No, Angela, the L’Oreal defence will not wash!
IF Angela Kerins, the embattled chief executive of Rehab, believes her salary is ‘fair and appropriate’, then what on earth is the problem with revealing it? If her value to Rehab has been independently assessed, as she insists, and the level of her pay package set by professionals who are prepared to stand over their recommendations, why not share their conclusions with us right now?
At the last count, after all, Ms Kerins was earning more than the Taoiseach, and considerably above the levels advised by the HSE for the post.
She has denied reports that her entire package is worth around €400,000, but won’t confirm that her salary remains at the figure of €234,000 revealed some years ago. Yet if it has, indeed, increased on foot of these independent experts’ evaluations, isn’t that something she should be shouting from the rooftops?
If these boffins – themselves, surely, commensurately well reimbursed for their own efforts – have awarded her all this dosh because, as they say in the L’Oreal ads, she’s worth it, why is Angela being so coy?
She must be doing an extremely good job there in Rehab, to be deserving of so much money. There is every possibility that when we do eventually discover how much Angela is earning, the cry will go up: ‘It is not enough. Pay her more.’
At the moment, however, Angela’s stonewalling of all efforts to extract a little candour on the money front isn’t exactly filling us with confidence. Following an avalanche of demands, she has finally consented to the Rehab board meeting to ‘discuss’ her salary. And not until February 17. This shows a very poor ability to learn from the mistakes of others. The CRC’s Paul Kiely tried to avoid revealing the extent of his remuneration, and look where it got him. And her failure to grasp the public’s concern at the revelation that just 1 cent from every €2 scratch card goes to her charity is not very inspiring.
She’s argued that because just 40 per cent of Rehab’s funding comes from donations and the Exchequer, she’s not obliged to share her pay details with us. She maintains that her money comes from Rehab’s commercial element, not public funds.
But we are entitled to expect that a chief executive – especially one who is so clever and worth so much money – should be able to see the full picture here: the public funding – some €126million between 2010 and 2012 – inevitably frees up the private funding that pays Angela’s salary.
AND we are entitled, at least, to some accountability for that 40 per cent of Rehab funding that comes from the riff-raff. So if Angela would just reveal that 40 per cent of her entire package – and do it now – then even us ordinary folk, who aren’t nearly as clever as highly paid executives, could work out the rest.
Most of all, though, we are entitled to wonder if such a very clever, very well paid, very high-powered chief executive wasn’t really dumb enough to believe that if she just ignored the perfectly legitimate queries about her salary, if she fudged and waffled and ducked and dived for long enough, if she just kept repeating that it’s none of our business, then eventually these pesky questions, and the public disquiet and the HSE inquiries and the politi cal pressure, would al l j ust magically go away.