Dublin West General Election - SEE MOD NOTE POST 19.

chucknorris wrote: »

For example, if you were to take the office at €600 a month for say 10 months, that's €6000 alone. As crazy as it seems, FF HQ do not pay a cent for constituency offices.

The figures from Fingal show that Cllr McGuinness received an average of just over €24,000 per annum.

Based on these figures its safe to surmise that Cllr McGuinness has received over €100,000, in payments and expenses since 2011 to the present date from Fingal County Council for his work as a Councillor.

Which by far, exceeds any of the figures you have mentioned in your posts.

Pat Dunne wrote: »

The figures from Fingal show that Cllr McGuinness received an average of just over €24,000 per annum.

Based on these figures its safe to surmise that Cllr McGuinness has received over €100,000, in payments and expenses since 2011 to the present date from Fingal County Council for his work as a Councillor.

Which by far, exceeds any of the figures you have mentioned in your posts.

I see now the point you are making.

If you read back on my post, about an example of a constituency office, I clearly said 'as an example' to show how easily something like €8700 would be gobbled up, in the context that FF HQ agreed for it to be spent specifically on areas like that - for the first time.

Every single Councillor gets €17000 plus the €6000 expenses by default (Without question). Some go well above that. That's half the average industrial wage, although a Councillors remuneration shouldn't be considered as a wage at all, but take it as a comparison. Take tax from the base and it's lower still. You'll probably get a figure of €60,000 for four years after deductions. Some people wouldn't get out of bed for that in one year and credit to ANY Councillor, as it's a part-time money for a full time job, 7 days a week, usually on top of a full time job (although in David's case, he only went full time 18 months ago). If you do have another job, you can then almost half that €17000 in terms of tax immediately as most here will know. If I for example worked on a Saturday in my job, and I got say €300 as overtime, €150 of that is immediately gone, but good for society

@Pat Dunne, while we are pointing out correctly every single Councillor gets in Fingal from the publicly available figures, gross, what would you say the cost is for example of the following - keeping in mind the figures wouldn't publicly be accessible:

(1)To have a leaflet dropped in to every house in Dublin west, but also the print that leaflet? (40,000 houses in Dublin west on average) on a quarterly basis.

(2) To sponsor any given local organisations race night or fund raiser.

(3) A set of jerseys for a sports club.

chucknorris wrote: »

I see now the point you are making.

If you read back on my post, about an example of a constituency office, I clearly said 'as an example' to show how easily something like €8700 would be gobbled up, in the context that FF HQ agreed for it to be spent specifically on areas like that - for the first time.

Every single Councillor gets €17000 plus the €6000 expenses by default (Without question). Some go well above that. That's half the average industrial wage, although a Councillors remuneration shouldn't be considered as a wage at all, but take it as a comparison. Take tax from the base and it's lower still. You'll probably get a figure of €60,000 for four years after deductions. Some people wouldn't get out of bed for that in one year and credit to ANY Councillor, as it's a part-time money for a full time job, 7 days a week, usually on top of a full time job (although in David's case, he only went full time 18 months ago). If you do have another job, you can then almost half that €17000 in terms of tax immediately as most here will know. If I for example worked on a Saturday in my job, and I got say €300 as overtime, €150 of that is immediately gone, but good for society

@Pat Dunne, while we are pointing out correctly every single Councillor gets in Fingal from the publicly available figures, gross, what would you say the cost is for example of the following - keeping in mind the figures wouldn't publicly be accessible:

(1)To have a leaflet dropped in to every house in Dublin west, but also the print that leaflet? (40,000 houses in Dublin west on average) on a quarterly basis.

(2) To sponsor any given local organisations race night or fund raiser.

(3) A set of jerseys for a sports club.

Based on what you are saying he was earning well above the average industrial salary when you combine these two sources of income for most of this period

looked into this further, someone pointed me to an amendment to the 1997 Electoral act in 1998

Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1998
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1998/en/act/pub/0004/sec0011.html#sec11

Amendment of section 32 of Act of 1997.
11.—Section 32 of the Act of 1997 is hereby amended—

(d) (4) Election expenses incurred pursuant to this section by a political party in a constituency in relation to a candidate at a Dáil election (including expenditure incurred in the constituency by or on behalf of the national agent of the party) shall be deemed for the purposes of section 21 to be expenses incurred by the candidate.”.

the explaination of which at the time the Bill was debated was
http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1998/03/31/00019.asp

The amendment in paragraph (d) inserts a new subsection (4) which clarifies that expenditure by a party in a constituency, including expenditure by the national agent, will be deemed to be expenditure by a candidate for the purposes of the reimbursement of the election expenses of the candidate. This will change the present position that the expenditure of a party in constituencies other than the candidate's constituency could be used by a candidate to claim recoupment of election expenditure. The new arrangement clarifies that only expenditure in the constituency can be included in the candidate's claim.

so its about restricting expenses claims to the candidate constituency, not sure it fully clarifies that only candidates can get state reimbursements.

Pat Dunne wrote: »

Could I ask if you are actually go to partake in actual discussion on this thread or if you are just going to continually post links.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=95092880&postcount=221
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=95092880#post95092880

I am contributing to the discussion, I said all I could possible say in that last post, I thought it was worth following up as thats the closest I've seen of a law that states what McGuinness claims rather then what Fianna Fail claimed.

i was soo about to unsubscribe. <SNIP>

So back to the election, all candidates are getting active again and competing for exposure.

Rodric O'Gormon has public meeting posters up in the village,
Donnelly has 'housing is a human right' posters up on polls.
Coppinger is in the journal today asking customs to turn a blind eye to abortion pills.
Varadkar is promoting areas of good news from government.
Joan is also trying this but was verbally abused at Clonsilla train station this morning.
McGuinness is taking part in a charity in Clonee.

Seen Mickey Martin on the news this evening and being questioned about Avril Powers decision to jump ship. He started extolling the virtues of Jack Chambers and how we would be hearing much more about him later.

He really must not have thought that Mc Guinness would jump ship and run as an independent.

Must be sick as a pig. lol Good enough for him.

FF is a series of groupings, almost like franchises. They operate on their own, individually, under umbrella of FF.

When David left the party, himself and herself were in an RTE audience with Claire Byrne, and where David slammed the party for a lot of the reasons Averil mentioned yesterday, she disagreed with David.

What you can say when you are inside the tent, is different that what you can say when you are outside of it.

I think she'll do very as an independent.

Heard odds given by paddy power for an election this year are 10/11. Odds are a snap elect after the budget in October

expectationlost wrote: »

what date was this ? not this one, not the debate on FF's future http://www.rte.ie/news/player/claire-byrne-live-web/2015/0420/
here he is a 27 minutes

don't see power there, who is 'herself'?

My apologies, it was actually on Sean O'Rourke.

In regard to the point I made, listen from about 12 minutes on and you hear the position Averil has in regard to FF.

That's two days after St Patrick's day. You would never have believed she was thinking of leaving the party. My point being being - what you can say and what you cannot say depends on whether you are in side or outside the tent.

http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A20746218%3A0%3A%3A

It's ironic, you need the clout of a technical grouping to assert your independence. I think McGuinness has made a good choice, he will get something of a reflected boost from some of the other Alliance members as they speak during the campaign.

However, they will not be allowed onto the ballot as 'Independent Alliance' or even 'Independent', the rules mean they will have to contest as 'Non-Party'