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Breaking stories
Allowances cull ‘needs to be more extensive’
By Mary Regan, Political Correspondent
The cull of public sector allowances needs to be more extensive than the 88 earmarked for elimination, according to the chairman of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee.
Chairman John McGuinness (FF) said his committee will have a “comprehensive report” within weeks of all 1,100 allowances, with recommendations of which ones should be added to the list for elimination.The Irish Examiner revealed yesterday that the 88 allowances identified for abolition amount to €30.5m, meaning the savings would be far short of the €150m a year originally promised by Brendan Howlin, the public expenditure and reform minister.
Allowances facing the chop include:
* The border duty allowance for defence force personnel, saving €4.4m a year;
* The Gaeltacht allowance paid to 341 gardaí, saving €1m a year, and to 891 post-primary teachers, which will save €2.1m a year;
* A ‘teaching through Irish’ allowance, saving €3.1m per year;
* Disturbance money for foreign affairs staff posted abroad, saving €280,237 a year;
* A clothing allowance for the Taoiseach’s press officers, costing €3,000 a year;
* One paid to hospital consultants for upkeep of their medical education, saving €7.9m.
* An allowance for prison officers to run tuck shops in prisons, saving €33,300 a year.
A spokesperson for Mr Howlin said the list is “not exhaustive” and “could change”.
Mr McGuinness said his committee will not examine the 88 allowances already targeted, which, he said, will deliver a “low payback” in terms of savings.
“As we do our work, we will uncover more that perhaps should be added to that list and we will be making our recommendations in November,” he said.
“We hope to have a comprehensive report at that point in time. We’ll be pretty quick in terms of our deliberations and will be making them public then.”
As the process of examining these allowances gets under way, Mr McGuinness said he expects “the complexities of dealing with those allowances is going to come to the fore” during committee hearings.
“Some are not allowances or expenses, a lot are core pay. There are reasons historically behind all of these,” he said.
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