Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I echo the sentiments of our esteemed Leader and welcome you back, a Chathaoirligh. It is wonderful to see you back in your rightful place in the Chair. I think all of us, right across the Chamber, have missed you and we wish you very well in the future, in particular a very happy Christmas. This is not scripted as I was not expecting you to be here, but it is great to have you back.

There are a few points I want to make and this morning when I was thinking about what I might say, I believe it is reasonable for me to say that I have never played the person in this Chamber nor will I. I always talk about the issue. There are many issues on which I could have played the person but I wish to raise the resignation of a Member of the Lower House today and the behaviour in terms of signing in and fobbing in. While there has been much discussion about the person's entitlement to expenses or otherwise, the reality is that regardless of the expenses, which are far more generous than a lot of other people's because the Member in question is further away, he was being paid a salary of approximately €90,000 a year to do a job and it appears that he has been doing another job, quite effectively it seems, somewhere else yet he was still being paid. That reflects badly on everybody. It reflects badly on Fine Gael but it also reflects badly on every single Member of both Houses. I think there is probably an issue in terms of how people are entitled to their salary and, equally, to their expenses. I know of a school not too far from where I live where everybody fobs in every morning with his or her fingerprint. Ten minutes after a student should have arrived in the school, parents get a text to say so and so is not in today if he or she has not fobbed in. That is fine if such students are at home in bed because they are sick, but if they went off to school in the morning and did not arrive, at least their parents are aware of that and they can do something about it or investigate it further.