“You couldn’t make it up. In what other workplace are there two bars, where people can buy drink and food on credit?”
Imelda Munster has criticised the practice of allowing Oireachtas members the privilege of buying food and drink in Leinster House on credit, while welcoming new measures to ensure that these tabs will be cleared in the near future.
It was reported earlier this week that all unpaid Dáil bar tabs will be automatically deducted from the salaries of TDs and Senators from mid-June onwards.
In a statement released on Friday, Munster, who is Sinn Féin’s representative for Louth and East Meath, questioned the practice of giving TDs and Senators a credit option to begin with.
“It’s a privilege not afforded to anyone else, and I think it should be scrapped completely,” she said.
The new policy, outlined in a letter sent this week from the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission to all TDs and Senators, requires all members to complete an application and deduction mandate form prior to making any further purchases on credit.
This new credit system will come into effect on 23 April 2018.
“You couldn’t make it up. In what other workplace are there two bars, where people can buy drink and food on credit?” Deputy Munster continued.
“The Dáil is a place of work, and I see no reason for bars on the premises, in particular the Private Members’ Bar from which staff and visitors are prohibited.”
“If an ordinary mother can’t go into a restaurant and demand food on credit, I don’t see why Oireachtas members’ are afforded that privilege.”
Munster was critical of what she referred to as “sleeven politicians” who “would bring up groups of constituents and make big men of themselves buying rounds of drinks, and presumably votes, and then never paying for them,” before the new change in policy.
“This was making fools of constituents who went home thinking their local politician had bought them food or drink, when in fact they themselves, as taxpayers, were picking up the tab,” she added.
Munster has written to the Ceann Comhairle to express the view that the current culture needs to cease.
“There is no justification for it,” she concluded.
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