€13,000 for councillors who quit seats

MOST TDs and Senators are expected to take a golden handshake of almost €13,000 to give up their council seats by the end of June — a year before they are obliged to.

All political parties, except Fine Gael, want their Oireachtas members to give up their council seats and to take this substantial financial sweetener so the new candidates will have 12 months to build up support for next year’s local elections.

The package will be provided in the Local Government Act 2003 and is expected to come into effect this June. It will ban TDs and Senators from holding the dual mandate of national and local seats from June 2004.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen has brought forward the retirement gratuity of €7,800 due to be paid to TDs and Senators next year to June 30 this year.

Mr Cullen has also added an extra €5,000 sweetener to encourage all TDs and Senators to take the package, according to the Opposition parties.

Fianna Fáil, Labour, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats all indicated yesterday that they want their Oireachtas members to take up the package and give up their council seats by June 30.

But Fine Gael is not as united with one deputy, Michael Ring, threatening to challenge the constitutionality of banning the dual mandate in the Supreme Court once it becomes law. And two other Fine Gael backbenchers, Jimmy Deenihan and Tom Hayes have indicated that they will not give up their council seats until they legally have to in June 2004.

A Fine Gael spokesman said: “We will look at the co-option of new candidates to replace their retiring TDs and Senators on a case by case basis.”

The June 30 deadline would give political parties who dominate councils a chance to secure the chairmanships of many Council committees.

An outgoing TD or Senator would have a better chance of being elected chairperson to the some of these committees and then they could hand over the post to their replacements, according to one Government source.

Fianna Fáil said yesterday it was their party policy to get all TDs and Senators to retire from their council seats by the end of next month.

However, several Fianna Fáil backbenchers have indicated their reluctance to retire before June 2004 and the party spokeswoman conceded they could not force them to do so.

Labour is hoping to have most of its candidates selected by the end of the summer and many of their selection conventions have already taken place.

“Our TDs and Senators have indicated that they have no problem stepping down and we are encouraging them to hold their co-option conventions as soon as possible,” a Labour spokesman said.

All Green Party TDs have already stepped down from their council seats and most replacement candidates have been selected.

And the Progressive Democrats have already selected several new candidates and will ask all their Senators and TDs to step down once the dual mandate law is passed in June.

Speculation that many TDs and Senators would try to influence the selection of their replacement candidates so that they would not be a threat to their seats was denied by all parties.