Making representations on behalf of serious offenders is not uncommon, writes Liam Reid
The State spent more than €5.1 million last year on the salaries of 145 staff who deal with the constituency work of senior and junior Ministers.
The staff, who include both full-time civil servants and political appointees, are located in the departmental and local offices of the Ministers. Their salaries and pensions are paid for entirely by the State. Their work is mainly involved in dealing with requests, gathering information and making representations on behalf of the constituents of the Ministers.
According to well-placed Government sources, constituency offices of Ministers can issue any where between 500 and 1,000 e-mails and letters in any given week on behalf of constituents or local groups.
Most of the correspondence, often in the name of the Minister in question, is never seen by the office-holder.
Minister of State for Labour Affairs Tony Killeen is the latest Minister to have encountered controversy over representations made by his office, and the practice of making representations on behalf of serious offenders is not uncommon.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made inquiries in relation to the architect Philip Sheedy who had been jailed over a traffic collision in which a young woman was killed.
Former minister of state Bobby Molloy resigned in 2002 after his office made a telephone call to a judge's office in relation to an incest case.
Many of the representations made by a Minister's office are to other Ministers, and to State agencies, especially the HSE, and local authorities.
Under Department of Finance guidelines, all senior Ministers are entitled to have between five and six full-time constituency staff working on their constituency business. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste are entitled to a number of extra staff on top of this figure.
These normally include two staff who are political appointees, and who are usually based in the Minister's constituency. They are employed for the duration of the Minister's term in office and include a personal assistant, who is paid about €56,000, and who normally accepts and makes representations on behalf of the Minister. A constituency secretary, earning about €40,000, is also usually employed in the constituency office.
In addition, a number of full-time departmental staff are assigned to constituency work in the Minister's private office. They are mostly at the clerical officer grade.
Various expenses relating to the operation of the constituency office of a Minister are also paid for by the department, including overtime and travel.
According to figures supplied in parliamentary questions last week, the 15 Cabinet members employed 84 staff between them for constituency work.
The highest number of staff, nine in total, were in Mr Ahern's office at an annual cost of €290,000. Tánaiste Michael McDowell has seven staff in his constituency office, while the remaining Ministers employ between four and six staff each on constituency matters.
The total cost of the constituency staff for the Cabinet is about €2.7 million. The 17 Ministers of State employ 145 constituency staff between them, at a cost of €2.4 million. Most junior ministers employ a personal assistant, a secretarial assistant, and between one and two clerical staff, who are full-time civil servants.
Labour's Eamon Gilmore, who asked questions last month in the Dáil on the level of staffing for Ministers' constituency offices, said this gave them a "competitive advantage" over backbench and opposition TDs.
"I accept that Ministers need constituency staff, but I think the present Government has exceeded everything that has gone before them," he said.
Resources that TDs have for constituency work have also increased significantly in recent years. Many TDs now employ both a secretarial assistant and a parliamentary assistant, paid for by the Oireachtas. Many TDs have chosen to locate these staff in their constituency office to work mainly on constituency issues.