Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

They say to start as you mean to continue. By God, this Government has done that. The first thing the Government did after the election was to spend weeks and weeks talking to itself about the creation of a government. When it came back, then decide to vote to give itself two weeks' holidays. When it came back from that, it decided to create an enormous number of extremely high paid jobs for a record number of Ministers across the country.

To underpin the direction of travel for this Government, it has now decided to delete the scrutiny that would normally happen for a Bill such as this. Let us call a spade a spade. This is a Government on the make. This is a bloated Government steeped in a culture of having its snout in a trough. The idea that 40% of the TDs opposite all now have a highly paid position is incredible. All the Bill does is solidify the new arrangements between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents by creating as many goodies as possible for those TDs.

The fact is that a junior Minister will now get the salary of a TD of €113,000, with a top of €45,000 and another potential top up of €32,000 in travel expenses. A junior minister will now get approximately €200,000. A super junior Minister will get approximately €204,000. It will cost the State approximately €5 million in total.

Is there any wonder we have a culture among some elements of the administration of this country that seeks to build a bike shed for €350,000, a security hut for €1 million, a WRC wall for €500,000 or a great wall of Tara for 11 years? Is it any wonder that we have that culture in some elements of our administration, when it is being led by a Government that is steeped in exactly the same culture of waste and largesse? The culture is rotten from the top. The leadership is giving the example that taxpayers' money is there to be burned and enjoyed. That is one of the reasons the children's hospital has taken decades to build at a cost of €2.5 billion. The Government is showing the wrong example to the rest of the State. It is ripping off the taxpayer and incinerating taxpayers' money. It has to come to an end.

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