Political money racket - Credibility undermined once again

The €10,913 added to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s €200,000 salary last year and the extra €5,000 added to Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore’s €184,000 may not seem terribly significant sums in the grand scheme of things.

However, Mr Kenny’s €200 a week or even Mr Gilmore’s €100 a week represent, for hundreds of thousands of Irish people today, very significant, almost unattainable, life-changing figures.

Apart from the money involved, the additional payments, delivered through the party leader’s allowance scheme by their respective parties, underline once again that when we talk about pay in the public sector, nothing is as it seems. The basic figure, always the one used in public debate, is almost inevitably supplemented by allowances, some pensionable, some not. Some are earned because extra responsibility is accepted. Others are achieved for no reason other than the passage of time.

For too long, and possibly to the ultimate disadvantage of those enjoying them, these allowances were used as convenient ways of improving conditions without breaking salary caps.

In recent times, that particular constraint has been more observed in its breach than in application, especially when packages for ministerial advisers or semi-state executives are under consideration. There has hardly been a starker do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy endorsed by this Government than the number of times cabinet-sanctioned pay ceilings have been breached.

Historically, the value of these allowances was best seen when senior civil servants persuaded government to exclude them from a general round of pay cuts because they had already lost very significant allowances. Already unions have warned that any attempt to rationalise these allowances will be opposed and, in their interpretation, any such move would breach the terms of the Croke Park deal. Undoubtedly, some allowances are entirely justified and should be more properly paid as salary but others must be suspect.

Reform and Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin has the unfortunate but urgent task of trying to separate the wheat from the chaff on this issue but his long-fingering, to the autumn at the very least, of aresponse to a report already on his desk does not auger well for the decisive action and reform his Government were elected to implement.

Today’s great difficulties mean the sums involved have a significance no-one ever imagined they might have, but the lack of transparency, the cute hoorism that these allowances represent, are damaging and divisive at a moment when transparency and equity are essential.

If there is to be a second Croke Park deal, this issue should be resolved before it is agreed. The private sector must have a direct role as well, because this country has suffered enough through self-serving self-regulation, and what is the Croke Park deal other than the ultimate expression of that discredited principle?

Unfortunately, and with almost a Quinn-like disregard for the facts, these arguments are dismissed as being anti-public service rather than what they really are — an effort to make normal the fairness and transparency we all need if our society and economy are to ever recover.