Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have former Ministers, Deputies and Senators who would do great work for Ireland overseas. I welcome the comments because I would have been a kind of a citizen of Siberia in the other House for having the audacity to suggest it. We need to start talking honestly about politics, politicians, the cost of it, the number of us and the size of our constituencies, what is expected of us, what our staff are subjected to, what they are asked and what our demands are. Let us have a proper discussion about remuneration. I do not disagree one scintilla that politicians are the last people who should be determining politicians' pay. They are the very last group of people. If we are ever to unwind ourselves from this situation, we need to very mindful and very cognisant of the fact that we could be on very dangerous ground if our pay were to be restored in one fell swoop in the future, because that would be perceived as a gigantic jump in terms of salaries and the world and its mother would be giving out about whoever comes after me.

We also as politicians need to start defending our profession rather than running each other down and, at the first opportunity, saying this is a waste of money or that is a waste of money. There are bodies there, and I have come from a meeting with one of them, the Standards in Public Office Commission. Legislation will be coming into this House, which I hope all the Senators support, dealing with the standards applying to public servants, including officeholders, to Deputies and to Senators. If we have an honest conversation about that, then we can restore a bit of honour into this profession. We not all crooked. I resent the fact that some people assume that because we have the letters TD after our names or Senator before our names that we are somehow crooked. We are not. A small minority of people who went before us were and they did untold damage to the profession. It is up to the profession now to clean itself up and restore its own reputation. I am also in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and I look forward to another debate, if the Seanad is of a mind in January or February to have an honest discussion.I do not know whether I would be the Minister of State sent in because what I might say would not be too popular in some quarters. I would welcome that. It is badly overdue and needed.