‘€110k for a 70-hour week isn’t as attractive as it used to be’: why so many TDs are quitting
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/110k-for-a-70-hour-week-isnt-as-attractive-as-it-used-to-be-why-so-many-tds-are-quitting/a1706181995.html
Posted by badger-biscuits
42 Comments
Gosh the poor things a lot of them barely even turn up to the Dáil and when they do they’re chauffeured and have their meals expensed!
Must be full on time wise in fairness. Particularly for rural TD’s that have to occasionally at least travel to the Dail and do their clinic work.
Poor things. Useless gobshites. Wouldn’t know a day’s work if it hit them lmao.
Throw in having to look after a few houses and cars and pay housekeepers. Try it sometime.
Absolute bollox do they actually work 70 hours.
The Facebook comments here…lol
👋
1/3 have reached retirement age.
1/3 are leaving for the private sector after doing the dirty on Irish taxpayers.
1/3 should have never been elected in the first place.
Saved you a click.
It’s grand money if you’re an influencer type with nothing else lined up
Just scanning the photo, I am glad 90% of these are leaving public life as they absolutely have not been good for Irish citizens. The problem, of course, is they will be replaced in the most part with more malignant privateers.
Yeah it’s only **2.5 times the average wage**.
Ridiculous. Maybe pay careers, nurses, teachers etc properly first before raising his.
I’m gonna say something unpopular: TDs are under-paid. To get the job, they have to get interviewed by thousands of people. The interview process takes months, unpaid. Then if they get the job, it only lasts five years at most. And then they have to go back out and get interviewed again by thousands of people. They have no time off (summer recess is taken up by constituency work), and get absolute abuse, every day. And their job is so important: They vote on legislation which affects five million people.
You’d have to laugh at the posh clowns in these comments. Must be so nice to be so far removed from all the shit going on in this country.
‘I get give or take, it works out at about with expenses 140,000 a year and I pay 30.3% tax on that, so it’s about a net 100,000 and out of that 100,000 I run a home in Dublin, Castlebar and Brussels. I wanna tell you something, try it sometime…’
Have you ever heard the vitriol from twats about the average teacher? Who the f@ck would want to be a politician!?! The political dynasty clans have “f%ck you” money and been brought up to be thick skinned and concerned with legacy. It will be increasingly more difficult now fir anyone in politics especially with the open hate, divisiveness and nonsense of social media
I seriously considered going into politics a few years back. I wasn’t being big headed, I just felt that I’d be able to make or contribute to decisions that could potentially resolve some of our issues in this country, particularly housing and the environment.
However, I have a young child and two more on the way. My wife and I divide the parenting and housework equally, and it’s very important to me to be involved in my kids lives. I’ve reduced my working hours to about 30 hours a week to do so.
They suggest that TDs work 70 hours. Maybe that’s not all of them, but to do a reasonable job I think you’d need to be doing at least 50 hours a week. Personally that would limit my ability to be involved with my family and force it all onto my wife. So that’s made the decision for me.
I’ll be 60 before my kids have all finished school. By that age I’ll be out of touch with young people in their 20s / 30s who’re struggling to get a start in life.
So ultimately we either need to reduce the workload on TDs so that they can live balanced lives, or we have to accept that only a minority of people will put themselves forward to be politicians
Headline shows exactly why politics is broken.
“Me me me”
The job is about serving the national interest and the public. Not themselves. And I seriously seriously doubt many of them have the talent to do better than €110k a year
It’s a thankless job from what I can see. I don’t know how people can do it.
Could someone shed light on a TD’s average workweek, and what they consider to be *work* (particularly relative to other professional/well-paying jobs)? Genuine query
I’m sure a few outliers work their bollocks off, but I reckon this reported“70-hour week” is economical with the truth, at best
Hours aside, being a TD in the social media/internet age can be grim enough
They themselves are as much complicit in the toxic workplace they work in since the foundation of the state than any media or recent lunatics in the public that have emerged in social media.
Theyve always played the game ..it’s just the game’s gotten a bit more fierce.
If only there was some way to know before taking the job 🙄
given the state of everything – healthcare, law enforcement, public transportation, infrastructure, education etc, all topped with an absolute lack of oversight and poor governance, they would as a matter of fact be doing us a great favor by quitting.
