Taoiseach Enda Kenny has chastised senior Fianna Fáil TDs for accepting ministerial severance payments, triggering a Fianna Fáil counterattack on Mr Kenny for taking a severance payment after the Rainbow Coalition.

Mr Kenny took a unprompted swipe at Fianna Fáil when asked about the €70,000 severance payment due to Alan Shatter, former minister for justice.

Among the Fianna Fáil figures Mr Kenny named was Public Accounts Committee chairman John McGuinness, a strident critic of wasteful practices by State and other publicly funded bodies.

Saying Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin declared during the 2011 general election campaign that any former minister re-elected to the Dáil would not accept severance payments, Mr Kenny went on to name those whom he said did not waive the payments. Chairman "I note that John McGuinness, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, received €61,318. I note that Dara Calleary received €53,708. Michael Kitt received €37,474, Billy Kelleher received €20,172, Willie O'Dea received €8,064," Mr Kenny said.

“This was a firm commitment given by Fianna Fáil that people who were ministers who were re-elected to the Dáil would not accept severance payments, yet all these people have done so.

“I also note that former minister Hanafin, who is now contesting in some particular circumstances the local elections, was in receipt of an €88,000 severance payment. So there seems to be an issue here.”

Former education minister Mary Hanafin lost her Dáil seat in 2011, but she is contesting the local election today in the Blackrock ward, south Dublin. Her campaign is in defiance of Mr Martin’s wishes.

There was no response to Mr Kenny from Mr McGuinness, Mr Calleary, Mr Kelleher and Mr Kitt.

Mr O’Dea said there was no direction on severance payment when he resigned as minister for defence in 2010, but added that he would have complied with such a direction if it had been in place.

“There was no directive there as far as I am concerned. I paid half of the money to the Revenue,” said Mr O’Dea.

Similarly, both Mr McGuinness and Mr Kitt were ministers of state only until 2009. Hypocrisy Fianna Fáil senator Darragh O'Brien accused Mr Kenny of hypocrisy and electioneering.

“Not for the first time in recent weeks the Taoiseach has embraced hypocrisy in an effort to distract voters from his Government’s broken promises and attacks on the weakest in society,” Mr O’Brien said.

“If the Taoiseach was serious about the issue he would have disclosed the fact that he himself took a generous severance payment when he last left government. He would have named the long list of his Cabinet colleagues who did likewise.”

Mr Kenny indicated during the 2011 election that he felt no obligation to return a severance payment from 1997, saying then that a €40,000 payment over three years was made in “very different circumstances”.

Mr Martin first said during the 2011 campaign he would not forego an €88,745 payment for departing ministers but he later said all former ministers returned to the Dáil would have to relinquish the payment.

Mr O'Brien said Mr Kenny would have acknowledged that Mr Martin, as well as former ministers Éamon Ó Cuív and Brendan Smith, were the first to refuse severance payments if he was serious about the matter.

"He would have disclosed the fact that he and many of his current Fine Gael and Labour colleagues actually continued to take ministerial pensions while serving in opposition in the last Dáil," Mr O'Brien said.

“But the Taoiseach did none of these things. He is counting on voters to fall for a very basic and transparent stunt. He is wrong in that, and will understand the extent to which he is wrong by the end of this week.”