Not of any relevance to most of you, but our taoiseach (the Irish prime minister) Bertie Ahern has had his pay raised to €310,000 ($457,000 or thereabouts) per annum. By contrast the president of the United States, a country with about 75 times the population of our small island nation gets paid $400,000 a year!
Ahern’s party’s defence for such a huge salary is that 0.6% of the Republic’s working population are better paid. 
Another defence for being paid so well compared to other European leaders is that the taoiseach doesn’t have access to places like Chequers that the British PM has. :dubious:
Our economy is headed south and our leader is rewarded with a ridiculously large salary. Hail to thee banana republic.
That’ll teach you to kick the Brits out. 
That’s just a coincidence right now. We pay $50,000 per IQ point.
It’s only because the dollar has hit parity with the peso.
Yeah, but Bertie doesn’t get super rad stuff like Air Force One, Camp David, a fleet of bulletproof limos, and nuclear weapons.
Why should this bother Bertie? He is given free houses by his “friends” along with thousands of pounds from other “friends” to give him a “dig out” when he was having money trouble when he was the Minister of Finance. A Minister of Finance without a bank account no less. Cunt is a corrupt fucker IMO.
No one has addressed what I feel is the most important question: how the hell do you pronounce “taoiseach”? I’ve had enough run-ins with Irish words that I know better than to guess.
I’ve no experience with Irish at all, but I’ll throw in my wild guess! Tau-seeg?
TEE-shock.
ETA:
The plural, by the way, is Taoisigh. That’s TEE-she.
Spot on. For his next trick he’ll now do Micháel O’Muircheartaigh 
Why do you hate Ireland?
It’s every Irishman’s right to bitch and moan about the fuckwits that rule us. We don’t particularly like anybody in power even when we’ve actually voted for them 
For generations the Irish people had to deal with oppressive external rule, it’s given us a very healthy disrespect for authority. It also helps that the shower that is in are linked to previous governments that were actually really corrupt.
I suppose we get the leader we deserve but what a fuckpig he is.
He is no different to every other leader/member of an Assembly, Parliament, Delegate or Grand Poobah on this planet.
He and everyone in the whatever House of Poobahs you want to talk about represent the people and, it follows logically, his decisions reflect the will of the people.
He as Taoiseach represents the people, even when he and his colleagues vote themselves a well deserved pay rise.
Be happy. 
Murahurtig. (And Mehall.)
I’m getting the feeling you might have better Irish than me. I have little BTW as I’m a typical Dub 
Nah. Just good Google-Fu.
Yes, but you can have the right to speak Irish!
/paraphrasing Life of Brian
Actually talking about Irish. Here’s a great ad that’s running at the moment in Ireland.
The translatation of what the guy is saying follows.
So don’t always believe a irish person when they start speaking Irish to you 
Wasn’t *that *convenient. He needs to get knocked off the front page, and Katy kicks the bucket. Coincidence?