Oireachtas expenses system is ‘flawed’
Following a review of around 1,100 allowances paid across the public sector, the committee recommended an independent review of travel and other expenses and allowances paid to TDs, which amount to around €10m.
“It would be wrong if we sent out the signal that the allowances to public servants would be reviewed but that our own would not,” Mr McGuinness (FF) said.
The PAC also looked at the party leaders’ allowance which cost €8m last year. The chairman said “major questions arise” as to whether independent TDs should continue to get a €40,000 annual allowance.
This has risen from £10,000 in 1996, or four times the rate of inflation, “so this level of payment needs to be justified”, he said.
Mr McGuinness said the allowance system for TDs and Senators — introduced in 2009 by the then Finance Minister Brian Lenihan — was “not a good system.”
The main task of the PAC is to ensure money is spent effectively, he said “and clearly we are not happy to have a series of unvouched expenses.”
He said the fact that allowances are paid in August when the Dáil is not sitting. “The system needs to be modified so that expenses incurred have a direct relationship to the payment.”
Following a review of around 1,000 allowances paid to public sector workers, Mr McGuinness said the committee found a “complex matrix” made up of legacy allowances — some of which provide a large portion of income to lower paid workers.
Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin, had promised to cut €7m this year from the €1.5bn allowance bill, but savings amounted to just €3.5m.
The PAC said the allowances should have been dealt with in the context of social partnership talks and benchmarking over the years. “Both processes failed to deal with the allowances,” Mr McGuinness said.
Simon Harris (FG) said the unions and successive Governments have to take responsibility for the way the allowances system developed: “People came into the rooms together and negotiated often secret deals like social partnership, where the Oireachtas was bypassed.”
The committee recommended a system of pay banding which would move justified allowances into core pay and consolidate small allowances.
“These recommendations will now be referred to the Minister of Public Expenditure and Reform and will form part of the work that is underway in the public sector generally,” Mr McGuinness said.
He also said county managers who did not respond to the committee “should do so immediately so that we can get a complete picture of just how many allowances are paid through local authorities.”
More and more professionals would rather have “their fingers cut off” than take high level jobs in the public sector, according to Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin.
He warned against going down the “dangerous road” of singling out highly paid public servants and “excoriating” them.
This is the “populist” approach being taken by Sinn Féin he said in response to demands from Mary Lou McDonald to address huge pay caps between top and low-paid public servants.
Ms McDonald was pressing Mr Howlin during a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Public Sector Reform, on whether pay over €100,000 would be tackled by what she called “Croke Park Nua.”
“The biggest cohort of people who earn more than €100,000 are consultants in our hospitals and I’m not minded to destroy the public health system,” he said.
“More and more people say: ‘I wouldn’t go into the public sphere, to be hauled before that committee and have my family talked about than I’d have my fingers cut off’.”
— Mary Regan
