‘Mistake’ will cost Regina €16k

SOCIAL Protection Minister Regina Doherty is to repay a €16,000 allowance she received last year in her former role as Government chief whip.

The allowance was revoked following advice from the Attorney General and, speaking yesterday, Ms Doherty said she is ‘not annoyed at all’ about the matter.

The original decision which was taken by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to pay the allowance was found in a report to Government to have ‘no legal basis’. She said yesterday that a ‘mistake’ had been made.

‘I’m not annoyed at all to be honest, the experience that I got being the chief whip for 13 months last year, I couldn’t have gained that experience in any other department.

‘I got to stick my nose into everybody’s business and learn a lot.

‘And they made a mistake, we all make mistakes it’s not the end of the world.’

Issues around the payment were first raised in the Dáil by Labour leader Brendan Howlin earlier this summer after he claimed that the payment to Ms Doherty was unlawful under existing legislation.

‘The whip was paid an allowance of €15,829 for her role as Government whip,’ former public expenditure minister Mr Howlin said.

‘No such position exists under law… the allowance was paid to the Government whip on the understanding that the Government whip was actually being paid for her responsibilities as Fine Gael whip.

‘This might seem like a technical and minor matter, however under the law no allowance can be paid to a party whip if that person is a minister or a minister of state.

‘This means that one cannot pay such an allowance to the new Government chief whip.’

Education Minister Richard Bruton also yesterday weighed in on the controversy – and on the furore around the fact that super-junior minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor would not receive an increase in her salary because there were already the exceeded number of super-juniors at the Cabinet table.

Mr Bruton said: ‘I think the position is Government have a lot of pressures to meet, we’ve problems in housing, in health, in education, we have great ambitions to expand in those areas.

‘We have to make a decision and we have made a decision that it’s not a priority to increase the pay to certain ministers, that is not a priority for the Government and I think people will understand why that is the case,’ Mr Bruton added.