Kenny: Adviser’s €35k pay rise was my ‘duty’

THE Taoiseach has confirmed he sent an email sanctioning a €35,000 pay rise for a Government adviser, claiming it was his “duty” to do so.

Enda Kenny said he agreed to the salary of €127,000 for Ciarán Conlon, an adviser to Jobs and Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton, because he would help get people off the dole and provide work opportunities.

He also told the Dáil the Government’s own pay cap of €90,000 had to be breached because Mr Conlon earned “well in excess of that” when he was head of the Fine Gael press office.

Mr Kenny defended his decision, saying Mr Conlon had economic expertise and political experience which justified the salary.

Answering questions from Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, Mr Kenny said: “Yes, I did send an email.

“[Mr Conlon] worked for the party which I led for eight, nine or ten years, and was on a salary well in excess of the limit that was set here in these guidelines... and was in the [adviser’s] job for five months before he received any payment.

“The person involved here has his master’s degree in economics and long experience of dealing with the ways in politics, and was chosen by the Minister for Jobs and Enterprise for a specific purpose in getting people off the dole.”

Mr Kenny was clearly expecting the question, because he then turned to prepared notes in an attempt to deflect attention back on Mr Adams.

“I understand that in the two-year period to the end of this March, the Sinn Féin MPs claimed stg£969,328 in staff payments, and you sir, before your election to this Dáil, Deputy Gerry Adams, claimed stg£106,880 for [your] staff for a parliament in which you never attended.”

Mr Kenny staunchly defended the payment just minutes after he rejected Fianna Fáil’s claim that the budget was “a brutal attack on young people with disabilities’’.

Opposition party leader Micheál Martin said the cut from €188 to €100 in the disability for 18- to 21-year-olds and abolishing the payment for 16-to18-year-olds was a “direct smash and grab’’ from the most vulnerable in our society.

“Targeting income supports for young people with disabilities, from 16 to 24 years of age, is calculatingly callous and cold,’’ Mr Martin said.

Mr Kenny said the provision does not affect anybody between 16 and 24 years of age currently drawing a disability allowance. “This measure only affects new claimants,’’ he said.

Mr Adams asked Mr Kenny how he found this cut “acceptable” when he was “prepared to intervene to secure a pay rise for a political crony”.

“How come one citizen can have these incomes slashed, services slashed and another citizen, a former Fine Gael adviser, can be given a €35,000 rise in contravention of your Government’s own regulations?” Mr Adams asked during Leaders’ Questions.