Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I raised last week the importance of having a debate on the report of the review body on higher remuneration. I raised that in the context of where stands accountability and responsibility. We could widen that debate. We need to know where we as a political society are heading. It seems that every time we decide to take away decisions from politicians, a short time later somebody wants to give them back to them. We did not like the way politicians were dealing with planning matters and we set up An Bord Pleanála, and we will be happy with it until we disagree with its opinions. We did the same with the roads authority. We did the same with the HSE, which we set up with a great brouhaha, which we will discuss later, but as soon as it gets something wrong, we will want to know where lies the political accountability and responsibility. We should have a clear understanding of the difference between responsibility and accountability, where the line lies and how we should explain it to people.

I ask for a debate on the review body. I have listened carefully to the Taoiseach getting it wrong every time he stands up. I support the decision of the review body in the case of the Taoiseach's salary. I think I am the only person in either House who does, or certainly who has said so. I do not have any difficulty with it, but I have a real difficulty with the way he is handling it.

This is the reason I want to debate the matter. People stand for many things, and speak about making comparisons with other European countries. I have done all that on behalf of this House and the other House for more than 20 years. Just in case people get what they wish for, let us start across the water by comparing this House with Westminster's upper house, the members of which do not get paid. If one compares one with the other, that is where one should start. The issue is not that simple.

From a constitutional perspective, the only place to consider the Taoiseach's position is in the context of the separation of the Legislature and the Executive. We have guarded that every step of the way since the foundation of the State and everybody agrees with it. The point is that since the foundation of the State in 1922, the head of the Judiciary, the Chief Justice, has been paid exactly the same as the Taoiseach. It is worthwhile for people to note that before we get into the debate because if one cannot find an external comparator and we do not agree with any of the private sector comparators, that is the one to which we should refer. While one might not have read it in any newspaper, the salary increase the Chief Justice got, to which he was entitled and earned, was exactly the same as that which the Taoiseach got. The Chief Justice is paid, to the penny, the same as the Taoiseach.

I want a debate here because I want to hear the different points of view. I am not here to defend the Taoiseach, but I am defending the system under which we took responsibility for this out of the hands of politicians and set up a review body, the members of which do a thankless job and in the main do not even draw a salary for it.

Although my time has expired, I want to make another brief point. It bodes ill — I will probably go to see a doctor later today — to find myself of one mind with Mr. Myers of the Irish Independent. However, I have been sick over the weekend since I read the story from Saudi Arabia, which has been confirmed on all sides, about a woman and her partner who were raped, and because they were together and unrelated, the woman has now not only to suffer the trauma of being raped but has been sentenced to 200 lashes by the official courts of Saudi Arabia. I say this because I am not surprised, and never have been due to my involvement with Amnesty International, by what goes on in Saudi Arabia, but it sickens me to my teeth that the western world treats these as if they were civilised and decent——