Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Following agreement between the housing bodies and NAMA, I expect the flow of properties from NAMA for social housing to increase significantly next year and an additional €10 million will be allocated to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to ensure we make real progress in delivering these units to those on social housing lists who need them. A range of other expenditure measures are set out in the expenditure report.

Political Expenses Reform

The payments the Members of these Houses receive are constantly under scrutiny and rightly so. While the revised system of expenses introduced by the last Government was an improvement on what went before, the system remains unsatisfactory. The recent Committee of Public Accounts report has raised a number of issues regarding who should determine Oireachtas expenses. As the PAC report acknowledges, previous efforts at the independent setting of remuneration did not resolve all issues. To that end, I have written to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, as the body responsible for these Houses, seeking its views on a cross-party, all-Member basis.

Nonetheless, there are a number of issues that require to be addressed immediately.

It is untenable to have a system of unvouched expenses so I am proposing to abolish the unvouched element of the parliamentary standard allowance.

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