So, who do you think has the biggest parliamentary salary, the Prime Minister of Canada or the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Twenty-Six county Republic of Ireland?

Right! The Taoiseach.

On a straight line comparison, based on exchange rates for the Canadian dollar and the euro, the Taoiseach's pay amounts to US $297,360, and the Prime Minister gets US $248,196, almost $50,000 less.

Recent rumblings and grumblings about the amount Twenty-Six county taxpayers shell out to pay the Taoiseach began when it was revealed that his salary is even higher than that of the British Prime Minister.

One of the reasons the Taoiseach gets such a high salary is that his pay scale is linked to public service pay increases and other "special awards". In Canada, salaries and allowances are adjusted in accordance with the index of the average percentage increase in base-rate wages for each calendar year, resulting from major settlements negotiated with bargaining units of 500 or more employees in the private sector in Canada, as published by the Department of Human Resources Development.

Seems reasonable, don't you think?

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