MINISTERS’ PAY CUT AMID BACKLASH
After days defending €16k Super Junior hike despite care staff fury...
ALL ministers and the Taoiseach are to take a 10% pay cut following the massive public uproar over a €16,000 Super Junior ministerial pay top-up.
Micheál Martin made the announcement late last night following a Cabinet meeting where he admitted his Government should have ‘handled’ the pay saga better.
Doctors, teachers and childcare workers had all vented their anger in the days after legislation was rushed through the Dáil supporting the pay hike. Fianna
Fáil TD Willie O’Dea said his constituents were ‘incensed’ about the pay increase and he branded it a ‘bad signal’ for the new tripartite administration to send out.
The pay cuts revealed last night were described by the Taoiseach as ‘an important measure’.
And they will be back-dated to when the ministers recently took office – and the ministers will also not take a 2% public service pay increase in October.
However pay cuts taken by the previous Government lapsed when the new one was formed. Martin has effectively reintroduced those previous cuts. He claimed the decision was made ‘some weeks ago’ by the leaders of the three parties in the new Government.
The move follows days of the top-up being defended by a number of ministers.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said that while he understood the ‘great annoyance and anger’ over the controversial pay rise, he appeared to defend it by saying it needed to be looked at ‘in the context’ of the July stimulus package.
And as late as yesterday morning Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said the decision to grant the additional €16,000 to Super Junior ministers was ‘an effort to fix an anomaly’.
He acknowledged, however, that the pay increase ‘stuck in the craw’ of people during what was ‘a very difficult time in our country’.
‘There was an effort to fix an anomaly, an anomaly that Fine Gael wasn’t in a position to fix before where you had a female member of the Cabinet, a Super-Junior minister at Cabinet being paid less than her male counterparts and that there was obviously an anomaly in that regard. So I do think that’s important,’ he said.
The new pay cuts will see the Taoiseach shave more than €20,000 off his own personal salary, bringing his new annual remuneration to €186,831.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar will lose €19,140, bringing his salary to €172,263. Ministers will be paid €158,129, losing €17,570.
The controversial Super Junior ministers will lose €15,218 and be paid €136,963, while ministers of State will be paid €121,478, a €13,498 chop. The Government has also been criticised for the amount of advisers ministers are employing. Yesterday it emerged that Green Party leader and Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan is to have eight advisers. This is two more than is currently allocated for the Taoiseach. Earlier this month Mr Martin told the Dáil that Minister Ryan would have ‘four or five’ advisers.
The final figure has yet to be released but the number of advisers could soar as high as 70. On Friday legislation was brought before the Dáil to allow for three ministers of state, who sit at the Cabinet table, also known as Super Junior ministers, be paid a €16,288 allowance on top of their €124,439 salaries (€152,181 total).
One TD from each of the three Government party’s was appointed as a Super Junior minister.
Fianna Fail’s Jack Chambers, who is also the Government Chief Whip, the Green Party’s Pippa Hackett and the Fine Gael party’s Hildegarde Naughton all received the promotion. However, prior to Friday only two could receive the extra €16,000 allowance.
This created an ‘anomaly’ whereby three ministers would be doing the same work but with only two receiving the same pay.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Government as the problem had been well flagged from the previous administration.
In 2017, then chief whip and Fine Gael TD Regina Doherty had to repay her allowance after a report from the Attorney General found it was not legal to pay the allowance to more than two junior ministers.
However, there was widespread anger in public and from the Opposition benches on Friday when legislation was rushed through to allow for the controversial €16,000 allowance to be paid to all three ministers.
During the debate in the Dáil, People Before Profit Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett called on the Super Juniors to give themselves a round of applause, like that which was offered to the frontline healthcare workers, instead of the hefty €16,288 pay increase.
Mr Boyd Barrett last night said: ‘It’s the very least that the Government could do after the disgraceful decision they made to increase three junior ministers’ pay by €16,000 a year. Clearly, the public outrage over the junior ministers’ pay rise has forced them into this move. However, this gesture still leaves ministers and TDs massively well paid and does not justify the nasty cuts to the PUP the Government plans to impose on tens of thousands of workers who lost their jobs because of Covid-19.’
Martin says it was already planned