Junior ministers eager to jump ship to get the call up

JUNIOR ministers were last night scampering like lemmings to dive over the cliff of political expediency.

The plunge will see five of them disappear on the rocks of public anger as 15 resurface and scamper back to the shore just in time for a rubdown from their taxpayer-funded chauffeurs and a helicopter ride back to the ministry of perks and pampering.

As has become a familiar facet of this government, Brian Cowen tried to cling onto the 20 posts long after it had become obvious that they were exotic pets the country could no longer afford. From just seven juniors in 1978, they had been allowed to balloon in numbers to a full score in 2007 as Bertie Ahern, giddy from a third election victory, was loathe to leave any Fianna Fáil TD off the gravy train and boosted the number by three as more jobs for the boys were artificially created on the bloated Oireachtas committee system. It was the last days of Bertie and he was fiddling with numbers as the Boom began to burn out.

Having a salary topping €150,000 lavished on each junior and a support staff costing the taxpayer €8m per year was seen as a price well worth shelling out for by an administration famous for Transport Minister Noel Dempsey dismissing the €150 million wasted on the PPARS computer system as “relatively very, very small”, and a Taoiseach with the nerve to insist he deserved a pay rise which would make him one of the highest paid leaders in the democratic world because, unlike his buddies in Paris and Washington, he did not have his own palace or yacht.

Though so recent, those days now feel long gone as an angry public outraged at the cash it has suddenly been called upon to hand over in “patriotic duties” in the form of swingeing tax hikes wants to see TDs face the new reality as well.

Pressure really mounted for Mr Cowen to cut the numbers of junior ministers in the wake of the disastrously received October emergency budget. It only intensified in January when the Greens expressed concern at the numbers and Conor Lenihan, Martin Mansergh, Trevor Sargent and eight others said they would fall on their swords for the good of the national exchequer if asked.

The Taoiseach let it be known he was not best pleased with such displays of self-flagulation, insisting the Government had an increased workload to tackle and the ministers of state were needed to get on with that. The message was backed-up as Justice Minister Dermot Ahern warned it was “facile” to think that cutting the number of ministers would “save the country”.

Now, two months and two emergency financial flashpoints later, Mr Cowen thinks it’s just a swell idea to cut them back after all.

They all get to re-apply and the lucky 15 will be returned in more specifically defined roles on April 22 — that’s still three more juniors than Fine Gael say is needed, but it will at least do something to assuage public disquiet that each minister costs €500,000 a year in wages, expenses and support staff.

Shame it took so long for the Taoiseach to wake up and smell the anger.