No such thing as too many comments! All welcome.

I think most of your suggestions are reasonable. However the idea that a Deputy would setup home in far off Dublin and rent a room for ocassional trips back to the consituency would be a recipe for a rapid eviction at the next election! Getting too close to the ‘Dublin elite’ has sounded the death knell for many a politician. Granted the idea makes sense objectively.

The reverse suggestion works in every respect though, but in actual fact this is mostly what is normally done. The extravagant hotel bills and opulent spreads tend to be cases of junkets abroad rather than day to day occupational expenses. The majority of TDs would rent an apartment or hotel room in Dublin and use it for the portion of week they attend Dáil.

The points re the legitimate workload are valid and interesting. This is a common conundrum. The unfortunate reality very few Deputies play any role in legislating, certainly not in the Dáil chamber. They may contribute to a bill via Oireachtas committees but very few will have the opportunity to initate legislation. There is a wider issue around the role of Deputies which concerns their limited remit (not by design but by practice) and the downsides of the whip system. Really it is only Ministers who can introduce legislation and certainly not an opposition Deputy. The rules of the house do no say this but it has evolved as the practice over time.

The day to day work performed by politician’s offices can be very clientelist and mundane. Yet it appears to be what people want. They certainly look for it in their droves. I witnessed this personally when I stood for election myself. It is a huge overhead and often will not produce more than the constituent could have achieved on their own stead anyway. However a public rep (or candidate) does tend to accumulate a knowledge of the system, not in any kind of malign way but more a case of how to navigate. This kind of advice can be usefully supplied.

It does leave the paradox where we want our TDs to legislate and govern but we also want them to fix our pavements and pander. Not an easy one to resolve.

On the point of party political activities, this is already funded separately from the rest and not by the tax payer. There is no allowance claimable for election campaigning or putting up posters. This has to be paid for privately and is what I will treat more of in the next few posts. Whilst I will detail my own incomings and outgoings in campaigning, I will also highlight that funding from some quarter is needed to cover it. If we remove all other avenues except personal wealth then we are creating a very elitist and not very democratic oligarchy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8303312.stm

Pay each non-Dublin TD a travel allowance for constituency visits equal to the following:

2w p (d – 30) / c

where

w = number of weeks that Dáil Éireann is in session
p = price of a litre of petrol (as ascertained by the C.S.O.)
c = consumption of a typical family saloon car, in km per litre
d = distance from the G.P.O., Dublin to the point in the constituency
furthest from Dublin, measured in km.

This should cover the cost of a car journey from Dublin to the constituency and back every week whilst the Dáil is in session. Additional journeys would not be funded by the taxpayer. It would be an unvouched expense, but it would surely be comparatively easy to administer, and preferable to requiring TDs to produce petrol station receipts to vouch for their travelling expenses when on constituency visits.

You write as follows: “Also whilst vouched expenses will presumably elevate transparency, any hope of savings to the state from same may be misguided, as the vouched total could tally to considerably more.”

This seems to presuppose that the taxpayer would have an obligation to fund all expenditure legitimately incurred by public representatives, were those expenses transparent and fully vouched. I suggest though that there ought to be ceilings imposed on expenditure under any given heading to ensure that the expenditure is legitimately incurred by the representative in performance of his or her duties as a legislator or councillor, and that the amounts reflect the economic cost of the activity incurring the expenditure.

I have no knowledge of how the system actually works – other than that gleaned from perusing the media. So I am trying to think things through pretty well from first principles.

TDs are elected by their constituents to serve as legislators in Dáil Éireann, proposing, scrutinizing, improving and voting for or against legislation. They are not elected to attend funerals, intervene in the interactions of their constituents with officialdom, open local businesses, or generally act so as to ingratiate themselves with their constituents in order to outpace a constituency rival. They may choose to engage in such activities, within reason, provided that they do not neglect their public duties. But maybe they don’t have an entitlement to engage in such activities at the taxpayer’s expense.

If the general public deserve more assistance in their dealings with bureaucracy, then this should be provided for by enhanced public funding of citizens’ advice bureaux, ombudsmen, etc.

I understand that many TDs are former teachers, lecturers at third level, local businessman, solicitors and other professionals. The basic salary of a backbench TD should be too far out of line with that enjoyed by people in such occupations. Expenses over and above that basic salary should be justified by economic costs of accommodation, travel, office expenses etc. justified by the special nature of the work that TDs are elected to perform.

Start with accommodation. The primary place of work of a TD is in Dublin whilst Dáil Éireann is in session. Normally people are expected to take up residence within commuting distance of their place of work, and do not get paid expenses to cover accommodation and commuting costs whilst they are active in their normal place of work. For TDs representing constituencies in the Dublin metropolitan area, that should be the end of the story. For TDs representing constituencies away from Dublin there are other factors that should be taken into account.

First of all, a TD is representing constituents in the Dáil, and therefore it is appropriate that the TD be present in the constituency from time to time to interact with constituents and gauge their views on matters of public concern.
A second point to be taken into account is that TDs do not enjoy job security!

So, in the case of TDs not based in the Dublin area, it seems legitimate for a TD to maintain a family home in the Dublin area, whilst claiming travel and overnight expenses for regular visits to his or her constituency. Alternatively the TD might maintain the family home in the constituency, and claim travel and overnight expenses when in Dublin. The latter alternative might in particular be more suitable if the TD has a family with children of school age.

So, now, let us try to put a ceiling on legitimate overnight expenses for a TD maintaining his or her primary residence in a community distant from Dublin. Such a TD might rent an apartment in Dublin. From the daft.ie website, I note, in the Q2 report, averages of 1,107 euro per month for a one-bedroom apartment in D2, and 1,312 euro per month for a two-bedroom apartment in D2. This suggests a ceiling of perhaps 15,000 euro per annum for overnight expenses for such a TD. I suggest though that any ceiling on overnight and travel costs should not be fixed over long periods of time, but should fluctuate with rents, petrol costs, public transport costs etc. The justification for payment of such expenses in addition to the basic TD salary is that they ensure that TDs from places like West Cork are not financially disadvantaged vis a vis Dublin TDs when they carry out their duties as legislators on behalf of their constituents.

One can of course make a case for expenses covering constituency office staff, and for researchers. But one should, I believe, distinguish between expenses legitimately incurred by TDs as legislators on behalf of their constituents, and other expenses that are incurred through political activity, and, in particular party-political activity: attending party conferences, campaign costs, posters etc. If there is a case for such party-political activities to be part-funded by the taxpayer, then it is better that political parties receive public funding in proportion to their representation, or to their first preference vote. Some of funds received by parties would then be dispersed to their local activists to finance party-political activity. Responsibility for ensuring that the money is well-spent would then rest with the political party organization.