500,000 State-funded political leaflets dumped

More than 500,000 political leaflets, newsletters and calendars, printed at the state’s expense, have been binned after TDs and senators failed to collect them from the Oireachtas printing facility.

In the past two years, 48 Oireachtas members had political literature and personalised stationery printed, which was later recycled without ever leaving the publicly funded facility.

TDs and senators already receive an allowance covering the costs of running their offices, but they are also entitled to get printing jobs done by the in-house service at no cost to themselves.