Finland's Speaker of Parliament Sauli Niinistö (Nat. Coalition Party) wants to bring the Parliament's complicated system of paying Parliamentarians' personal aides under control. Under the current system, MPs can hire a full-time aide, or use the allocated funding to buy services from their party or various companies.
Speaking to Helsingin Sanomat Niinistö said that loose ends should be pruned away, and that MPs' aides should be paid a simple monthly salary.
In some cases, individual Members of Parliament have used funding earmarked for hiring aides for various services, including website production and communications services, spending up to EUR 10,000 a month.
Parliamentary civil servants and auditors have not been able to ascertain if the funding has been used for the right purposes.
Niinistö says that he has discussed the matter with the leaders of the party groups in Parliament. The next discussion on the matter will be early next week.
Niinistö himself would have wanted a system in which the funding for the assistants would have been channelled directly to the Parliamentary groups, allowing the MPs to get expert services through their own party groups.
He concedes that it is no longer possible to revert to such a system. Now Niinistö wants at least to make sure that the funding for MPs' aides goes to that specific purpose.
The Speaker says that he was surprised to learn that it has been possible to use the aide funding for short one-month service contracts.
Such contracts have been utilised by about 60 members of the present Parliament. Many have used both salaried aides and separate outside services.
