Aengus O Snodagh, the Sinn Fein TD, has found himself at the centre of an inky black storm after reports that he uses three printer cartridges a day. Every day.
O Snodaigh, the sitting TD for Dublin South Central, used €50,000 of printer toner cartridges in 2007 and 2008. That €50,000 was paid for by the tax-payer, of course.
Presumably armed with nothing more than a rudimentary calculator and a bit of knowledge, the Irish Daily Mail broke down the cost of each of those cartridges – an eye-watering €130 – by the number of sitting Dáil days over those two years and came up with the synopsis that O Snodaigh had been using three of these cartridges every day he was present in the Dáil.
To put things in perspective, the paper claims that the average usage by TDs in Leinster House is about two of those cartridges. Every year.
O Snodaigh will celebrate the 10th anniversary of his graduation to the Dáil in May of this year. Who knows, maybe he was printing up hundreds of invitations for a special anniversary bash?
