Taoiseach under fire from the lef t over €378k lump sum and pension of €126k
THE Taoiseach will receive a lump sum of €378,000 on retirement and an annual pension of €126,000, the Dáil heard yesterday.
The amounts were criticised by Solidarity TD Mick Barry – who also claimed that Enda Kenny had helped to widen the gap between ‘the rich and the rest’ in Ireland.
The bumper payout reflects Mr Kenny’s record of 42 years in the Dáil and his Taoiseach’s salary of €200,000. He will get his lump sum immediately on stepping down at the next general election, and will then also be paid his pension as he has already reached the age of 66.
In his first year after leaving office, therefore, Mr Kenny will receive more than €500,000 from the public purse, a sum 16 times the average industrial wage.
The confirmed amounts drew criticism in the chamber from leftwing TD Mr Barry. The Cork North Central deputy pointed out that next week the Government would hold public-sector pay talks with a negotiating stance of support for ‘two-tier pay rates’, with lesser allowance systems and pension rates for new entrants.
This was the solidarity the State was showing to the people who helped to get the country out of the crisis, Mr Barry said.
He asked Paschal Donohoe at Leaders’ Questions: ‘How can the Minister defend a lump-sum payment of €378,000 plus €126,000 per year for the departing Taoiseach while at the same time attempting to defend these scandalous twotier pay rates for young workers in our public services?’
Mr Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure, acknowledged the average level of a public pension in the State was €23,000.
However, he added that by the beginning of next year, anybody earning a pension below €32,400 would see their pension reduction, imposed after the financial crisis, entirely eliminated.
Mr Barry said the outgoing Taoiseach was bequeathing a shocking social inequality, and had created an Ireland where the wealthiest one-fifth of the population owned 73% of the wealth.
By contrast, the poorest onefifth owned just 0.2% of the nation’s wealth – a ‘differential of an incredible 365 to one’, he said.
One in five workers are low paid, the Solidarity TD said, adding that a 14% gender pay gap exists, and that two-tier pay was Government policy. ‘It is an Ireland where a job is no longer a guarantee of a life free from poverty or even of a roof over one’s head,’ he said. ‘This is the Ireland Deputy Enda Kenny has helped to shape.’
Mr Donohoe bitingly replied: ‘The last time I checked, Solidarity was a movement originating in Europe that sought to defeat communism – but what we have from the Deputy is a movement and a party that is seeking to enforce some form of communism on people who deserve better.
‘We are aware of all of the challenges that still exist but we are also aware of what has been achieved, and know that the best way to build on that is by trying to bring people together, not to continually divide them.’
Mr Barry claimed that every one of Mr Kenny’s six budgets had been regressive and had widened the gap between the rich and the rest. He added: ‘Did the Taoiseach fashion this island on his own? Of course not. He had many helpers along the line, among them Minister Donohoe, the two young princes waiting in the wings, and a sorry and now deservedly depleted Labour Party.’
If the backlash against social inequality grew in the years ahead, the honest historian will say that the legacy of this Taoiseach was the social inequality which fed it, Mr Barry said.
‘Seeking to enforce communism’