Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator MacSharry on that point very strongly. Senators from country areas cannot use the facilities of the House on the days we are not sitting. As such, many of us have set up offices in what I call our constituencies but referring to our home bases. We never asked for expenses for those offices. We asked to be allowed to put the expense of our offices under the €12,000 we get for our expenses. It was never going to cost more money, but for some reason heels were dug in. There was a view that it would give us bad press or something. In the meantime, we are all laying out big money for offices, but cannot put that in as an expense. It is crazy because we are providing the service and working for the people. I know they keep telling us we do not have constituencies and that our constituency is Ireland and I understand the point. However, we have to have a base from which to work and a place our secretaries can be if they are in our local areas. It is fine for people in Dublin. Things are really geared around Dublin people who can come in every day to Leinster House and use their offices here. We cannot do so.

Speaking for myself because everyone does things differently, I note that I rent an office and have photocopying, electricity and other costs. I bear those costs out of my wages. I am not complaining about that because I am well paid, but we should be allowed to put those costs in under our expenses. It is not about giving us any more money. The ones who ended up gaining out of all of this have been the newspapers because we ended up spending a lot of the expenses money on advertising. That is what we can put under our expenses as well as a bit of extra secretarial staff support. I cannot understand why we are not allowed to put our offices in as an expense under the same amount. I support Senator MacSharry very much on that.