12 NTMA staff earn over €250k

Michael Noonan has confirmed that 12 employees of the National Treasury Management Agency earn over €250,000 per annum.

In a written Dáil response to Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, the finance minister confirmed that a further four employees of the NTMA earn between €200,000 and €250,000 per annum.

The revelation of the 16 employees earning in excess of €200,000 comes in spite of Mr Noonan asking the NTMA to apply the €200,000 public sector pay cap to its staff. The State agency, which manages the national debt and is the parent of Nama, falls outside public sector pay grades.

In his answer, Mr Noonan confirmed that a further 29 NTMA staff earned between €150,001 to €200,000, with 96 earning between €100,001 to €150,000 and 306 earning up to €100,000.

Mr Noonan said: “The legislation which established the NTMA in 1990 deliberately positioned it outside of the wider public service structures with operational freedom to negotiate market-competitive salaries so that it would have, for example, the flexibility to recruit specialists in mid-career from the private sector.

He said: “Under the NTMA business model, its remuneration structure is such that there are no general pay grades and no pay scales and all staff are on individually-negotiated contracts. NTMA staff members are subject to the public service pension deduction.”

Earlier this month, it emerged that the NTMA warned the minister that imposing a pay cap of €200,000 on its staff would impede its work and have “serious detrimental consequences” for the taxpayer.

In a letter to Mr Noonan, NTMA chief executive John Corrigan said: “I must stress the NTMA’s increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining key staff with the appropriate level of experience to work with us on issues vital to the State such as the planned re-entry to the international bond markets, the recovery of money for the taxpayer through Nama and the valuation and sale of state assets.”

He wrote: “I believe the application of a salary cap of €200,000 without any regard to private sector analogues will directly impede the NTMA in this work, with serious detrimental consequences for the exchequer and the taxpayer.”

The minister wrote to the NTMA chief in December, asking for staff on more than €200,000 “to consider waiving at least 15% of salary or such amount of salary as exceeds €200,000”.

Earlier this month, Nama chairman Frank Daly defended its pay levels, saying only a handful were on salaries of €200,000.

The average salary at Nama was “well below” €100,000, he said, and the skillset required to run the agency meant it had to pay a certain market rate.