Let’s get real, Taoiseach: scorch the junior ranks and abolish the Seanad

I SAW Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue on the news the other night, talking about the members of the Oireachtas feeling pain and yet being determined to give a lead.

There was a strong sense in everything he said that members of the Dáil and Seanad were suffering and yet, in their nobility, were prepared to suffer more. They were offering up a cut of 10% in their expenses as a mark of solidarity with the tens of thousands who were losing their jobs and the hundreds of thousands facing a year or more of poverty.

And all I could think, watching him, was “give me a break”. Our TDs are used to five-year terms now — they’d be horrified, all of them, if we ever returned to previous times when the average Dáil term was around three years. A typical TD will earn, between salary and expenses, about €750,000 in a five-year term. TDs who have been there, without ever holding ministerial office, since Bertie Ahern was first elected Taoiseach, will have earned not far short of €2 million in that time.