Robinson in salary admission
DUP leader Peter Robinson has not taken any of his salary since becoming First Minister.
He made the revelation as he discussed how his party will end the controversial practice of double-jobbing.
Former First Minister Ian Paisley also did not take any of his Stormont salary, both men instead paying the money to the DUP, he reveals.
READ MORE OF THE PETER ROBINSON INTERVIEW HERE
And any DUP MPs who remain in both Westminster and Stormont after the next General Election will have to pay all of their Assembly salary to the party, eliminating the financial gain of double-jobbing, the party has decided, he says.
Speaking to the News Letter just over a year since taking over as DUP leader, Mr Robinson has clearly taken on board the public antagonism to double-jobbing.
The practice, where senior politicians hold a string of political appointments, has created a perception among many voters that some politicians are getting wealthy from public funds.
Sitting in his office in Stormont Castle, he says that the party will remove almost all dual mandates between MPs and MLAs at the next election.
The East Belfast MP says that, besides himself, only one other Executive minister who is an MP will remain at the Executive table following his re-shuffle, which he says would probably have happened last Thursday if the news of loyalist decommissioning had not broken.
He says that as the General Election looms larger all nine DUP MPs will indicate their intention – either to focus on Westminster or Stormont.
"The officers of the party – and I think you need to take into account what the officers say – agree with that policy but we had always indicated that we would phase out the issue of double-jobbing between Westminster and the Assembly," he says.
"They (the party officers) are suggesting that one or two of our MPs should continue in the Assembly as a link between those two institutions for the following Westminster term, and then bring it to an end.
"We will look at that and whether it is appropriate for some of our people to continue with that but if they do continue they will do as I have been doing, and as Ian Paisley did before me, giving the whole of your Assembly salary to the party."
Mr Robinson says that no one was aware that his Assembly salary went to the party because it had never been publicised.
"Every one of our councillors, every one of our Assembly members, every one of our post holders, every one of our ministers, pays into the party in accordance with what they receive for those positions.
"That means that the First Minister gives up completely his Assembly salary. As MPs, we only get a third from our second salary, but that goes over to the party.
"That would be the position for anyone who was double-jobbing in the period from the next election.
"Each MP will want to talk to their own constituency association before they make any public announcement about their intentions and some of them have started that process already."
Asked if the European Election result – where the DUP vote almost halved - surprised him, Mr Robinson says: "I think if you'd asked me several months before the election and predicted that would be the outcome I would have been surprised then.
"But I can't think of any election in the 30-odd years that I've been involved in politics where so many factors were to our disadvantage and I think that if you had, several months ago, told me that all of these things are going to happen during the course of the election I think I would have considered the outcome to be a very good result.
"I think Diane (Dodds) did very significantly well to win back the seat – and that has to be your first objective – in the election.
"We are still the largest unionist party; the tally results show very clearly that all nine of the seats that the DUP holds at Westminster we were ahead of the Ulster Unionist Party."
There is little love lost between the DUP and UUP leaders and Mr Robinson dismisses the claim by Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey - made in a News Letter interview last week – that the Conservatives and Unionists had been ahead of or level with the DUP in nine or ten Westminster seats.
"I listened to the tripe that Reg Empey has been telling your newspaper – that they were ahead in nine or ten – that is an absolute fallacy.
"I have seen the Ulster Unionist tallies. The Ulster Unionist tally give Jim Nicholson over 100,000 votes which shows just how off-the mark their tally is."
And, attacking Sir Reg's analysis of the election, he said: "He would do well to have a bit more knowledge of sophology before he starts commenting on election results."
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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