Public sector salaries - Civil servants are paid too much

Over decades our politicians have celebrated our republicanism, but the manner in which they have paid the elite within our civil service makes a mockery of real republicanism.

It is not that anybody begrudges those people a fair wage, but in this case the so-called servants are being paid much more than the people they are supposedly serving. The monkeys have taken over the zoo.

Back in the late 1960s Charles Haughey was approached as Minister for Finance to increase the salaries of Dáil deputies. He was asked to give them an extra £500 a year, but he decided to give them £1,000 instead, because he would get just as much criticism either way.

The Taoiseach’s salary is listed at €161,441 annually, but for some reason that figure does not include the extra €87,247, that he receives in his Dáil salary, or the special pension privileges that all our politicians enjoy in being able to collect their ministerial pensions while still in office.

As a result, the Taoiseach is one of the highest paid prime ministers in the European Union, receiving more than four times the salary of the Polish Prime Minister.

Politicians are not expected to be included among the more than 100 highest paid civil servants who are currently in line for a massive pay rise, even though they are already earning between €150,000 and €236,000 annually.

The Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector has appointed an independent research group to examine the salaries of senior public officials in comparison with those of people with commensurate responsibilities in the private sector.

The examination will include the salaries of the Secretary Generals of Government departments, who receive €236,646 annually, Supreme Court judges who get €213,863, High Court judges who get €201,594. chief executive officers of the likes of the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, and Forfás, the Garda Commissioner and Chief of Staff of the Army who all receive a salary of over €175,000, while City and County Managers get €159,515.

The six-man Review Body which includes one former politician, two members of the Labour Court, and three Government appointees to the Civil Service Committee for Performance Awards, the Broadcasting Commission, and the National Roads Authority will draw up a report to be forwarded to the Oireachtas for consideration in mid-2007. The politicians will decide then whether to grant the pay increases.

Politicians would hardly dare award themselves rises before a general election, but they will have a vested interest in sanctioning increases for others, as those would later provide an excuse to increase their own salaries in line with a kind of benchmarking with senior civil servants.

Top civil servants are being handsomely compensated in comparison with the vast majority of people whom they are purportedly serving.

Our cost of living is already threatening our competitiveness, and it is time that our leaders adopted a true spirit of republicanism in recognising their responsibilities to the Irish people as a whole by providing proper example.