Special advisory pay - Time to end salary cap breaches

Besides indulging in semantics, Fine Gael is defending the indefensible in the latest row over six-figure pay cheques for experts.

Perception is everything in politics, and when it comes to breaking the rules, there is a growing public perception that ministers of the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition are every bit as venal as their counterparts in the previous administration.

Call them what you will — special advisers, spin doctors, ministerial aides, backroom officials — the reality is that ministers are doling out exorbitant salaries when they decide to hire people with special expertise. This they have done repeatedly since coming to power. And invariably, the contractual salaries have mirrored the customary excesses of the last government.

To make matters worse, caps on the pay of experts are flagrantly breached at a time when the country is on its knees. What really sticks in the public craw is the fact that it is taxpayers’ money seems to be blithely ignored.

This is unconscionable at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet, put food on the table, or pay high mortgages for homes deeply mired in negative equity. Clearly, when it comes to hiring specialists, ministers appear not to be subject to the strictures of an austerity programme that weighs so heavily on the shoulders of Ireland’s new poor.

Not surprisingly, in a case that raises the ongoing controversy of breaching salary caps — although the department says no cap was breached as this was an external expert — a bitter war of words has broken out between the Government and the opposition. So vehement is the opposition protest that Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have ended up singing from the same hymn sheet.

For Health Minister Dr James Reilly, the portfolio is once more proving to be something of a minefield. In an effort to rid hospitals once and for all of long queues, not to mention the unedifying spectacle of patients sleeping on trolleys in crammed corridors, he has created a Special Delivery Unit, a kind of mini department within the department itself, tasked with the aim of cutting hospital waiting times.

Adding to the staff of 17, an international expert, Lis Nixon, with a reputation for getting things done in this difficult area, has been recruited to sort out the excessive waiting times at Irish hospitals. Her salary is reported to be €164,000.

Describing this figure as “obscene”, Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher claimed she was yet another special adviser. In the inevitable game of political ping-pong, however, a spokesman for Mr Reilly has responded by claiming Mr Kelleher was wrong.

Rocking the boat, at least where Fine Gael is concerned, but hitting the nail squarely on the head in the process, Jerry Buttimer, Fine Gael TD in Cork South Central, has broken ranks by saying the pay package was too high. What lends weight to his line of argument is the fact he is chairman of the Oireachtas Health Committee. Mr Buttimer is already on record as stating that “high salaries in the public sector need to be tackled and the Government is committed to doing so”.

If, indeed, the Government is so committed, now is the time to prove it. The Coalition should put an end once and for all to the seemingly routine breaching of the cap on salaries. What infuriates the public is the perception ministerial whim seems to fuel this unacceptable practice.