Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns repaid just over €8,500 in travel and accommodation expenses that were mistakenly paid to her by the Oireachtas while she was on maternity leave last year.
Cairns, a TD for Cork South-West, went on maternity leave on November 29th, 2024, after she gave birth to a baby girl on the morning of the last general election.
Despite informing the Oireachtas she was taking maternity leave and would not be travelling to work in Leinster House, Cairns continued to receive her full Oireachtas expenses of €4,478.50 a month for the following three months up to the end of February 2025.
Those expenses include a travel and accommodation allowance (TAA) of €2,782.92 and a public representation allowance (PRA) of just under €1,700.
There are 12 bands of TAA payments, ranging from €9,000 a year to €34,065, depending on the distance between a TD’s home and Leinster House. Cairns is in band 11.
Cairns kept her constituency office open during her maternity leave, which ended in September 2025, and intended to only receive the PRA element of her Oireachtas expenses while out on maternity leave.
Asked about the published list of Oireachtas expenses paid to TDs and Senators last year, a Social Democrats spokesperson confirmed travel and accommodation allowances amounting to €8,534.29 had wrongly been paid to Cairns and had since been repaid.
“Deputy Cairns had thought that because the Oireachtas had been notified that she was on maternity leave, and therefore no longer travelling for work, the TAA would automatically be paused but it wasn’t,” the spokesperson said.
“Deputy Cairns became aware that the TAA was continuing to be paid into her constituency bank account in March 2025, at which point she immediately contacted the Oireachtas and requested that the payment be paused for the duration of her maternity leave.
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“The TAA that Deputy Cairns received up to that point, €8,534.29, was refunded. This comprised payments for December 2024 and January and February 2025.”
The repayment included an amount of €185.53 to cover TAA expenses paid to Cairns for the last two days of November 2025.
Cairns announced in July she was pregnant with her second child and planning to take maternity leave from October.
When Cairns first took maternity leave, there was no formal arrangement in place to allow women TDs, Senators and Ministers to take such leave.
The Government used ad-hoc arrangements to have other ministers cover for Helen McEntee when she twice went on maternity leave while minister for justice.
Cairns has said the lack of maternity leave for national politicians was denying women the opportunity to become political representatives.
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In late 2024, the Oireachtas passed the Maternity Protection, Employment Equality and Preservation of Certain Records Act, which allows TDs to take up to 26 weeks of maternity leave.
Cairns was the first Oireachtas member to take maternity leave under the Act.
The Oireachtas declined to answer questions about the TAA payments to Cairns last year.
The TAA is calculated on the basis of 150 days’ attendance at Leinster House. TDs must register their attendance in Leinster House for at least 120 days annually to retain the full allowance.
A deduction of 1 per cent of the allowance is made for each day less than 120 days attended at the end of the year.
Despite the new law there is no way under the expenses system for a TD to mark herself as absent because of maternity leave. This meant Cairns had to put in sick certificates to account for her absences under the 120-day rule.
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Under the TAA scheme, TDs are required at the end of each year “to certify that the amount paid to them was applied in respect of expenses incurred for the purpose specified in the regulations”.
TDs are not allowed to avail of the Bike to Work Scheme if they avail of the TAA.