Chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission Kieran Mulvey has said his appointment as chairman of the Sports Council – for which he receives a €9,000 fee – predated a Government circular that one person should receive only one salary.
Mr Mulvey is on a salary of €156,000 as chief executive of the commission – the equivalent of a deputy secretary general in a Government department and is also paid nearly €9,000 as chairman of the council.
He said his salary as head of the commission was determined by the Government and he had experienced the same pay cuts as others of his level in the public service. He said he was also chairman of the council, which is a State body.
A daily newspaper yesterday published details of a letter sent by Mr Mulvey to the Department of Transport in which he made inquiries about plans by it to cut the fees paid for his post as chairman of the council.
The letter described the fees as “quite small” and said the chairmanship required considerable out-of-hours commitments at evening and weekend events.
Speaking in Killarney, where he was attending the delegate conference of the trade union Impact, he denied he had lobbied to keep the fees.
He said he had been told the payments were to be ended and he had inquired as to why this was the case.
'It's not a big issue'
Mr Mulvey said the department
had looked at his warrant of appointment as chairman of the council and restored the fees.
Asked whether he would be prepared to relinquish the payments he said this was a matter for the Government to decide.
“It is not a big issue,” he said.
He said the secretary general of the department also took the view he was not in breach of the one-person, one-salary principle.
Separately, speaking at the conference, he said the private sector in Ireland over the last five years had gone through a "torrid period of attrition" in terms of workers' rights, pay levels and ultimately in relation to unemployment.
However, he said over the last 18 months he had noticed certain pay movements in some sectors of the economy which gave rise to pay increases of 2 to 4 per cent.
Progressive agreement
"These have been negotiations through successful strategies by unions such as Siptu, Mandate, TEEU and the CWU. So collective bargaining is alive and well. It has withstood the rigours of those who believed that trade unions were dead and should be dusted off."
Mr Mulvey said that in the public service if it had not been for the Croke Park agreement and subsequent Haddington Road deal – warts and all – “there would have been unilateral decisions made by the previous and current governments that would have effectively brought about the end of collective bargaining” in the sector.
