Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Leader, like many others, will have seen an article in Monday's Irish Independent- a front page and a two-page spread exposé-type article within - on the redundancy arrangements for retiring county, city and town councillors. The journalist in question described these payments as controversial, and he anticipated that there would be a public outcry about them. I fear that his prediction is unfounded because the people know quite well the level of work that former town councillors and city and county councillors do 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the year and that they would not for one minute begrudge those redundancy payments to the recipients. In fact, I calculated that the redundancy packages, where some of the more senior and long-serving councillors are concerned, would amount to less than €30 per week for those who in some cases have given over 40 years' service. I doubt if any journalist or reporter in the country would accept that as a redundancy package.
However, it gives rise to an issue which I hope the Leader can address. We might be able to have the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government in the House in due course to discuss a revised regime of payments to the new county councillors, many of whom represent constituencies twice the size of those they had to represent previously. The workload has not got any lighter. The Minister also should look at introducing a contributory pension for serving councillors whereby they would make a contribution which the local authority would match in order that these councillors would get a meaningful and proper pension when they finished their long years of service instead of being held up to what is an attempt at ridicule of the aggregated sums of some of the bigger earners.