PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins is to take a voluntary pay cut, the Dáil has heard.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin said “the President has indicated to my department that he wishes to undertake a voluntary pay reduction, and that has been put in place”.

Legislation to reduce the Head of State’s salary to €249,014 from €325,507 is being processed but will only apply to the next president. Therefore, Mr Higgins has waived 23.5 per cent of his salary, to bring it in line with the Government’s intended reduction. He follows in the footsteps of his predecessor Mary McAleese, who took a similar pay cut.

The issue was raised by Fianna Fáil public reform spokesman Seán Fleming who had asked how many public servants were on salaries of more than €250,000. He also asked whether the cut would apply to Mr Higgins’s pension as a former minister.

Mr Howlin said he did not want to get into a discussion on the President “but the deputy can be assured that the highest probity will attach itself to all his actions”. However, during the presidential election campaign, Mr Higgins pledged he would waive his ministerial and TD pensions and his pension as a lecturer from NUI Galway if elected.

There are 18 individuals receiving more than €250,000 and “whose remuneration is subject to ministerial sanction” along with a number of academics “at professorial level in the health and education sector”. There are “no persons in either the Civil Service or local authorities with salaries above €200,000”.

Seven are chief executives of commercial semi-State bodies, “all of whom have taken a reduction, although their salaries are still over €250,000”. One is the chief executive of a non-commercial semi-State body, and the rest are the Chief Justice, the president of the High Court and the Supreme Court judges.

Mr Fleming said he asked the question because they were promised that people such as the chief executives of semi-States, along with hospital consultants, “would be dealt with at an early stage. That was last July, but there is no sign of this happening.” He suggested: “Let one or two of them go to court if they are so minded.”

The Government would have the support of the House if they cut salaries, he added.

Mr Howlin replied: “I do not think the deputy and I have any difference of opinion on this. It is a question of how we do it rather than what we do.”