Disability body to be wound up as boss refuses pay cut

NATIONAL disability organisation, People with Disabilities in Ireland (PwDI), is to be wound up after failure to resolve a row over attempts to force its chief executive to take a €64,000 pay cut.

The shock decision was taken yesterday following a meeting between solicitors for the directors of the organisation and officials from the Department of Justice, which provides its annual budget.

Chief executive Michael Ringrose, who was resisting pressure to take a 40% cut in his €154,000 salary, was informed afterwards that he was being let go without further pay. Five other head office staff and about a dozen regional staff were also told their jobs were gone.

One of the directors, Tom King of PwDI’s Co Clare network, said a meeting was scheduled with auditors early next month and the formal winding up of the organisation would follow unless there was a dramatic change in circumstances in the meantime.

“There are two ways out of this. Either Michael Ringrose takes the €90,000 salary on offer or he goes and lets the organisation find a chief executive who will work for that amount of money. If neither of those things happen, PwDI is gone,” said Mr King.

Last November Mr Ringrose renewed his contract, which stipulated the €154,000 salary, but at the time the department was conducting a value-for-money review of the organisation. Mr King said the outcome of that review was not known at the time the contract was renewed.

It found that almost 40% of the organisation’s €1.4 million budget last year went on salaries and concluded that if the wage bill wasn’t reduced, the department should take over administration of the organisation and channel funding directly to the projects supported by PwDI rather than going through the organisation.

Mr Ringrose said he could not comment on the row over his own salary as he had put it in the hands of his solicitors, but he pointed out that there was no question over the quality of the work he or the other staff had done.

“Our job was to build up the organisation, to end the absolute exclusion people with disabilities were feeling. It was meant to bring people with disabilities into the mainstream and we have been fairly successful,” he said.

The Department of Justice said the decision to wind up the organisation was one for the directors, but if it was disbanded, funding for the projects it oversaw would continue. “Hopefully this can be resolved but we can fund projects directly rather than go through PwDI. We would prefer to operate through PwDI but it’s not absolutely necessary,” a spokesman said.

Mr King welcomed the department’s commitment to continue funding but said he did not see how some of the regional offices could continue fully operational without staff. “The department has given a guarantee but we are waiting to see what that means in practical terms. The one thing we want to ask the department is to think about the end users — the people with disabilities — and ensure they don’t lose out in all this.”