Politicians’ pensions and their poisonous legacy

Irreverent. Irrepressible. In the corridors of power

WHEN Mary Harney retired in 2011 she received a pension of €129,805, in perpetuity. She was only 58. We learned last week that the former health minister has added another role to her astonishing post-politics portfolio of directorships.

The Hanover Group, which represents drug-makers Vertex, opened a Dublin office this month and has announced Harney as a key member of its team. She already has eight directorships. One company, Biocon, of Bangalore India, is Asia’s largest biopharmaceutical PLC – so it’s sure to be one of a number of well-paid posts.

Now 63, Ms Harney’s slick business website, Maryharney.ie, says, ‘having retired from politics in 2011, former Tánaiste Mary Harney completely re-imagined her career.’

It recounts her career as ‘Minister for Environmental Protection, Tánaiste, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and seven years as Minister for Health’. She clearly sees her political career as central to marketing herself as a business executive.

In February 2011, just over two months after her Government signed us up for a crushing IMF loan, she retired from politics. Before she started drawing down the pension she got an initial pension lump sum of around €160,000 and a termination lump sum of about €17,000. It was only six years ago.

The largesse of the pensions for retiring politicians, in the context of what was happening, was incomprehensible. Many of us worried that we’d lose our jobs, thousands did. Social welfare was the only safety net for many. The unfairness of it was overwhelming.

How could it be fair that the people who were most responsible for the catastrophic mess could walk away with guaranteed, exorbitant pensions? Brian Cowen had just passed his 51st birthday – he got an annual pension of €134,000 and higher lump sums. He has not done as spectacularly well as Harney but he has secured some directorships. He also went on to study an expensive course for business executives at prestigious Stanford University in 2012.

This newspaper tracked down another member of that Cabinet to his new home in Naples, Florida. Former Minister Martin Cullen lives there among New York retirees on a pension of €119,000.

Cullen’s career was littered with controversy. After he was appointed Minister for Environment in 2002 he became the Minister most associated with E-voting machines. They were scrapped.

He was moved to the Department of Transport. There payments to a constituent came to light. Two independent reports cleared him of any wrongdoing in the awarding of lucrative public relations contracts to Monica Leech. He stepped down in March 2010 and began drawing his pension. He complained of a back ailment. The day we tracked him down he was going to play golf in the Florida sunshine.

Some will justify high wages for politicians as they work in a supposedly unpredictable environment. But who doesn’t these days?

Though Enda Kenny, who has held his seat in Mayo since 1976, wouldn’t indicate that. In the four decades since then he has spent nine years in high Ministerial office. He has had a State car and Garda driver since 2011.

Micheál Martin has been either a Cabinet Minister or leader of Fianna Fáil for 20 years. He has also had a chauffeur-driven car for the entire two decades.

During this time, like all long-serving, high-level politicians, they earned big salaries and drew down whopping expenses. Monthly mortgage payments and bills are hardly a worry.

MARY Harney was appointed to the Seanad by Jack Lynch in 1977 and never left the Oireachtas. She was single for a lot of this time but married Brian Geoghegan in 2001. He is a former chairman of State employment agency Fás.

They all got big salaries and pensions. When Ireland was doing well we didn’t like the pension payments but we didn’t get too angry. But that changed in 2008. Economic theorists and bureaucrats in Brussels and Dublin (who were invariably guaranteed gold-plated pensions themselves) decided the panacea to the financial catastrophe was austerity. Austerity, of course, for all those outside the elite. From late 2008 wages were cut, the pension funds of ordinary men and women disappeared. The pension fund was even raided. Social welfare payments to the unemployed, the old and the sick were also cut. The hospitals that Mary Harney was in charge of saw their budgets slashed. Infrastructure spending? Gone. House building? Forget about it.

Now, nearly nine years after austerity began, and six years after the Government stole away in the night we are still suffering. Wages weren’t restored, homelessness is worsening, our health service is plagued almost weekly by scandal or crisis.

Not only are the people responsible still drawing down massive pensions, they are picking up directorships and clocking up air miles.

The sense of unfairness, so tangible in 2008, feels worse in 2017. As we ground our way through austerity, it wore us down. And the lives of retired politicians just get better. It is more infuriating now, not less.

Fianna Fáil were annihilated in 2011. The once almighty party went from 77 seats in 2007 to 20 in 2011. It has recovered somewhat but it is unlikely it will ever hit the 80-seat mark again. Fine Gael, which took over in 2011, was hammered in 2016, losing 26 seats. Their coalition partners Labour went from a high of 37 seats in 2011 to seven seats in 2016. Their coalition could not be reformed and we endure political chaos in the Dáil. Only last week the Government nearly lost another vote. We face another election in the near future and the political disorder will only intensify. Political uncertainty has caused fury. The fury grew from the feeling that it is the small man who has paid for the recklessness of the political class and the establishment. Undoubtedly the political classes believe they are entitled to receive such obscene pensions while we suffer. They draw them down.

There has been some reform. Any politicians who entered politics after 2004 can only draw their pension at 65.

But those shamed by the capitulation of 2007 are still among us.

Suffering can make us insular, not recognising the experiences of others. But in the US, Britain and all over the world the entitlement of the political classes intensified through the crash.

That is why Donald Trump was inaugurated President of the United States two days ago. That is why Britain will begin to leave the European Union in March.

The anger of the little man has brought about revolutionary change. Yet the political and media establishments sneer at these democratic votes as if they were the madness of ill-educated oafs.

The sense of injustice still grows.