TDs pay to rise by €42,000 over five years

TDs will have received an 84% wage hike over five years by 2005, with their pay rising €42,000 over that period.

Senators are doing even better. Their pay will more than double, according to a new study on politicians pay.

As TDs enjoy the first weekend of their three-month summer break, they can contemplate their current basic salary of €73,900 rising to €91,800 in another two years. Added to that, expenses and travel and subsistence allowances have become far more generous in recent years, meaning most TDs will be earning six-figure sums.

Before their recess, TDs heard that Dáil Éireann sat for an average of just one-and-a-half days a week since the general election last year, making it one of the least active parliaments in Europe.

According to a study by Industrial Relations News magazine, published in its current edition, TDs have benefited from a pay bonanza over the last few years.

Salary increases have come from:

* the Buckley report into top level civil servants wages.

* the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness wage agreement.

* the Benchmarking report into public sector wages.

* the Sustaining Progress national wage agreement.

Senators fared even better as their wages are now fixed at 70% of a TD's salary, up from 63%, so they are due all the same increases as paid to TDs.

Report author Martin Frawley of IRN, said the pay bonanza stems from TDs being the only public sector workers to benefit from the Buckley Pay review process and the awards made by the Public Service Benchmarking Body, as well as partnership agreements.

"On top of these increases in basic pay, there are considerable hikes in allowances, travel, expenses, administration/office as well as pension, gratuity and severance payments agreed for TDs over the last few years.

"Only nurses would come anywhere near such pay increases over the same period and even they are confined to the one pay determination system," Mr Frawley said.

Yet the Oireachtas will not reconvene until September 30, giving TDs 13 weeks off.

The extraordinary overall increase for TDs is primarily down to the fact they were afforded what Mr Frawley said could be described as a sort of 'double whammy'. Specifically, they benefited from 'special' pay increases under the Buckley pay report published in September 2000 and the benchmarking report published less than two years later.

"No other public sector group has ever been allowed to benefit from the two 'special' pay reports, which have always been mutually exclusive," Mr Frawley said.