SIX WEEKS ago Ruairi Quinn pleaded with public servants to moderate their claims so that income tax reductions and anti poverty measures could be introduced in next January's Budget.

"Serious restraint has to be exercised in the overall interests of the economy", the Minister for Finance intoned. He looked with a jaundiced eye on militant teachers nurses and civil servants. And contemplated the worsening prospects of negotiating a new national wage agreement in 1997.

Then his parliamentary cola leagues launched a dawn raid on the national cake. An all party Dail committee lobbed in a demand for a 30 per cent wage increase for TDs. A round figure of £10,000 a year. It was a breathtaking claim. And it lacked any sense of proportion or fiscal discipline.

Few would say that TDs are well paid. A basic salary of £33,354 will not put caviar on the table. But only, one third of those elected depend solely on their Dail salaries. Their tax free Dail allowances and travelling expenses are quite liberal. And the great majority are double jobbing as members of local authorities, (or the European Parliament) and receive allowances and travelling expenses in connection with those duties.

IN the circumstances, as all parties preached wage restraint, control of Government expenditure and the need for industrial competitiveness, the size of the pay demand was outrageous. It was outrageous because it sent precisely the wrong signal to the electorate.

At a time when social cohesion was never more important in responding to the unemployment crisis and social deprivation when restraint and discipline were required to underpin future economic growth, our elected representatives opted out.

Their demand for a 30 per cent pay rise, plus increased pension benefits and severance pay, was gluttonous. Had it come from any trade union group, they would have denounced it themselves.

Trevor Sargent, of the Green Party, was the only Dail representative to object. He broke ranks and described the pay claim as "hypocritical and hollow" in the context, of a new pay agreement and the need for restraint.

The claim was damaging from another perspective. It sought to perpetuate a system of pay relativities within the public sector.

Over the past 20 years, employers in the private sector have gradually eroded traditional pay linkages and, demarcation divisions between one, job and the next, a new technology and work practices were introduced. But, in the public sector, in spite of efforts by successive governments, little has changed. Traditional relativities are a persistent cause of wage "leap frogging". And TDs are looking backwards, rather than forwards.

NINE years ago, the outgoing Fine Gael/Labour Party government granted TDs a 19 per cent wage increase. The unprecedented award was made on the recommendation of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector and reflected the fact that Dail pay had fallen well behind other sectors.

For the first time, politicians pay would be linked with national agreements and they would automatically receive pay awards.

Having done so well out of the review in 1987, deputies went looking for more in 1990. They commissioned a report from the Irish, Productivity Centre and sought increases ranging from 25 to 30 per cent.

They were disappointed. The Review Body rejected the attempts to link salaries to Civil Service grades and awarded an increase of 3.8 per cent. But it sweetened the pill by proposing significant changes in pensions and allowances. At the same time, it recommended a range of increases from 13 to 17 per cent in the pay of senators and ministers.

This time, TDs are hopeful of a more generous hearing. Some of the top earners in the State, headed by Michael Buckley, of AIB, will review their pay claim in tandem with those of the judiciary, of semi state chief executives, medical consultants and senior civil servants.

Deputies have used the growth in the number of Dail committees and their increasing workload to justify the 30 per cent pay claim. But there has been no offer to change work practices.

For years, TDs have resisted efforts to cut the umbilical cord that links local and national government. Ministers were finally forced by legislation to give up their council seats. But efforts by the last government to impose a similar obligation on TDs, in the interests of wide ranging local government reform, were successfully resisted.

Changes in pay levels are normally linked to new work practices and increased productivity. But the brutal "down sizing" of the Dail suggested by ISME (Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association), which proposed a 50 per cent pay rise in return for a 30 per cent cut in Dail numbers, would be unacceptable both to deputies and to the electorate.

Down sizing has already gone out of fashion as a business strategy in the United States. But flexible work practices are the order of the day. In that regard, the Review Body might suggest that deputies concentrate on their Dail responsibilities and divest themselves of unnecessary council functions. It would be a reform worth paying for.