‘Legal concerns’ on providing pay details of civil servants

PROVIDING specific details on the salaries of the country’s top civil servants could raise ‘potential legal issues’, the Department of Public Expenditure’s secretary general has said.

It comes amid ongoing questions from the Dáil’s spending watchdog about when Department of Health secretary general Robert Watt stopped waiving his pay rise.

Fianna Fáil TD Paul McCauliffe told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) there has to be transparency that ‘the reduction actually has taken place’.

Mr Watt was appointed to the job in April 2021 after occupying the role on an interim basis.

Following controversy over his €292,000 salary, he confirmed he would waive the €81,000 pay rise linked to the role ‘until the economy begins to recover and unemployment falls’.

In January, he confirmed that he was in receipt of the full salary but has repeatedly refused to state when he stopped waiving the pay rise.

Following public sector increases, Mr Watt’s salary currently stands at €294,920 and is due to increase again to over €300,000 in October.

During an appearance in front of the PAC yesterday, David Moloney, secretary general at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) acknowledged that there had been calls for more transparency over top civil servant’s salaries.

As a result, the salary range of ‘accounting officers’, or secretary generals, will be contained in Government departments’ 2021 accounts.

However, Mr Moloney said, the exact remuneration of the top civil servants may not be able to be disclosed due to ‘potential legal issues’.

Mr Moloney said that while DPER has attempted to address concerns, the level of information they can share is limited due to laws around data protection.

He stated that tax and pension details are private.