a spending and claims "watchdog"

wylo

Im just wondering is there any system in place that keeps an eye on spending by all politicians, from top to bottom.
Hearing about the latest revelations reminds of me all the other claims Ive heard about over the years.
I know for a fact that there are many councilors out there going on junkets wasting our money. 5 of them might sit in a car, head to the talk, they will sign in and leave straight away, come home and claim for petrol and sometimes a hotel. Despite the fact that they are on a full time wage they still choose to commit this fraud.

It must be going on at all levels in between, surely it would be a good investment to hire a couple of people to keep an eye on all this.
And better still , to keep them honest, they could get a small reward every time they catch a politician wasting money.

Perhaps Labour or FG should push for this, it would increase their popularity even more.

Biggins

You mean this lot that make up the Dail commission on expenses:
..who themselves spent €1.3 million themselves in the last two years.
(On top of their lowest wage each of €106,000 + €40,060 allocated expense allowance and another 41,000 for a secretary)

BroomBurner

No, noone tells top politician and senior civil servants to stop spending money. They don't want to ruin their own careers, and they want to have the same privelages that their bosses have.

Rebelheart

Right, lads and girls. I'm with you on this one. I am willing to become part of a Boards.ie team which will lobby to ensure that every single member of the Oireachtas must provide the details of their expenditure.

It is absurd and deeply offensive that these people - members of Oireachtas Éireann - have no obligation to keep their receipts for expenditure when they preside over a tax system which demands that we, the public, must have receipts in order to get exemptions, funding etc from the taxpayer. This double standard, above all, drives my passion.

Le meas,

Rebelheart

PS: I'm Fianna Fáil by tradition and ideals, Labour by moral and public values (although I accept it is easier to have those values when in opposition), "Fine Gael" by educational training (i.e. Arts in UCD). I'm very proud to be Irish and European, but I look for inspiration to Scandinavia, France, Switzerland and other continental countries rather than Britain or the US. I want Ireland to be, in terms of social justice and environmental awareness, the best in the world, and therein lies my definition of patriotism.

Dannyboy83

LOL, will you guys get real?
Nothing will change and nothing can be done, this is Ireland.

In the UK, people got fired and had to back pay expenses.
In Ireland, nothing has happened, other than a few golden handshakes, which is essentially just rewarding people for corruption.

Theres only 2 ways you could change it:
1) Goto the EU and demand that they do something
2) Have a revolution

We haven't had a statesman in this country in 30 years at least

Rebelheart

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

LOL, will you guys get real?
Nothing will change and nothing can be done, this is Ireland.

In the UK, people got fired and had to back pay expenses.
In Ireland, nothing has happened, other than a few golden handshakes, which is essentially just rewarding people for corruption.

Theres only 2 ways you could change it:
1) Goto the EU and demand that they do something
2) Have a revolution

We haven't had a statesman in this country in 30 years at least

I understand where you are coming from, Danny, and to be honest I have been there too many times. I have to have faith in my people, whether that's the elderly lady I spoke with in Doolin last summer, the man I spoke with at the fleadh in Castlewellan a month later or the homeless guy on UCD campus I was speaking with yesterday. We are worth fighting for. If we don't make a stand things will get worse.

Dannyboy83

Rebelheart wrote: »

I understand where you are coming from, Danny, and to be honest I have been there too many times. I have to have faith in my people, whether that's the elderly lady I spoke with in Doolin last summer, the man I spoke with at the fleadh in Castlewellan a month later or the homeless guy on UCD campus I was speaking with yesterday. We are worth fighting for. If we don't make a stand things will get worse.

Look if you want to know what I think, forget about politics.

I was only discussing it with a bunch of elderly guys today and they said it was the exact same in their day and it will remain like that forever as long as we are ruled from Dublin.
If you have the energy to do something, be like Michael O Leary and go away and make yourself rich so you don't have to worry about these political scum.

Any ideas you have about lobbying tds or trying to take some political action to effect change, just do yourself a favour, wipe your ass with it and flush it down the toilet.
Nothing will change in this country.

About the only idea I could think of which might effect a little change would be to make a " Farenheit 9/11 // Loose Change " style documentary about the massive abuse and sheer greed of the Irish political class and then put it on google video.