NTMA staff agree to take 15% pay cut

Top earners — apart from one — at the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) have caved into pressure from Finance Minister Michael Noonan and agreed to take a 15% pay cut.

Mr Noonan confirmed he sought the cuts from those earning over €200,000 as he further revealed that five staff received aggregate bonus payments of €62,610 in 2011.

The state agency, which manages the national debt and is the parent of Nama, falls outside public sector pay grades where a €200,000 pay cap applies.

In December, Mr Noonan wrote to the NTMA chief executive, John Corrigan, asking for staff earning more than €200,000 “to consider waiving at least 15% of salary or such amount of salary as exceeds €200,000”.

Now, in a written Dáil response to Fianna Fáil finance spokesman, Michael McGrath, Mr Noonan has confirmed that all members of the NTMA senior management team and four of the five other specialist staff earning over €200,000, have agreed to his request to waive 15% of their salary or an amount that exceeds €200,0000 if the application of the full 15% cut would bring their salary below €200,000.

Mr Noonan said those to accede to his request include Mr Corrigan; the chief executive of Nama, Brendan McDonagh and the chief executive of the lesser known National Development Finance Agency, Brian Murphy.

The 15% pay cut reduced Mr Corrigan’s annual salary to €416,500, while Mr McDonagh’s salary was reduced to €365,500.

In his response to Mr Noonan’s December letter, Mr Corrigan warned that imposing a pay cap of €200,000 on NTMA staff would impede its work and have “serious detrimental consequences” for the taxpayer.

In his letter, Mr Corrigan said he and Mr McDonagh would take the 15% pay cut and said that he circulated the minister’s letter to the other NTMA employees concerned asking them to respond to him (Mr Corrigan) on the matter.

Mr Corrigan told Mr Noonan: “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 that 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.”

Mr Corrigan told the minister that senior NTMA managers had already taken an average 24% pay cut by waiving performance-related payments for 2010.

In his written Dáil response on the issue to Mr McGrath, Mr Noonan said: “I would like to acknowledge the positive response to my request of those NTMA staff who waived part of their salary.

He added: “I have also been informed by the NTMA that the members of the NTMA senior management team also waived any consideration for performance-related pay in respect of 2011 — as they did previously in respect of 2010.

Mr Noonan said: “The NTMA made performance-related payments to five key staff in respect of 2011.

“These payments in aggregate totalled €62,610. This compares with payments totalling €1,981,760 to 258 staff members in respect of 2010.”

In February, Mr Noonan confirmed that some 12 employees of the NTMA were then earning more than €250,000 per annum.