Public sector bonuses - Senior staff should lead by example

Every week there seems to be a sensational disclosure that calls the judgment of political leaders into question.

Yesterday there was the revelation that bonuses were paid last year to high-grade civil servants throughout the state and semi-state sectors.

The details of those payments were given to Fine Gael education spokesman, Fergus O’Dowd, in answer to a Dáil question. Some 98 of the payments were to senior members of staff at the Department of Finance, which has directed some of the most savage cuts in the history of the state.

In 2008, after the current economic downturn began, 19 members of the department’s staff — at principal and assistant principal levels — received special payments totalling €53,394. The following year 27 members at the same levels received €55,670, and during 2010, 52 members at the same levels have already received over €115,000.

Earlier this year Michael Somers, the former chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency, received a bonus of €200,000 for his performance last year. It is vile that the Department of Finance would implement such bonuses while denying welfare recipients their Christmas bonus and cutting the pay of frontline staff such as nurses, teachers and gardaí.

Such bonuses are not only unjustified but they are a vicious kick in the teeth for public sector workers. No matter where people stand in the argument about the public sector being overpaid in relation to the private sector, people should recognise that a great many at the basic level in the public sector are struggling like most other people.

They have a right to expect that senior people in the various departments and state agencies — and especially in the Department of Finance — should lead by example. The latest bonus controversy strengthens the distorted perception that the public sector is a gravy train from top to bottom.

It should be stressed that the chief executive of the National Lottery waived his performance related bonus for 2009. Those who accepted their bonuses should be thoroughly ashamed of their greedy behaviour, because they have disgraced the idea of real public service.

These sordid bonuses, in the midst of the savage cuts suffered by the more deprived segments of society, lend credence to exaggerated allegations that those in the public sector are ripping off the system and not listening to the pain being experienced by the majority of workers. This is grossly unfair to a great many frontline workers who are providing invaluable service.

As public sector pay accounts for a massive slice of our national spending, the issue has to be tackled, but society should not make the mistake of lumping those ordinary public workers at basic pay levels with those who discredited the idea of public service by gouging the public purse.

Even though the Government should already have abolished such bonuses in the current economic circumstances, the senior public servants should be leading by proper example.