A confidential document prepared for the loss-making Great Southern Hotel (GSH) group shows that some managers at the chain can avail of annual earnings of over €145,000.

A document, obtained by The Irish Times, shows the annual "reckonable earnings" of 17 senior managers at the hotel group. Based on these figures some managers, if they have long service, could stand to gain over €300,000 in loyalty payments, which are being offered to staff prepared to remain with the hotel group when it moves into private ownership.

Among the earnings are bonuses of between €2,165 and €15,780 per manager. However a spokesman for the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), which ultimately owns the hotels, said bonuses had not been paid in recent years because of losses at the nine-strong hotel group.

It is understood that some managers are disgruntled about the loss of these bonuses and are hoping to include these figures when loyalty payments are worked out over the next few weeks.

The board of the GSH group, which answers to the DAA, is proposing to pay staff who remain with the group a "transfer" or "loyalty" payment of six weeks for every year of service. Those who wish to leave are expected to be offered voluntary redundancy at eight weeks of pay for every year of service.

Recently an exercise was done with the GSH group calculating what senior managers might be entitled to via loyalty payments or redundancy. But last night the DAA loyalty or redundancy offers would be based on salary alone and no additional items would be taken into account.

Unions at the group believe that if managers are entitled to include bonus payments, trade union subscriptions, expenses and meal allowances in their overall reckonable earnings their members should be allowed to do so.

This week at the Labour Court talks broke down when the hotel group refused to guarantee that any new employees joining the group would be given the same terms and conditions as existing employees.

The document indicates that base salaries across the hotel group vary widely. For example, a general manager at one leading GSH hotel was paid €87,162, another was just paid €75,602, but another collected €105,202.

The breakdown of what makes up their reckonable earnings includes the following: salary, bonus, meals on duty, accommodation, mobile phones, car or car allowance, dry cleaning, medical expenses, trade union subscription, rail travel, car parking, and airport car parking.

It is understood the vast majority of the hotels, with the exception of Dublin, would be unprofitable if they were stand- alone operations. The nine properties are currently up for sale and hundreds of expressions of interest have been submitted to advisors handling the sale.

The DAA will be the beneficiary of the sale and it stands to make up to €200 million from the deal. The hotels are being sold as a "going concern" which means they must - at least in the short term - remain as hotels.