also have non contributory pensions as well as TD salaries, plus income from their Civilian jobs where applicable …
If they want to serve their countries let them do it for expenses only …

I’m not sure that actually works out the way people tend to imagine. If you benchmark Enda Kenny against the CEO of a corporation with the same number of employees and cabinet ministers against board directors of such companies… wouldn’t you effectively wind up giving them all a pay rise?

They need to compare the qualifications of those they’re benchmarking against too. There’s nothing stopping someone who failed foundation level maths and has never studied business becoming the Minister for Finance at the moment. It would be interesting to see how other countries appoint ministers.

Can all the self-fullfilling prophets take two mins and sign the bloody petition before shooting it down? Unbelievable some of ye.

Journal, you should probably amend the description you have with this link on your FB page. The nurse/Garda/teacher bashing comments have already started there. It’s not really anything to do with what this petition is proposing.

This should happen, unfortunately the pay scales suggested are still way too much. TDs should be on the average industrial wage. There is no evidence to suggest their level of experience or qualifications are remotely close to that of the “real world”. Ministers should be on 40K and the Taoiseach on 45K. The Dail should reduce in numbers to only 2 TDs per county and every county represented (none of this Cavan-Monaghan or Laois-Offaly crap). They should retain one of the apartment blocks around dublin that is empty and this would serve for TDs to stay there for Dail business and they give in vouched receipts for standard class public transport as they expect the public to travel this way. This way we might get some genuine people sitting in those seats. There is no way wages should be remotely close to that of UK MPs

the look on his face says it all. they don’t do enough to justify there salary. they need a slap of reality .there in power to care for the country not themselves and they have the cheek to rip us off and want paying for it.

It was going well enough until we got to TDs… TDs would get €60,000? Your benchmark here is a bit off if we consider a Cllr has to be elected (presumably like aaron intends to be judging by his website!) as a community leader in the first instance – this is a closer benchmark to “senior middle management” than a TD.

€60,000 for a TD would also really open the door for corruption etc, I’d worry. For the Ministers/Junior Ministers? Yeah, absolutely, think that’s a great benchmark. €60,000 for a TD would be wrong, without full public sector reform. They would be behind 60% of public sector workers, and most of the remainder would be on increments and would finish their careers ahead of a TD. I presume Aaron will be calling for Croke Park to be abolished?

If he is, there may be merit in his point. Otherwise? Pointless stunt.

Real world salary! I’d like to add two more; 1. Real world understanding of modern Ireland and the challenges most of the population face 2. Real world experience and understanding in sectors relevant to their roles.

100,000 euro max and ban expences altogether,cars , travel expences etc.let them live in the real world. see if they will be impleminting austerity measures then.look at the dail on tele, half of them are asleep or absent, terminate 50 per cent of them,and suspend the rest of them for double jobbing. let the terminated ones wait 6 weeks for their dole.

They should all take the average industrial wage like sinn fein do

Keith, I know it has no chance because of the selfish and assumption of importance TDs have on themselves but this would be equitable in our situation is all I’m saying.

So far, this government is earning their pay. Makes me slightly proud to be irish that we’re getting some grain of respect back internationally.
To those people on the average industrial wage who are complaining about TD salaries, perhaps they should have run for election themselves? Or better still, they should have been more ambitious and planned their career better. More high calibre people is what this country needs not a bunch of negative-minded loudmouthed underachieving little socialists trying to dismantle our econony from within.

Dream on girls – this will never happen !

Everybody should subscribe to this and the civil service should also be included.

Conor. The job of a TD is to represent his/her constituents on a national level. I agree that Population is a factor but it can not prevent people from being represented and therefore should not be the ultimate factor. Fact of matter is that the needs of one child or one sick person in Donegal or Mayo is the exact same individual need for each child or each sick person in Dublin and by leaving population as the factor is exactly why inequality is rife in out society and why these people are not being represented. It is also the reason why over centralisation has happened around Dublin. TDs need to be moved more towards national issues and away from local ones which should be concentrated on council representatives. So yes, 2 TDs for each county regardless of size. And Conor I am “real”