TDs and Senators are not overpaid and should benefit from pay restoration in the same manner as other public servants, said the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin.
Speaking at an Oireachtas committee yesterday he said Ministers, their special advisers and office holders would not get increases set out under the terms of the Lansdowne Road agreement on public-service pay. He said this had been agreed voluntarily by Ministers in a Cabinet decision.
He acknowledged there was no provision in recently published financial emergency legislation, which will give effect to measures in the Lansdowne Road accord, to exempt Ministers and advisers from pay increases.
The Lansdowne Road deal provides for most public service staff to receive a €2,000 rise in earnings between January 2016 and September 2017.
In amendments tabled to the proposed financial emergency legislation at the Select Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin had urged that members of the Oireachtas and highly paid public servants be excluded from the pay increases.
Emergency over
Mr Howlin said that while, from the time of the agreement in May, he had signalled that Ministers and advisers would not benefit, he had never indicated other Oireachtas members would be excluded.
He said Senators who earned about €65,000 were not overpaid, nor were TDs. He said they should receive pay restoration in line with other analogous workers. He said in the legislation he did not want to “isolate any particular category of worker”.
Seán Fleming of Fianna Fáil said the Government should not introduce financial emergency legislation when the emergency was over. He said a court challenge would be successful given the Government's statements on improvements in the economy.
