FURY AT CABINET TOP-UP OF €16K
Super junior ministers’ pay hike ‘obscene’
PLANS to top up the wages of three super junior ministers by €16,000, have been branded ‘obscene’. TDs were appalled by such a move at a time when 300,000 people are out of work.
The three who will benefit include one from each party in power: Fianna Fáil’s Jack Chambers, Fine Gael’s Hildegarde Naughton and the Green Party’s Senator Pippa Hackett.
Government backbenchers who support the decision were reminded that the heroes on the front line were more deserving, when the Dáil was told the three ministers should get a hand-clap instead of a top-up.
The ‘sickening’ pay increase comes despite dire financial warnings that we’re facing into a deep recession.
Up to 1.2 million workers in the private sector lost their jobs, had their pay cut or are on some form of State support since the
beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The €16,288 top-up on the three junior ministers’ salary of €124,439 brings their total to €140,000. Under the previous rules, only two super juniors could avail of the allowance.
Mr Chambers is chief whip, Ms Naughton is junior minister for roads and Ms Hackett is junior minister in the Department of Agriculture.
There was outrage in the Dáil yesterday as Sinn Féin introduced an amendment to prevent the supplement but the Government majority accepted it.
Pearse Doherty criticised the decision and said it was unfair to frontline workers who will receive no pay rise. He said: ‘We have seen posts from frontline workers asking if super junior ministers would not just accept a clap instead.
‘For all the deputies who are going to vote for this increase, when they are already on more than €100,000, just think about what our frontline workers have done over the course of the pandemic. Think of the staff nurse who is on basic pay and would have had to work every single day up until last Friday to get the equivalent amount that you’re going to
‘We want to show a good example’
increase super junior ministers salaries to, this week.’
He said: ‘It is absolutely sickening – ministers will give them all the claps and all the plaudits and nice words, but think of the staff nurse who had to go into hospitals... I think it is obscene and I think it is wrong.’
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett gave a slow hand clap as he sarcastically suggested a weekly round of applause rather than a salary top-up. He said: ‘If the minister of state wants equality at the Cabinet table perhaps the senior Cabinet ministers might cut their pay a little to show leadership for people who are suffering out there and are on fractions of the salaries and wages.’
The astonishing pay boost comes despite emergency measures including welfare payments and wage supports to keep the economy limping on, that have cost the State €13billion so far.
The State’s budget watchdog, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, recently warned the coming recession will be the ‘most dramatic’ in Irish history. The economic think tank, the ESRI, has also warned that we’re facing into a deep recession.
Social Democrats TD Róisín Shortall described it as a ‘slap in the face’ to the public.
Labour spokesman Ged Nash described it as a ‘move to keep all Government parties sweet’. He said it was ‘most unfortunate, to say the least, and does not sit well with the public in these very straitened times’.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath said: ‘We want to show example to the people out there who are suffering. It is just not fair or right.’
Fianna Fáil TDs were also denounced for voting for such a proposal as they are now in Government, while they tried to stop it during the last administration, when they were in opposition; even though Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath said yesterday: ‘I don’t recall it being discussed, is the straight answer. And it was never put before the Oireachtas.’
However in 2017, when Fine Gael wanted to pass legislation to appoint Mary Mitchell O’Connor as a third super junior minister, the €16,000 top-up payment became a subject of controversy The legislation never entered the Oireachtas but, in a statement published on the Fianna Fáil party website, the then spokesman on education, Thomas Byrne, said that they would block the new role, which they could do because of their confidence and supply agreement with Fine Gael at the time.
Reacting yesterday, Mr Byrne defended supporting the move now, despite his protest years earlier. He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘In the last administration there was only one party and we didn’t feel it was necessary, at that time, and there was never actually a proposal put to us to do that [in the Dáil].’ He said: ‘It was done to accommodate the three parties.’
Earlier Mr McGrath said: ‘There was an issue of having three ministers of state at the Cabinet table with same level of responsibility.
‘The legal position is that two of them get extra money but not the three. We are in a situation now where we have three ministers of state attending Cabinet, two will get the allowance. I personally think it is fair that the three will be treated equally.