Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I am impressed at how anxious Deputy Power is to speak on this very important motion. I appreciate having the opportunity to make my small contribution to this debate. This is an extremely important issue and follows on from the point I made on the Order of Business about the urgency and the impetus required to restore some degree of public confidence in the political system and integrity into political life. Everybody in the House is aware that politics has been damaged from the perspective of the Government and the Opposition. The public has lost confidence in politics and is cynical. In many instances people are rightly cynical and disappointed because they feel let down by the political system. It is essential that we restore some degree of moral authority.

In the context of our current budgetary position and the fiscal corrections which will inevitably have to take place this year, the impetus to achieve some degree of moral authority for the Government and politics in general becomes even more pressing. We are all aware that we face a very difficult budget again at the end of this year on top of last year's budget which saw €4 billion in savings. We expect similar savings to be proposed by the Government in the coming budget in December or perhaps sooner.

For that very difficult pill to be swallowed by the public, it expects and deserves some leadership at Government level. It would make that bitter pill slightly more acceptable. The Government cannot afford to apply double standards to this and that is why this Private Members' motion is so important. People can see that politicians are well paid, which is correct, and Ministers are particularly well paid. I do not disagree with that. To see people in positions where they are very well paid with taxpayers' money and simultaneously drawing down pensions while serving in office is unacceptable. I have always found this unacceptable and not just because the issue has been whipped up by the media in recent weeks. Since I have participated in politics, I considered this unacceptable.

I am pleased we have reached a point where the issue is now in the public eye and under the media microscope. The Fine Gael proposals are very simple and modest and despite what the Government has said, they are constitutional. It is important to make that point. This is a House of Parliament, which is designed as a Legislature with the capacity and authority to legislate. There is no constitutional case to be made against the Legislature legislating on political remuneration. I reject out of hand any suggestion on the part of the Government that the proposal to stop or prohibit ministerial pensions being paid to serving Members is unconstitutional.

We must go beyond the proposals before the House today. The Government must legislate to prevent all public pension payments to Oireachtas Members. Any Member of these Houses in receipt of a public pension - whether as a former member of the Garda Síochána or as a teacher - should not continue to receive it while drawing down a public salary. That is not to say that people have not legitimately accumulated and properly contributed to pensions for retirement. They are entitled to such pensions, although not while drawing a significant salary in this House as a Member or as a Minister. Those payments must be also frozen. I am conscious that not everyone will agree with me. People on both sides of the House would have difficulty with it because they believe they have legitimate expectations. There is a legal argument in that respect, but there is no moral argument. Anyone drawing down a salary of €100,000 plus should not be in receipt of a public pension. It is not good enough to say that people should voluntarily forgo pension payments. Legislation needs to be introduced to prevent the payments for serving Members. When they retire, they could receive their pension payments just as other retired public servants are entitled to do.

We need to stand up to some of the criticism of politicians and to the media hype concerning politicians' legitimate salaries. This is an important point. The perception is that we, as Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, have taken no pay cuts and have not been affected in any way by the measures introduced since finding ourselves in recession almost two years ago. This is not correct. Every Deputy has been subject to the pension and income levy and all of the other levies applied to the public sector. It is right and proper that we accept our fair share of the pain and the blame.

The opinion that politicians should not be paid to a reasonable standard is wrong. Reverting to a situation in which politics is only possible for the rich would be a dangerous prospect. People such as me and many of my colleagues on both sides of the House, who entered politics at a young age and did not have vast empires or the opportunity to earn large sums over many years beforehand, would have been prevented from entering politics. It is important to point out that politics must be accessible to people from all walks of life, that they should be able to put their names forward for election and that they should have a prospect of reasonable remuneration upon election, given the opportunities they will necessarily forfeit. Politics should be representative and this House should be representative of the general population. The more we can reflect normal society in the Chamber, the more legitimate and accountable political life will be.

Anyone in receipt of a significant salary in the House, be he or she from any sector of public life, should not be entitled to draw a public pension. This is an important principle that we need to apply in the House and across the public sector. Yesterday, I submitted a series of parliamentary questions to every Department, the responses to which were, to put it mildly, less than accountable and transparent. I asked every Department the number of former public servants who had been appointed or employed as political advisers, spin doctors, etc. to Ministers and Departments. Bar the Department of Foreign Affairs, every Department refused to answer this simple question. If we are discussing governance in an age of transparency and openness, the openness that applies to Ministers and other elected representatives should apply to those employed to advise them and perform their media work, namely, the spin doctors and handlers in the background. As we are all aware, quite a number of these people employed in various Departments are retired from other walks of life in the public sector. Such people should be accountable. Many of them are better paid than Deputies. If they are in receipt of major public salaries, they should not be drawing down pensions from previous public employment. It is a double standard and inconsistent to suggest that these principles should apply to Deputies and Ministers, but not to spin doctors and handlers. Every Department should reassess its position in this respect.

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