TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny insisted he could not alter the pension and severance payments of senior public servants.

“They were set by the previous government,” he said.

The Taoiseach’s assertion was challenged by Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, who said it was up to the serving Government to sign off on added years for pension purposes.

Mr Kenny, she said, knew full well that had he wished to stop the payment made to the former secretary general of the government, Dermot McCarthy, he could have done so.

“Shame on the Taoiseach and the Government, particularly as they are cooking up massive cutbacks that will hurt ordinary people, for being so coy and duplicitous in respect of those in the upper echelons of the public and Civil Service,” she added.

She said there were reports about the entitlement of county managers to payments of €74,000 on retirement. She understood that they derived from the same entitlements that allowed Mr McCarthy to receive €713,000.

Mr Kenny said his remit had begun this year and significant changes had been made, adding that Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin was committed to reviewing appointments at senior level in the public service.

He added that the Government had honoured the situation put in place for Mr McCarthy’s severance package.

The Government, he said, was also committed to the introduction of a single pension facility and the details would be published shortly.

Ms McDonald said the Taoiseach should explain to the House how an outgoing secretary general walked away with such a bonanza and how it might be that managers in local authorities were set to do likewise on the Taoiseach’s watch.

“You know the story, Taoiseach, in relation to the unemployment figures, you know children have returned to school and cannot secure special needs assistants . . . you know there are people on hospital trolleys,” she added.

Mr Kenny said Ms McDonald was “still being affected by the comfort she enjoyed during her party’s recent meetings in the Shelbourne Hotel”.

She had conveniently forgotten, the Taoiseach added, that the Government had changed the terms of reference relating to the minimum wage and that, even with the constraints of the financial conditions imposed upon it, had cut the level of PRSI applying to employers so that they could retain their employees.

“She seems to forget that the Government reduced the level of VAT which applies to the hospitality sector and thereby provided a direct stimulus which had a positive effect for so many people on the lower end of the salary scale.”

Mr Kenny said Ms McDonald “and her party colleagues conveniently forgot all of those matters when, during their recent meetings, they looked out upon the sublimity of St Stephen’s Green”.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (SF) said the Taoiseach had conveniently forgotten about the working-class when he was signing cheques for €700,000.