Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The section relates to the existing legislative provisions. There are already sections in legislation providing for all of these matters such as the payment for travelling facilities, overnight allowances, telephones, miscellaneous expenses, constituency office and constituency travel. Each of those has a distinct statutory existence. The first sub-section enables me to make a regulation if I so wish to provide for a composite allowance instead of the existing provisions. That is what it means.

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