Lamentations as Noel gives up his €167

DÁIL SKETCH:Former Government minister Noel Treacy has decided to forgo his pension, writes MARIE O'HALLORAN

AS A debate it was passionate, heated and on occasions quite personalised.

The oratory was at times unique and there were flashes of modesty as well.

Former Government minister Noel Treacy is a case in point. The Galway East TD is to give his mere €167 a week net pension (a mere €24,007 gross last year, before the pension cut) to some very lucky and yet to be named voluntary bodies and charities.

Noel said he was asked on eight occasions to get involved in politics. But he refused on those eight occasions.

However “I gave in on the ninth.

“I served on the local authority for six years. I never as much as claimed one cent while a member of that authority,” he humbly told a virtually empty Dáil chamber.

The former minister of state, who has a basic salary of a mere €98,000, was angry too.

The whole situation was “outrageously hypocritical”, he said. It’s “the politics of envy and the politics of hypocrisy”, he said of the general debate on the Fine Gael demand for an immediate end to the payment of pensions to former ministers still serving in the Oireachtas.

And it was ironic .he noted, because in 1997 when the rainbow coalition left government after just two years “they took decisions recommending that pensions would be given to ministers” after serving two years. “And they knocked at the doors of the subsequent government of Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy time out of number to make sure that that situation prevailed.”

Outrageous indeed. But Fianna Fáil is a party of largesse as the deputy explained in a style of oratory he definitely learned at the feet of the master, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

“Deputy Kenny was a beneficiary of that decision,” [to give ministers a pension after two years in office] he said.

“Our party’s generosity consistently to this nation, to its people and to its parliament was always honoured in the breach and never just for mere opportunity. It was honoured in the interest of the totality of consistence in what was best for the common good and to retain people in public office.” Eh? But there’s more.

Gesticulating with his hands, almost beating his breast, the irate TD added: “I want to say that I, I who gets a mere net pension of €167 per week, cannot afford to give up that pension but I am not going to be the one in the interests of equity in this House, solidarity with my colleagues, and indeed under the great generosity of the Opposition who have decided that they’re going to donate their pensions to various bodies and organisations.”

He said he was speaking to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny last week “and he felt that this whole pension situation was really draconian and it was going to drive politicians out of this House”.

Noel thinks this may even be an Opposition ploy to stop experienced Ministers and TDs from going forward at the general election. But they are so wrong. Oh lucky Galway East.