Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I never received such a payment. Such payments are anomalous in terms of the pressures we are facing and we need to abolish them. We are doing a lot of things we did not do in the 1990s. Perhaps we should have done them at that stage. A number of policies were wrongly bolted on during what were purported to be the boom times. At one stage, all but two Fianna Fáil Members had an allowance for something. The public reacted badly to this and we need to address the issue. I am also minded that we should avoid the other extreme. Politics should not be for those who can afford to practise it as a hobby. One of the first demands of the British Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century, when it first elected representatives to the UK Parliament, was to have parliamentarians paid. Until then it had been a gentleman's club to which people moved from the law library or the shires. For ordinary people to do a job, there is a rate that should be paid. I am conscious of this as a former trade union official.

I have listened with care and noted the passion - I use the word advisedly - with which the proposers of the amendment, Senators Paul Bradford and Fidelma Healy Eames, have made their arguments.

I said on the last occasion that I believed they were motivated by honourable beliefs to table this amendment. I have a different view on it, as I have explained at length.

A snapshot in time, namely, the day of the election, determines the parliamentary provision we provide. As to why we provide any parliamentary provision from the public purse, we do so to address the issue about which all of us are deeply concerned, namely, that everybody is entitled to operate within the political system, of which parties are an essential part, although they are not formally recognised in the Constitution. They run press offices, conduct research and support their members. Traditionally, that was done through the leader's allowance and it will now be done at a reduced rate through the new parliamentary activities allowance. It is available to both party members and Independents, as determined by that snapshot in time when the electorate, whether it be the confined electorate for this House or the broader franchise for the other House, determines the distribution of the money. The essence of the argument being made is that this should be a variable and cover a situation where people move out or in of a party, but that is highly problematic for all the reasons I have given.

To put this matter in its context, the backdrop is the reforming of the political funding system whereby one would had to be beholden, either at the church gate or, bluntly, more alarmingly at the Galway tent, to people with deep pockets; of course, they were not giving the contributions to influence policy and they were giving it, I am sure, for the best of motivations, but the perception is that if people with deep pockets give very large contributions to political parties or individual politicians, they could be influencing decision-making and policy-making. That is the reason we moved in the electoral Acts and the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act which we are now amending to bring forward a different support mechanism which, obviously, we have to keep under constant review.

The point I will make in response to Senator Thomas Byrne's point on people leaving and surrendering their allowances is that it does not get away from fixed point decision-making. In my judgment, it would be very complicated were it to be a moveable feast. I gave the example of Deputy Willie Penrose in my own party who had left the parliamentary party and then rejoined it. Are we supposed to constantly adjust for those who are in and out on the basis of having a proper support system and so on for parliamentarians?