Standards Commission senator vows he will refund expenses paid during Oireachtas Covid shutdown
A SENATOR who oversees Oireachtas standards says he will refund “any and all nonincurred expenses” paid to him during the coronavirus lockdown when the Senate was closed.
Ned O’Sullivan of Fianna Fáil is a member of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission which approved of steps to deal with Covid challenges – but which overlooked the payments of expenses, which he admitted was an “anomaly”.
Another Fianna Fáil senator, Eugene Murphy, declared yesterday he had “no difficulty in paying some back if asked”, when he made an appearance of Galway Bay FM.
He defended the payments received while the Seanad was closed, saying the time in question was “probably the busiest period he has had in politics”.
Mr Murphy, who lost his seat in the general election, said he said he held clinics in both Roscommon and Galway and had also made “several trips” to meet ministers in Dublin.
Fianna Fáil senator Malcolm Byrne, who told the Irish Independent he has made a waiver of the travel allowance – and whose receipts are far lower than his colleagues’ – said he accepted this newspaper’s disclosures amounted to “bad public relations” for the upper house in showing €240,000 was paid out for the two months of closure.
Green senator Vincent P Martin, who is a brother of party deputy leader Catherine Murphy, commended the Irish Independent on its story. Mr Martin was a Taoiseach’s appointee to the Seanad and did not receive any of the controversial payments.
He said it was “a good piece of investigative journalism”, adding of his colleagues: “I don’t know how they can justify taking expenses when the place wasn’t sitting.”
Other senators are understood to be considering how they will react, after the Irish Independent highlighted yesterday that 48 members of the upper house were paid €120,000 for each of the two main months of lockdown.
The money, an average of €4,000 each, was paid out to senators under the umbrella heading of the parliamentary standard allowance (PSA). It is on top of the annual senator’s salary of €66,111.
The PSA is made up of two elements, the travel and accommodation allowance (TAA) and the parliamentary representation allowance (PRA). The latter covers office costs and matters such as money spent on advertising the holding of clinics.