Well, talking to a few random people involved in politics from various parties the issue that causing many to reconsider standing is harassment and no real prospect of an end to it.
We are going to end up with nothing but hot heads and the utterly brazen as politicians in a few years as anyone remotely normal is just getting endless abuse from tiny % out there who think it’s fine to keep stalking and harassing people involved in politics or even public discourse.
It’s even worse in journalism – appallingly bad pay in most jobs and an expectation that you’re going to take abuse on social media, which for many is considered part of their job nowadays. They don’t get the option of not being on it.
Plenty of people in journalism get fed up very fast when you’re chasing unpaid invoices for tiny amounts of money, having people expecting you do so stuff for little or no pay and no job commitments – freelance everything, and then being harassed by psychos online just to add to the fun.
Who said i5s 70hr/wk?
Well they are going to get a beautiful pension and if they are a minister they will get two separate pensions. A lot of those TDs have served for years, even decades. They are going to get rewarded handsomely. Éamon Ó Cuiv (Dev’s Grandson) has been a TD for nearly 33 years.
Most of these are retiring and it’s nothing to do with the monies.
Good riddance, nobody cares, they are mostly useless. Wanted career so there they go.
I wish we could rethink our system with a bit of depth cs the simple “abolish the seanad” narrative.
TDs are souped up county councillors. We’d be better to move the national parliament to a list system where TDs can focus on national issues and forgo the local clinics & parish pump politics.
Then replace the sealed with a smaller number of souped up county councillors who can gave an eye on how the national stuff affects their locality without the stranglehold situation we currently have.
The salary was never the big attraction, it’s the pension.
Also from the graphic the only party who have a problem with retaining their TDs is FG.
FF only have 2 quitting – 74 year old Eamon O’Cuiv and Sean Haughey. Hardly rising stars.
SF only have 1.
GP, SD, LAB have “old guard” leaders stepping down presumably for the greater good of the party – other than Sean Sherlock.
The obvious reason why people would leave politics these days is the abuse they get and unfortunately that won’t change anytime soon!
As someone who owns their own business, 70 hours doesn’t seem like that much. Less than half of a day six days a week.
Like I get many do 35 -40 but we have a crazy issue here. They aren’t worth more. And to get better people they aren’t paid enough. The pay doesn’t bring people to the job.
I call bullshit! 4 years and then a big fat pension? Oh the humanity!
Ireland is [one of the most centralised countries in the EU](https://ailg.ie/european-body-issues-damning-report-on-irish-local-government/). This means that we have the National government wasting time on local issues, and politics of “sure his dad fixed the road”. TDs have the power to delegate to more local governance, but not the will.
Ok but €110k isn’t capturing those travel expenses you don’t have to even incur to claim
So much for I’ll fight for you if you vote for me.
What the fuck are they doing during a 70 hour week? Half of them don’t even turn up
The reality is that its almost trivial for a decently educated person to earn 100k these days. In Dublin, something would have had to actively gone wrong with your career to not be on 100k+ in your 40s. So the pay definitely isn’t an attraction. The danger of that is that you might find more and more people for whom money isn’t an issue (e.g. those with family money) choosing politics. Ah its not there yet, 110k clearly isn’t awful, but its worth not having a breakdown everytime TDs get a pay increase in line with the rest of the public sector.
In terms of global politics, they probably have one of the easiest jobs around and they are still making a balls of it. Doing basically nothing in the middle of a housing crisis and then complaining that people are mean to them is, well, something.
Let them off. Not capable of the work obviously
70 hours a week 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Did they confuse hours with minutes?
Fuck right off, it’s an absolute honour to hold that position, and to then say 110k isn’t enough is ridiculous. Not too mention all the additional expenses they claim.
On top of that, show me a TD actually working 70 hours a week consistently through the year, I doubt there’s one of them, and their voting records and absenteeism would back that up.
I wonder did they consider interviewing the various TD’s who actually apparently have the time for 2nd jobs? Cathal Berry & Jim O’Callaghan come to mind.
Plus all the abuse in person, on social media plus hate mail and threats direct to your home from halfwits who think that’s acceptable. No wonder it’s only selfish and thick skinned folk that run for politics, anyone honest would be eaten alive.