Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 4, between lines 21 and 22, to insert the following:

“(3) The parliamentary activities allowance shall be paid from voted expenditure not paid from the Central Fund.”.

The Minister has heard me talking about this issue before. I have a later amendment on the broader issue. The Minister spoke about open government. There is no reason for the parliamentary activities allowance not to come through the Minister's Vote every year. I know it is not germane to his Department. However, we need to have some mechanism for us to have a debate each year in the Dáil. There is a debate on every other Estimate of Government expenditure apart from a handful of items. I do not know why the political system is so sensitive about it - historically it has been. This is paid from the Central Fund to the parties. Is it paid by the Department of Finance or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform? I suspect it is the Department of Finance if it comes from the Central Fund. This is not quite right. The Minister is the sponsoring Minister for this legislation, yet the payment is not coming through his Department but through the Department of Finance and the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan. Even though this might be a difficult debate, it would be healthier for democracy if we had a brief debate on this issue each year as part of the Estimates process through some mechanism. I am always opposed to any of these payments going through the Central Fund because that bypasses the entire Oireachtas every year and there is no Estimates debate on it.