Donohoe: I accept anger over top-ups for ‘super juniors’
FINANCE Minister Paschal Donohoe has said he understands people’s anger at a €16,000 pay increase for super junior ministers.
Mr Donohoe said he accepts it has caused ‘great annoyance and anger’ but he also defended the controversial decision.
Two junior ministers or ministers of state are ordinarily entitled to receive an annual allowance of €16,888 on top of their €124,439 salary.
But the Government has three super junior ministers – minister of state for climate and transport Hildegarde Naughton, Government chief whip Jack Chambers and minister of state for agriculture Pippa Hackett.
Mr Donohoe said the decision to top up their earnings was to ensure junior ministers who are carrying out the same work are paid the same.
‘I can absolutely understand the anger that this is causing for some,’ he told Newstalk.
He added: ‘I’d also make the point that we’re doing that in the week in which we
Minister: Paschal Donohoe announced a €5billion stimulus plan for the economy, in which we extended the wage subsidy scheme into next year, and we made the changes to the pandemic unemployment payment over a very long time period. We were dealing with a specific matter.
‘We have a number of ministers of state around the Cabinet table that were being paid differently and we were looking to get to a point that if they were doing the same work they were paid the same. But all that being said, I do accept that this is causing a great annoyance and anger for some, but I would ask them to just place this in the context of a huge, huge variety of different measures that we announced last week, that are all about getting people back to work and all about growing incomes again.’
However, the decision has been widely criticised, with Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty saying it is unfair to frontline workers who will receive no pay increase.
Earlier, the Irish Medical
Organisation (IMO) strongly criticised the Government for passing the legislation to allow the pay increases for the three junior ministers and said it was ‘gross hypocrisy’.
The new law allowed a pay rise of €16,888 for the three super juniors to ensure that each gets the same pay ‘bump’ in their new roles.
The IMO, the country’s largest representative group for doctors, says the fact that the legislation was passed within weeks of the formation of the new Government has shocked many hospital consultants, who continue to earn at least 30% less than their colleagues, purely based on the date of their employment.
The pay disparity was introduced by the Government in 2012. It introduced the 30% pay cut for newly recruited consultants only. It was part of wide-ranging post-crash austerity cuts.
Professor Matthew Sadlier of the IMO Consultant Committee said: ‘This is gross hypocrisy plain and simple. The new Government doesn’t want people in the same super junior roles earning different salaries yet they are quite happy to oversee exactly the same injustice amongst hospital consultants. This type of hypocrisy poisons the morale of hospital consultants and is directly linked to the recruitment and retention crisis which has left over 500 consultant posts vacant.’
Referring to the recent campaigns to have a nationwide round of applause for medical staff, he added: ‘It is telling that the Government priority is to pay some ministers more while healthcare workers get a round of applause.’
‘This is gross hypocrisy’