It’s nice work if you can get it ...

WE now find that widows, the blind, families depending a lot on childrens allowance, the disabled, those on the minimum wage, etc, all have to make do on less.

To avoid having to pay the Universal Service Charge you have to earn less than €4,004 a year or €77 per week. Meanwhile, how do our departing politicians fare? A Sunday newspaper examined how 32 of them were faring and found that those 32 were getting lump sum payments totalling €8,075,781 and pensions totalling €2,125,644 per annum.

Two examples given were Bertie Ahern (€388,855 lump sum and a pension of €155,892) and Mary Harney (getting €343,087 lump sum payment and a pension of €118,837 per year).