Teacher TDs should hand back the money
It is a disgrace that the named TDs and senators are still earning money for work they are no longer carrying out it's bad enough that they are being paid for not doing the work that we elected them to do!
They should rescind their teaching contracts immediately and return the money that they earned since being elected to be spent far more worthily on the many neglected aspects of our education system.
In the US, the Democratic presidential nomination contender Wesley Clark was roasted recently for earning money on the lecture circuit while seeking to be elected to public office.
He returned the money and has been ordered not to engage in such practices until he is a private citizen again.
The same rules should apply here in Ireland. Bravo to the Irish Examiner for being the only national broadsheet consistently to expose the Oireachtas as the joke it truly is. Of course, if Michael Gag-Dowell gets his way, such reporting might not be around for much longer.
A report such as yours on Monday last is a further argument in favour of an independent media free from the watch of government a component of which claims to be progressive and democratic in name but, in practice, is neither.
Declan Cashin,
Callan Road,
Kilkenny.
