Katherine Zappone Envoy Gig

LOL

"Expenses" and "entitlements" are synonyms in political circles. There's a gigantic menu of things which politicians can claim expenses for, for which they don't have to show any receipts nor prove they incurred any cost.

Even when proof is required, there seems to be no real oversight. The Healy Rae brothers were proven to be scamming the expenses system last year by claiming for time spent in the Dail when there was video and documentary evidence proving they were in Kerry and their assistants in Dublin were clocking them in. Absolutely nothing came of it. Bonafide expenses fraud. Nah, no bother, carry on.

It's only available in the 'indoctrinated' version Dudley.

Leo & Danny Healy Rae, two cheeks of the same ar$e when it comes to Covid guidelines.

You need to be a member. 😉

@McMurphy wrote:

The Zappone angle is already dead and buried, so I've given up trying to keep it on-topic. Nobody gives a **** about that anymore.

Any road, I picked out MHR because that was the most obvious/recent example I had of expenses fiddling. But across the political spectrum they're all at it to one degree or another. Like civil servants who save up their "sick days" to use at the end of the year, politicians all put in for all of their expenses whether they use them or not. Zappone stood to have a lot more than €15k available to her out of this gig.

Available at FG HQ, and leading book stores

I feel we are heading towards the dismissive 'ah shure it was only 80,000 she got, could have been worse, she coulda put in for a yacht' stage?

You're getting into the deeper complexities of it now.

Fraud = putting in for expenses which you know you didn't incur

Abuse = putting in for expenses which are technically above board, but far in excess of what's necessary.

Abuse is in essence an systemic issue. If it possible to abuse a system, then the system is broken. People are corrupt and will take what's available to them, and the system needs to account for that.

If your private employer said, "You can claim up to €200/month expenses for your mobile phone and we won't ask for proof", then 99% of people will claim that €200. And will laugh at the people who don't.

Likewise, "If you need to rent a property in order to travel for work, you can do so, and we don't care where you rent or how much it costs, just claim it back", 99% of people will rent out a large, central, expensive property, regardless of whether it is excessive for their needs.

And they will feel justified in doing so, because the employer has effectively told them that it is OK to do that.

The fact that in this case it's a public employer who allows blank cheque expenses, is irrelevant.

That doesn't make these abuses OK, but getting annoyed that people abuse an abusable system is like getting annoyed that rain makes you wet. You will lose your sanity way before anyone gets punished for abusing the system.