A CALL has been made for the Taoiseach to order a complete review of the pay of higher public servants in the wake of revelations of bonus payments to senior grades.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny demanded the review as Brian Cowen defended the bonuses, insisting they were part of the existing “pay pot” for those pay grades and said that the average payments were €2,000 to €2,500.

Mr Kenny said there was “outrage” across the State about the payment of bonuses to AIB executives, until the Minister for Finance stopped them.

But he told the Dáil it now appeared that the bonus culture remained “alive and well” in some State agencies and the Department of Finance, creating an enormous credibility problem.

Mr Cowen insisted that it was wrong to conflate the banking sector bonus system with the payment to what he called “middle-ranking public servants at principal officer and assistant principal level” in the Department of Finance.

They received a “special service payment” based on “special demands of the job or whatever occurred in a previous year. The average payments were between €2,000 and €2,500. That should not be conflated with bank bonuses.”

Mr Kenny said the Budget “presented as fair and equitable, asked ordinary public servants, be they teachers, gardaí, nurses, cleaners or carers, to take salary reductions and pay more levies and taxes. Now they find in some areas of the public sector that a bonus culture is alive and well. It is as if a separate club exists.”

He called for a review of pay after it emerged that in 2009 a €200,000 bonus was paid to the chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency; €31,000 to the chief executive of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board; and €40,539 to the chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland as well as payments to departmental officials.

For semi-State agencies, Mr Cowen said the decision on such payments was a matter for the boards themselves. They were often “built into individual contracts”. He said a letter was sent to departments and semi-State bodies to suspend “consideration of bonus payments”.