A confidential review of how TDs and Senators claimed expenses said a system was needed that provided “certainty of identity” to stop politicians from having others clock in to work on their behalf.
The report was prepared in 2021 following media coverage of “alleged abuses” of the system for payment of travel and accommodation allowances to members of the Oireachtas.
Under the current system, TDs and Senators are obliged to ‘fob’ in for 120 days each year to be paid allowances of between €5,250 and €34,065 depending on how far they live from Leinster House.
However, the system was not checked in any way and only required Oireachtas members to clock in without any obligation to clock out on the same day.
The confidential review said public confidence in politics had been in decline and the U.K. Westminster expenses scandal had brought an “exceptional focus” on how elected members are paid in salary and expenses.
It said: “Expectations of the public, along with the media, have resulted in less privacy and higher levels of scrutiny of an elected member’s actions than at any time previously.
“This is a price that is now having to be paid by those serving in public office and who are in receipt of public funds.”
The report’s author Trevor Reaney said the key consideration in any review had to be creation of a “positive impact on public confidence”.
He said any new system needed to “make it impossible (or as close to impossible as can be) for anyone other than the member themselves to register their identity”.