Dáil’s ‘swearing system’ for unvouched expenses doesn’t add up when so many have lost so much
IF YOU work for a private company and claim expenses, they must be vouched. If you are self-employed, you can claim nothing against your annual tax bill unless you have every receipt in order, and even then you can be randomly audited, and grilled to account for every cent you spent.
That is why yet another wrongheaded move to help politicians claim expenses is not what this Dáil needs to bolster its credibility with the public right now.
The current system for claiming unvouched-for expenses is arcane and obtuse. To help our elected representatives claim travel expenses, they are now allowed to swear they attend sittings. What other workplace would permit such a bizarre system to be introduced, when the Revenue Commissioners themselves would never allow it for the average taxpaying citizen?
It should be a given that politicians must forego any travel expenses for the time they weren’t travelling during lockdown. The system is there for legitimate recompense, not financial reward.
Expenses themselves are fine; no employee, politician or other, should have to spend his or her own money on behalf of an employer. That said, the current system, introduced largely as a vexatious move to prevent Freedom of Information requests about who claimed what and why, ought to be scrapped and replaced with absolute transparency.
The time is ripe now for reform of the entire system because the public has no stomach for this nonsense in a world in which thousands have lost their jobs, and thousands more remain on income support during a pandemic furlough. An angry electorate cannot and will not accept the laxity and generosity of this ludicrous set-up.
We are told the unvouched system is still subject to audit, but how many are audited? Undeniably, the number seems small compared with that of the wider populace. The swearing of propriety is not enough. The taxpayer is ultimately on the hook for all expenses, and the very least we can expect is that they are vouched.
COVID SOLIDARITY HANGS BY THREAD
TIME and again, the new Government has failed where the previous caretaker administration excelled. Micheál Martin’s uneasy coalition insists the proposal to force pubs to retain receipts for 28 days is straightforward and in line with current practices.
Can it also really have failed to notice that public confidence is at an all-time low in relation to the management of the Covid crisis, when you take into account the multiple contradictions we are now expected to accept?
Instead of building support, politicians are perceived as going after publicans with pointless bureaucracy that serves no health interest. If checking a receipt after a month is going to help someone who presented with Covid three weeks ago, they need to better explain how.
If this really is a commonsense measure, they need to better communicate the logic informing it. The virus is the enemy, not publicans.
The battle was won during the first wave with a sense of solidarity – much that has happened in the short lifetime of this government is a grave threat to the continuation of that common purpose.