CORRECTION: One of the headings was incorrect. It is travel and subsistence not mobile phones that the most money was spent on. Somehow the headings got shifted across in the totals column. Apologies.
I’ve been messing with Gav’s spreadsheets. Here’s two one quick visualisationish (try saying that one out loud, radio students) thingy. This is TDs only, expenses claimed between 2005 and 2008.
Per category.
The Dáil posse spend a lot on phones, it appears. Wonder if they’ve started billing State for the bills on those unofficial Blackberrys certain TDs have started using. Texts sent or data downloaded from those would not be FOIable, remember. Nice way of circumventing FOI law, that.
Next time you see a Government minister with a second phone, you’ll know the score.
Oh, I’ve got an average figure a TD spent in each category per year. So you can how sort the data per heading and if your TD is above the bolded figure (the average amount spent per year per TD in that category) in any of the few years… well, it may interest you. Please download or copy the file before sorting the data for your own purposes. Each time you sort it, it gets resorted for everyone.
Note: I used the figure of 200 as the number of people who sat in the Dáil on average per year. The election meant one year there were 220 claimants, all the other years there were around 166. 200 is probably too high an average figure but I was feeling generous.
Move sheets by clicking the names across the bottom of the file. Download by clicking File > Download. If you use Gmail, click File > Copy.
Have a good long weekend.