Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, has told angry Fianna Fail TDs and senators he will consider demands for direct payment of rent and telephone invoices in a shake-up of the Oireachtas expenses scheme this summer.

Lenihan met Fianna Fail backbenchers on Friday after deputies demanded changes to a proposed new expenses regime that will replace civil service mileage rates and special Dail accommodation payments with a single payment to cover all expenses incurred by Oireachtas members.

A new expenses regime was proposed in January by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, chaired by John O’Donoghue, the Ceann Comhairle, in a bid to cut the Oireachtas budget by 10%.

The commission invited TDs to review its proposals in January. Many Fianna Fail deputies, however, only became aware of the details of the planned regime for the first time on Tuesday at their weekly parliamentary party meeting.

When the minister returned to discuss the new plan at a second party meeting on Friday, deputies lobbied him to take office and telephone costs out of the single payment plan and to meet the actual expenses of Oireachtas members under these headings.

“Deputies are subsidising their political operations out of their Dail salary,” said Michael Mulcahy, a Fianna Fail backbencher and member of the Oireachtas commission.

Lenihan told the Dail on Thursday that ministers took a 10% salary cut in October, which amounted to a 20% cut when taken in conjunction with the public sector pension levy.

He introduced legislation to the Dail that allows him to draft “a composite expense allowance for Deputies and Senators” in lieu of existing allowances.

But faced with an angry reaction from backbenchers to a new single allowance — linked to Dail and Seanad attendance — to replace the existing expenses regime, Lenihan agreed to consider the views aired on Friday and come back with revised expenses proposals. These are unlikely to be prepared before the autumn.

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