Dozy TDs are losing an average of three of their controversial ‘fobs’ every week.
The Irish Mirror can confirm that the Houses of the Oireachtas have had to issue 129 replacements for fobs lost or mislaid by our scatterbrained politicians in Leinster House since the middle of 2016.
The little widgets have suddenly shot into the limelight following two recent Dail controversies.
The first one has been dubbed ‘votegate’ and it centred around dodgy voting in the Dail, where some TDs were pressing the voting buttons on behalf of colleagues - sometimes when they weren’t even in the building.
There have been suggestions that this could be solved by introducing a new system where a TD must use his or her personalised fob to vote in your allotted seat.
The second controversy around fobs concerns the use of the widgets by politicians for clocking-in for lucrative allowances every day.
TDs get paid close to a whopping €100,000 a year as their basic salary.
But the gravy train doesn’t stop there, with a host more allowances available for the costs associated with living away from home during the week, including the dual abode allowance, money back for phone bills and even laundry bills covered.
But by far the biggest allowance available is the TAA (Travel & Accommodation Allowance) which can see a TD paid up to an extra €34,000 a year, depending on how far he or she lives from Leinster House.
This is self-monitored and is paid based on a TD clocking-in with their fob for at least 120 days in the year.
There is no checks to see if it is the TDs or somebody else on their behalf that fobs in.
The weaknesses in the system were exposed last week when it emerged that Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae was fobbed-in as having been in Leinster House for work on June 21 last year.
But the maverick TD has also admitted that he was in Sneem, Co Kerry for a funeral that evening.
Sneem is around a four and a half hour drive, 230 miles, from Leinster House in Dublin.
A spokesman for the Houses of the Oireachtas said: “In the event of a Member losing their fob, it is standard practice to issue a replacement.
“When the One Stop Shop is informed that a fob is lost, it is immediately deactivated on the system.
“That fob can then no longer be used.
“The replacement fob is issued to the Member following the deactivation of the lost one.
“The Member signs for the replacement fob and it then is activated on the system.
“129 fobs have been signed for over the last three years.”
