Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State spoke of consistency. The only thing that is consistent is the inconsistency. The report states: "In the interests of fairness and equality, it is important that travel rates that apply to councillors are consistent with those that apply to local authority employees and other groups across the public sector."

The Government wants them to have the same mileage rate, but it does not want them to have the same allowances or rates of pay.Their allowances and pay are not consistent with that in the public sector, yet they are being told now that their milage rate is dropping from 46 cent per kilometre up to 6,438 km to 39 cent. It has been admitted that many councillors will be worse off. I welcome the idea of reviewing pay although it should be named the low pay commission. Hopefully there will be a timeline. The €1,000 being provided is not being back-paid, even though it is acknowledged that since 2014 the amount of work being done and the area being covered has extended enormously for the 949 councillors that remain from the 1,600 that were in place previously. The back pay only applies as far back as last summer and not 2014. The €1,000, for the benefit of Members, is an increase of €2.74 per day. If the tax is taken from that, it comes to €1.42.

My words are not half as good as those we received when I sent out the circular that was issued to us last night. I received these from the public representatives. One contribution was, "The current proposals are an absolute insult to me and to the vast majority of my elected members". Another said, "With regard to the idea of the €1,000 for municipal members, there is no allowance to backdate the allowance to the date the workload actually increased", which was in 2014. On the issue of the vouched expenses, "The small increase was to compensate councillors for the additional work, not to add to their workload", which the vouched expenses system will do. Another contribution was, "Unlike TDs and Senators, humbler councillors are not exempt from commercial rates on dedicated constituency offices". They cannot even buy ink. If someone wants to go to a conference, he or she will not be reimbursed and, therefore, if he or she does not have another job, he or she is unable to attend. They cannot buy paper, ink, stationery or any smaller items with the expenses they receive. Ten days a year are provided for teachers, but there is no substitute cover. That is another issue that needs to be addressed by the low pay commission. A final contribution states, "This is a joke. How many civil servants work for this kind of money?". I received many other contributions.