Enda Kenny, Fine Gael, pensions and gross hypocrisy

Dionysus

So, all that talk from Fine Gael about how shameful it was/is of Fianna Fáil ministers to have numerous pensions and accept large severance payments has just been blown out of the water by Pat Leahy in today's Sunday Business Post.

According to the SBP (story available online at 10am tomorrow), Enda Kenny was a teacher in the 1970s for four years. Four years! This coming April Kenny will be entitled to a payment of €100,000 for reaching his 60th birthday. Each year thereafter he will be entitled to an additional pension of €30,000 per annum. This is on top of his entitlement to a TD's pension and a ministerial pension. Oh, and he has already admitted to taking 250,000 in pensions and severance payments to date.

Rotten. To think Fine Gael was attacking Micheál Martin for being entitled to his teacher's pension - a right Martin publicly renounced - and all along Kenny never came out and renounced his right to his numerous pensions and this (massive) severance payment. Martin also stated that, if re-elected, he will not take his own (massive) ministerial pension of €90,000. Why did Kenny not come out at the same time and make such a commitment about this payment?

Tell me, somebody, just what is the real "reform" and "change" which Fine Gael is offering us when underneath it all its leading members are engaging in the same sycophancy for which they've condemned Fianna Fáil? Why are many people keeping their heads in the sand on just how similarly self-serving Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are. Is it because Fine Gael has promised to redirect money we don't have to bail out idiots who bought at the height of the boom? If you're voting for them, which of their election promises has bought your silence and tolerance of the same old corrupt politics that Fianna Fáil gave us?


Breaking News: According to Journal.ie, Kenny has just come out and said he will accept the €100,000 lump sum payment, but defer acceptance of it until after he leaves office. What? four years teaching and he'll still accept a €100,000 severance payment that a teacher with 34 years teaching is entitled to! How can anybody defend that? How can Fine Gael lecture anybody on ethics in government? Just a week ago they were hammering Micheál Martin on the same issue. And now this is revealed.


And for those of you who are still in denial about Fine Gael being Fianna Fail Nua, why is Fine Gael refusing to name the corporate donors who attended a Fine Gael fundraising dinner in Dublin last week? What are they trying to hide? So much for their promise of providing openness and transparency in government. The broken promises are starting even before the election: Varadkar refuses to name attendees

RonMexico

No

They are all hypocrites. Shock. Horror.

minidazzler

Regarding the attendee's, they aren't in the political sphere, they are entitled to privacy.

Regarding his teachers lump sum, WTF? How can he be allowed have that? Career politicians simply should not exist.

Micky Dolenz

Politics forum is where you should have posted.