Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What the Deputy is saying is that politicians should decide their own pay. I do not believe that is a good system. I do not believe that, in any other walk of life, people get to decide their own pay. There is a pay increase that people can decide to either accept or reject. Apart from the 2% increase, which the Deputy says he is gifting back to the State, what I hear him say, in essence, is that he is accepting the full salary from the State but that he is deciding what to do with it. This means he has already accepted a number of rounds of restoration of previous FEMPI pay cuts. Politicians within People Before Profit are accepting that and they are then putting that into some fund, apparently, which they presumably then make a decision on how to distribute, and in respect of which the State has no role whatsoever. Apart from this 2%, what I hear the Deputy saying is that he is accepting the full salary from the State. What we are doing is open and transparent. The Deputy is preaching over there while, at the same time, he has been taking the full salary from the State but not telling everybody what the balance is, in net terms, that he says he does not take. Is it gross or is it net? Where does that money go?

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