National maximum wage-earners should try living on minimum rate

ANYBODY who happened to listen in to a particular RTÉ radio programme during the week would be forgiven for thinking they had come across another appeal for some Third World country hit by another disaster.

They would have been somewhat right, as people phoned in about our disastrous health service which would even embarrass the Third World.

Joe Duffy’s Liveline was discussing the hospital beds crisis which has put more than 300 unfortunate people on trollies and nurses on the streets in protest.

It’s so pathetically and chronically ineffective that Ben Dunne offered to buy three portable cabins to help house patients waiting in crisis-hit A&E departments.

He was quickly followed by other offers to donate furniture, bedside lockers, blocks for the cabins, stacking chairs, carpets, plants, blinds, cleaning equipment, toiletries and sterilised paint.

All we were short was Trócaire, Goal and the Red Cross to launch international appeals for help.

Maybe it will come to that because it is inexplicable that the facilities in our national health service can be so appalling when it costs €11 billion to run for a population of about four million people.

It’s so glaringly bad now that even the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, had to notice it and admitted, in the under-statement of the year, that the facilities were “not up to scratch.”

You’d think he was talking about the pint in his local instead of a health service that’s costing the taxpayers an incredible amount of money.

Despite a 10-point plan that Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney introduced to solve the overcrowding in A&E departments, the service is as bad as ever.

Yet the Government in charge of that dilapidated service, and senior public servants, are due for significant pay increases next June.

In contrast, the national minimum wage is due to rise by 65 cent next month. Not per cent - just cent, less than one euro.

It will reach the grand total of €7.65 an hour. Under the Buckley report in 2000, some of the top people got more than a 20% pay rise, and the others weren’t too far behind. The Taoiseach’s salary went to €177,800; the Tánaiste to €152,400 and ministers to €139,700.

That very same year, the national minimum wage was introduced and set at €5.59 an hour.

From next month, those who are lucky enough to be on it will receive an extra €2.06 an hour for their labours, and there are plenty workers who are not even earning the minimum wage.

Although ministers and senior public servants were not due another increase until 2007 under a current review, the Government, concerned that they weren’t earning quite as much as Donald Trump, “invited” interim recommendations from the review.

So, next June, not too long before the Dáil goes into hibernation for its usual three months in the summer, our Government will get a hefty salary increase along with judges, hospital consultants and civil servants from assistant secretary up.

The top brass in the gardaí and the army, as well as local authority and health service executives and chief executives of non-commercial state-sponsored bodies, are also looking forward to a nice summer.

TDs are looked after under benchmarking, one of the biggest scams ever to be perpetrated on the public - unless you happen to be a public servant.

This year the salary of a TD will increase to practically three and a half times that of the average worker’s annual wages.

That’s €91,800 a year.

They weren’t getting that five years ago. Back then they were getting €69,800, but because they couldn’t live on it, they are now getting an extra €22,000.

Senators earn 70% of a TD’s salary, which is the rate for the Upper House.

And their salaries are only part of what a TD costs.

Build in the various allowances and expenses and, on average, our 166 TDs and 60 senators will cost €200,000 a year. That’s €200,000 EACH.

But this year that figure jumps by another €40,000 per TD because of a decision to give Oireachtas members new personal assistants.

I presume the new assistants are to make sure our Dáil deputies don’t forget what junkets they are due to go on or where the next golf classic or fundraiser is to be held.

IN January of last year, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission was established to be responsible for the finances of Leinster House. Each member of the commission is paid an extra allowance of €16,000 to do this.

And if a TD happens to be a chairperson of any Oireachtas committee, they also get €16,000.

With commendable restraint, the commission members allocated an average of more than €20,000 in travel expenses last year to each TD and €28,000 to senators. It will cost about €106 million this year to run the Houses of the Oireachtas. That’s hardly surprising when you consider that, apart from their salary of €91,800, TDs will get almost €110,000 each in expenses, allowances and secretarial services.

And if the salary wasn’t enough for the few days they are expected to work, every single member of the Oireachtas is entitled to appearance money of €61.53, for which they don’t have to vouchsafe, just for turning up to the Dáil or Senate.

Politicians attend the Dáil for about 90 days in the year.

Some of them have it down to a fine art by seeming to make only the occasional guest appearance.

Remember those lads in business big and small who got indignant about even the suggestion of a national day of mourning for the Pope because they reckoned it would cost the country too much money? They’re at it again, this time over the increase. Quite right, too, you might say, because our Government ministers and senior public servants are already well paid.

Except the increase they’re livid over is the national minimum wage.

The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland, the Small Business Firms’ Association and the Irish Business and Employers’ Conference variously complained that it would cost an extra €250,000 an hour, cost business another €133 million, or put jobs at risk. Or all three.

Not a word of what it costs to maintain the exorbitant salaries and perks of a Government which has proven to be inept, and a parliament which is one of the least active in Europe, if not the world.

Given that our Oireachtas politicians are a major drain on the taxpayer, and bad value for the money they’re paid, possibly a more realistic recommendation from the current review would be that they try a spell on the national minimum wage.