FG frontbench at odds over state employee bonuses

SENIOR members of the Fine Gael front bench are at odds as to whether bonuses for state employees worth hundreds of thousands of euro should be abolished if the party comes to power.

After securing details of the bonuses awarded to civil servants and state officials across a range of Government departments and semi-state agencies over the last 12 months, Fine Gael education spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said the extra payments should be “torn up” even if they formed part of the recipients’ negotiated entitlements.

A bonus of €200,000 was paid to the former chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency, Michael Somers, and €31,395 to the chief executive of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board.

Bonuses totalling €55,670 were paid to 27 staff in the Department of Finance last year, with a further €53,394 paid out to 19 staff in 2008. This year 52 principal and assistant principal officers in the department received seniority allowances totalling €115,395.

“(Finance Minister) Brian Lenihan must be forced to change the bonus culture across the public sector and it must be put to an end right now because we can’t afford it and we must give the leadership and restore trust in our public service,” said Mr O’Dowd.

It was put to him that some bonuses were paid under longstanding pay agreements. He was asked if it was Fine Gael’s intention to scrap all bonuses. “I can only speak for myself that I believe the bonus culture must end. We are talking about tearing up bonuses even if there is an entitlement. There must be no more. People are well paid at the top of the civil service and that is good enough for everybody right now.”

However, that was not the position of the party’s headquarters.

A spokesman said Fine Gael intended to do away with handing out bonuses “willy nilly”. The party would make senior public servants publicly accountable with greater scrutiny of their performance and with targets set and consequences for not meeting those targets, he said. But he confirmed those who met targets would be rewarded.

“It would be miles away from the current situation where (the bonuses) are awarded willy nilly,” he said, before adding that Mr O’Dowd had been speaking “from his own position”.

In the Dáil, party leader Enda Kenny said the payments proved that a “bonus culture” still existed within some Government departments and state agencies. Mr Kenny questioned why such bonuses were paid when the supposedly “fair and equitable” budget had taken money from carers and other vulnerable people.

Low-paid public servants had also been asked to take further reductions in the budget, “yet they’ll find that in some areas, there is a bonus culture apparently alive and well, as if a separate club exists,” he said.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the average payments in the Department of Finance were €2,000 to €2,500 and it was “important to make a distinction” between the bank bonuses and payments made to the middle-ranking public servants of principal officer and assistant principal officer level. He said the 1994 Programme for Competitiveness and Work had provided for a 1% pay increase for the middle-ranking public servants involved.

He said the payments were part of the pay bill rather than bonuses, with some departments incorporating the increase into the overall “pay pot” for those grades while others used the increase to recognise work of exceptional merit. “The special service payment in the Department of Finance was based on criteria concerning special demands of the job or whatever occurred in a previous year.”