The minimum TD's salary (not including expenses) is now €80,500 ($100K); most TDs are now earning more than €100,000 ($125K) annually when expenses are included. Senators are making between €55 & €60 thousand (approx $70K) per annum. Senators! Surely that should be an unpaid body as the members are unelected and essentially powerless. MP's in the UK Parliament are only paid £55,000 (€80,000 / $100K) annually. And, each MP represents a far greater number (around 90,000) of people than does each TD (23,000).
This is ludicrous. I hear all the time about how hard they work, yadda yadda yadda. They determine how much work they have to do. Why not cut the salaries and the workload by moving much of the "work" to the local level where it belongs or, more importantly, by just keeping government out of peoples' lives?
