The recession is biting, deeply. Most people who tore open pay packets in the past week will have noticed the 1% and 2% income levies deducted from their salaries. But of course they are the lucky ones: jobs are being lost at a frightening rate in Ireland, with nearly 300,000 people now on the Live Register.

Meanwhile, the public finances are a basket case and the government is still dithering over cuts to the public sector which are needed to achieve immediate savings of at least €2 billion. This would mean taking a tough line with public-sector unions, facing down their opposition in order to cut pay and numbers even at the risk of industrial unrest.

Already difficult, this task is rendered almost impossible by the fact that Brian Cowen’s government lacks credibility when it comes to tackling public excess. While preaching restraint to others, ministers fund a gravy train of expenses, allowances, bonuses and golden parachutes for themselves and other politicians. While thousands of private-sector workers lose their jobs in Limerick, Waterford and elsewhere, and thousands more take voluntary pay cuts to keep themselves and their colleagues in jobs, no perk goes unpocketed by our public representatives.

In fairness, the government has deferred yet another pay increase for the cabinet. Ministers have taken a voluntary 10% pay cut and a few public servants have followed this example. However honourable, these are mere gestures in the context of the €56m a year it costs for 166 TDs and 60 senators. Long overdue is a fundamental reform of the pay and conditions politicians enjoy. They have been built up to unacceptable levels in the last decade.

The basic salary for a TD now exceeds €100,000, senior ministers are paid €202,000 and junior ministers receive €139,000. On top of this they claim an array of expenses and perks from a system deliberately designed to be complex and unclear.

Why are TDs who live within 15 miles of Leinster House given a “daily allowance” of €61.53 every time they come to work? Surely the “overnight allowance” of €145.45 should be paid only after a TD provides a receipt to show they actually spent this amount. Rural TDs who own a house or apartment in Dublin can still claim the allowance. Effectively this means that taxpayers are subsidising their second properties.

Deputies are now claiming an average of €67,000 each a year on subsistence and travel. Given that the Dail sits less than 100 times per annum, that equates to €670 a day each in expenses. Why do TDs who claim mileage for travelling to Leinster House not have to sign in when they get there? Why do TDs get an allowance for a constituency office when they already have an office with a secretary and free postage and free phones in Leinster House? Why are taxpayers buying politicians new mobile phones every 18 months?

This all starts at the top. There is no justification for Ireland having 20 junior ministers, each with a retinue of advisers and secretaries, when only about five of them do meaningful work. Before Mr Cowen or Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, take an axe to the public sector, they must first take a hatchet to their own bloated administration.

Instead, politicians will presumably keep trotting out their routine defence of the way in which they are “remunerated”. While this continues, ministerial attempts to motivate people into acts of self-sacrifice with calls to “patriotic action” will continue to ring hollow and go unheeded.

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