1.5m workers earn less than Ahern’s pay rise

ALMOST 1.5 million workers earn less in a year than the €38,000 pay increase which Taoiseach Bertie Ahern recently approved for himself.

Despite the “ordinary man” image the Taoiseach likes to present, the size of Mr Ahern’s hike shows he is “completely out of touch” with the plight of the average worker, it was claimed last night.

Figures from the Department of Finance show two thirds of the total workforce of 2.2 million earned less last year than Mr Ahern’s pay rise.

“Pay increases should be only awarded when there has been a demonstrable increase in productivity, and when you look at how this Government has been stumbling from one fiasco to the next — whether it be Aer Lingus in Shannon, provisional driving licences, incinerators or cancer care — nobody can seriously suggest that such a raise is in justified,” Labour Party TD Ciarán Lynch said last night.

He added that €38,000 was not a “pay increase” but a salary.

“Unlike the Taoiseach, people earning such a salary are all too often slaves to their mortgages, over-borrowed, overcharged for childcare, and overstretched and stressed in trying to afford to buy a home,” said Mr Lynch.

“That is something that cannot be said of the current Taoiseach. [He] has quite rightly come under sustained criticism over this pay hike, and the fact that Bertie seems determined to brazen this out is proof-positive that the man is completely out of touch.”

Mr Ahern’s €38,000 increase is being paid in phases. His overall salary will rise to €310,000 in 2009 once the last phase is awarded.

Fianna Fáil TD Martin Mansergh recently sought to defend the pay increase by arguing that between 12,000 and 13,000 people would be better paid than the Taoiseach in 2009.

Mr Mansergh based this projection on a Department of Finance estimate which indicated that 9,680 people had earned more than €300,000 last year.

The opposition claimed this defence was ludicrous, and to put it in context, Labour’s Mr Lynch asked the department how many people had earned less than €38,000 last year.

The pay increases for Mr Ahern and his cabinet were recommended by the independent Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector. But it fell to the Cabinet to decide whether to accept the pay increases or not.

Mr Ahern subsequently insisted he would not change his mind about accepting the increase, saying: “It is going to be paid, and that’s it.”