TDs have "money to burn" and should forego their recent 4 per cent pay increase, the Dáil was told. Green Party TD, Mr Paul Gogarty (Dublin, Mid-West) said deputies enjoyed subsidised meals and free car parking, and he called on the Minister for Finance to consider taxing parking as a "benefit in kind".

He said they could also tax the equine industry and "put a bit more towards the less well off".

The new deputy said he had e-mailed all TDs and Senators, asking them to "consider foregoing their pay increase voluntarily but not one member of the Oireachtas replied".

The 4 per cent rise in October brought TDs salaries up to €71,813.

"Maybe they thought I was taking the mick, but I was totally sincere about it."

When Mr Michael Ring (FG, Mayo) suggested that deputy Gogarty should "give up his increase now and show an example", he replied that "I will make my own donations out of my increased income".

Speaking during the debate on the Social Welfare Bill, which gives legal effect to the increases in the Budget, the 34-year-old former journalist, said that high-earners, including TDs, had come out of the Budget with more than they had before. "We can deal with the VAT issue and the increase in the cost of living, because we have money to burn, but people who are scraping a living at the other ends of the scale do not."

Mr Ring rejected his claim that TDs enjoyed subsidised meals, but Mr Gogarty said that "deputies can have a three-course meal for €10 in the posh Dáil restaurant".He was shocked to read of the pay increase for TDs decided before he was elected.

TDs "will obviously pay more in tax than they would ever donate of their own goodwill", he said.

"To be honest, having gone from earning around the average industrial wage to a TD's salary, I know we can afford to do without this pay rise in a time of fiscal rectitude, if it means allowing something more for those who are less well off."

The Government would lose "more money through the special savings investment scheme than through the budgetary allocations for social welfare", he said. "Talking about an increase in pensions to €200 a week by 2007 is facetious in the extreme, because if we continue with a 6 per cent inflation rate that sum will not be worth diddly-squat in four years' time". How could they talk about a great pension increase in "these hard times" when TDs were getting a huge pay rise. "We can afford to forego that in order to allow others to get a bit more." "There are cars parked around the plinth and on the Merrion Street side of Leinster House, which represent a practical tax benefit. Do TDs pay a benefit in kind tax on the free use of these car parks? They do not."