I imagine they are given an annual allowance that’s broken down into 12 monthly payments. This is probably paid directly, monthly and at the end of the year they return what they don’t use…

Phil Hogan!

Ah Roger show some pity! Sure he needs all he has to pay all the management fees he owes in Portugal etc…..God Bless him, poor fella….

@Roger Phil’s personnel circumstances don’t allow him return any more than that, have a heart.

*pat them on the head

Let’s be fair, a return ticket for a week is more than that, a lot more. I regularly drive from cork to Dublin and back in the same day and it takes nearly €100 in petrol per day excluding tolls and parking. And let’s not forget hotels in Dublin ain’t cheap. I am all for tearing politicians a new backside but lets not delude ourselves or change pricing structures to get there!

And what about rural TDs who have to travel every week up and back to Dublin?

Take away their expenses and it’ll only be the very wealthy who’ll run in the first place because they’ll be the ones who can afford it.

We need reform of expenses, but absolute abolition creates more problems than it solves.

You’ll never have to worry about expenses David.

… Because they don’t deserve a salary for a day’s work?

I just did a quick analysis of my own using the data Gavan provided:
Party Returned
FF 0.53%
FFg 2.62%
Labour 7.41%
PBP 2.92%
SF 3.95%
Ind 6.87%
What does it tell you, when FF/FFg are the two parties with the lowest % of returns… One and the same always, and forever more.

Sorry, i had a type on SF, should have read 3.95%, not 2.95%

@Cal – Just in case you weren’t aware, the spreadsheet linked to at the bottom of the story now includes all the returns, so you’ll be able to pull out a comprehensive stat from there if you wish.

I took the data and bumped it into a pivot table. Thats where i got the percentages above from.
Its a really useful tool.
For example:
3 out of 20 FF TDs returned expenses.
27 / 74 FFg TDs returned expenses (and that number includes Phil Hogans 11 euro)
7 / 14 Independents returned expenses
13 / 39 Labour TDs returned expenses
6 / 14 SF TDs returned expenses.

Really, when you look at FF/FFg …. FF still believe ion their sense of entitlement and taking as much money as possible… After all, who knows how much longer the gravy train will run.
FFg very clearly heading in that same direction.

The overall party stats are extremely interesting and paint a very clear picture, of which party’s are in this for the money and nothing else.

Isn’t the point that none of them should be in a position to hand back anything, vouched, vouched, vouched . Incur the expense, show the receipt, and get it back. They have massive salaries relative to the average national income and in most cases their skill set. There are some very clever TDs, but we all know there is some complete monkeys there also.

I don’t think you can really look at the behaviour of parties without considering the geographic distributionof the TDs.

It seems that Dublin TDs return more.

But then consider that PBP are an exclusively Dublin party, with Labour being much stronger in Dublin than around the country.

Conversely, FF are an exclusively non-Dublin party and FG are stronger in rural areas.

Even though I’m not usually someone to praise them, Sinn Fein do return a high percentage for a party that has a distribution that reflects the general distribution of TDs,.

Enda – Thanks for your comment. We’re not ‘blindly ignoring’ it; we’re just in the middle of putting the story together. As the story was broken by someone else, it takes us a bit of time to be able to cover it.

I should add, in case anyone thinks otherwise, that the identity or political ideology of the TD would have nothing to do with it. We’re simply not in a position to cover a story at a time when there is only a single source, and that source is another Irish news outlet.

Mick was on Radio 1 this morning to discuss matters himself, and we’re putting the piece together on that basis now.

Mick Wallace is hardly a leftie so don’t know why you think he d be their “beloved”?

I was watching RTE1 last night, which I do most nights. The camera was Mick Wallace a number of times while Shane Ross, the verbal diarrhea was speaking. Each time, all one could see of Mick Wallace was the back of his head with his dyed hair all over the place. He was doing something on the chair beside him. I can only think of three things he was doing….. reading letters from his constituents, texting on his mobile, or playing patience on his ifon!

Until all Ministers, TDs, offer a substantial % of their salaries, I will not entertain any of these news titbits where individuals like Dinny, the Bull etc.are giving back a EU10 note. That wouldn’t even buy a homeless person a decent lunch or a small business owner that has lost everything. Many people have had over EUR60 a month taken from them to ‘help’ us with the situation we’re in, so step forward ‘Bull’ etc. and do the decent thing.

Sorry, at my post above, I watch the ‘Oireachtas Report’ on RTE1 late in the evening.