Proposed Watt pay rise shows how far this Government has strayed from reality

IN AN Ireland Thinks/Irish Mail on Sunday poll published today, 85% of respondents say public servant Robert Watt’s proposed €81,000 salary increase is not appropriate. The poll shows a disconnect between those surveyed and a leadership that thinks a pay increase of not far off twice the average wage, simply for moving from one Government department to another, is reasonable.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, Taoiseach Micheál Martin et al have yet to understand that such an increase for a mandarin in the Department of Health would be worrying at any time. That it is happening during a pandemic that has seen businesses shuttered and livelihoods devastated reveals a stunning misunderstanding of the public mood at the heart of the establishment.

We already spend €420,000 on remunerating HSE chief executive Paul Reid, in charge of a rollout that has been repeatedly abused as detailed in this paper.

The defence that we had to create a job with a salary of €292,000 in order to attract the best talent simply does not wash when the successful candidate comes from just down the corridor. That is too much for an already incredulous nation to accept.

This increase can only lead to inflation of higher civil service pay, and if the fear in Government is that talent will migrate to the private sector unless is it generously recompensed, then let them off. No mandarin in the country should be getting paid more than the Taoiseach, the president of the United States or the chancellor of Germany.

During this pandemic, we have already seen how the upper echelons display their sense of entitlement with contempt for their countrymen, whether it was those flouting public health regulations at the infamous Oireachtas Golf Society dinner, or the discretionary dissemination of vaccines at the Beacon hospital - as revealed by our sister paper the Irish Daily Mail.

Official Ireland takes care of itself and always has done so, yet it appears blind to the optics seen with such clarity by the people it is supposed to represent. The failure of the ‘civil war’ parties in the last election has yet to be fully comprehended by those parties, who appear to think it was a populist blip and that they will come roaring back next time around.

This delusion will prove fatal for them unless there is real reform of the thinking in all our institutions. We need people who are prepared to put the country first. While Mr Watt is entitled to seek an €81,000 pay rise, it is those in power who ought to realise how out of step this deal appears to the electorate.

The only public workers for whom all would agree to a pay rise are the medical staff who saved so many lives this past year. Beyond that, there is no sympathy whatever about pay rises, particularly on this scale, which is abhorrent as thousands still remain on the PUP.

It is not too late to insist that if Mr Watt is the right man for this job, that he forego this ludicrous pay rise. That would be evidence on his part of leadership and a public-service attitude that would show he really is the right man for the job.