“Former Green Party ministers Eamon Ryan and John Gormley have said they will give their payments to charity or to the party.
Other TDs who did not get re-elected are entitled to a lump sum of up to 75,000. Government ministers are entitled to a further 90,000.”
Once again, all at the bequest of the cheerful taxpayer.
For all that Greens stayed in government too long, and to my mind, should never have allowed the IMF/EU deal to bed down, the Green ministers did achieve something tangible and were arguably the best-performing ministers in that sorry administration. The fact that they are willing to give their severance payments to charity indicates a level of idealism that is hard to imagine anywhere else in Irish politics. (Will Dermot, Noel, and particularly Bertie ‘the architect’ Ahern be following in their footsteps? Not likely.)
No Greens in the Dail is a loss to Irish politics, and the party did not merit its recent wipeout. We, the electorate, need to be very careful of turning the smaller party in government into the whipping boy. To do so is largely to miss the point.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0301/1224291080505.html