Ministers still living in cloud cuckoo land

IRELAND has just suffered the humiliation of a bailout. And yet Taoiseach Brian Cowen is still paid €228,466 a year, the Tánaiste is paid €208,526 and each minister is paid €191,417. Our cabinet, clearly, are still living in fantasy land. They remain among the best-paid politicians in Europe, though they have been among the worst-performing.

They will say they are easy targets. Yes, they are. They will say they have already taken substantial cuts — yes, they have — €57,000 in Mr Cowen’s case since September 2008. They will say that cutting their pay further will save relatively little and do virtually nothing to plug the gaping hole in the public finances. That is all true. Cutting their pay would, in monetary terms at least, be nothing more than a cosmetic exercise.

But in political terms, it would be more than a cosmetic exercise. It would give the cabinet some claim to be leading from the front in making sacrifices. At the moment, they can make no such claim. Others have made the real sacrifices, while they’ve sat back and watched. It is absolutely preposterous that Brian Cowen and his cabinet have led Ireland into a bailout and yet still claim such massive salaries.