Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for their questions and contributions. Former taoisigh and Presidents have an ongoing role. It was mentioned that such an ongoing role can be beneficial to the country. Former President Mary Robinson was mentioned, for example, for her role in climate action and climate change. That is not just good for the world, it also reflects well on the country and we should be cognisant of that. It makes sense that if we have former officeholders - former taoisigh and Presidents - we should ask them to assist the country. They are people who are generally held in good standing internationally, who have good contacts, who know things and have great experience. We should see them as an asset to the country, not to the Government, if they are willing to continue to do things for the country. I should point out that they are also members of the Council of State for life so they do have a formal role under the Constitution. Being a retired Taoiseach is not a formal role but being a member of the Council of State is. Former officeholders continue to receive a significant amount of correspondence, media queries relating to their work, queries from historians and even queries from inquiries. They receive a huge amount of correspondence and queries, even unwanted correspondence and queries. They have been asked to assist in our UN work, in particular in the campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council and on European issues such as Brexit, to explain our case and issues in fora around the world and also, on occasion, in Northern Ireland.

Former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has a role in monitoring the referendum in Papua New Guinea. It is a really important role and we should be supportive of him in that. I had a very brief phone call with the new Prime Minister of Australia and one of the first things he mentioned to me is that our former Taoiseach is involved in the referendum in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

It was not something I brought up. It was something the Australian Prime Minister was aware of and volunteered. That just gives an example of the benefit of that sort of soft power of having our citizens around the world doing this kind of work. The former Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, has a role with the EU around human rights which has been very effective. While it is an EU role, the fact it is being done by an Irish person reflects well on us. Everyone will be familiar with the ongoing engagement of the former Taoiseach, John Bruton, in European affairs and US relations, given his role as EU ambassador to the US in the past. I know there was mention of large amounts of money and hundreds of thousands of euro. I would say once again that the secretarial assistance is vouched and the total cost of this scheme so far this year has been €21,190 for all officeholders combined. The previous scheme, which was abolished in 2012, cost about €168,000 to €183,000 a year. It really is very modest compared to what was there before. All four former taoisigh were contacted to make them aware of the assistance available, the rules and specifically that any work had to be associated with their former role. The decision to avail of supports is entirely at the discretion of each individual and they are under no obligation to make use of it. So far, only one former Taoiseach has elected to recruit a secretarial assistant and the same individual has made one request for detailed briefing material on Brexit. I take Deputy Howlin's point on transparency and I am absolutely willing to be as transparent as we possibly can but the general data protection regulation, GDPR, did actually change things. Our privacy laws in Ireland are different from what they were a few years ago. While it was possible in the past to disclose, for example, how much every individual officeholder got in terms of his or her pension and so on, under the GDPR there are new privacy rights that apply to every citizen. It is no longer possible for a Government to disclose what any individual public servant gets paid in terms of their pension or salary. We could remove that for everyone or no one but that previous system where it was transparent for some and not others no longer applies. The GDPR has changed that.

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