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.