MINISTER FOR Education Ruairí Quinn has defended the salaries paid to Government advisers, claiming they were a “fraction” of the amount paid to the previous administration’s team.

He made the remarks as Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald challenged him on likely proposals for the budget.

In sharp exchanges during Leaders’ Questions, Ms McDonald asked if the Government would consider cuts to the “extravagant salaries paid to your own special advisers”, claiming the cap was “more honoured in the breach than in the observance”.

She asked if basic rates of social welfare and the protection of the most vulnerable were “on the table” for budget discussions.

She highlighted the salaries of the Tánaiste’s two advisers, one on €168,000 and the second on €155,000, and said the salaries of advisers to the Minister for Social Protection and the Minister for Public Expenditure also breached the cap.

When she asked if the Government would show leadership on the issue of salaries Mr Quinn said “all of the special adviser salaries are a fraction of what they were in terms of amount and numbers compared to what the previous administration had”.

Ms McDonald said the party had met the bailout troika. It was made “very clear” the Government had wide scope and choice in the policies it could pursue, and its austerity policies were hurting citizens, damaging the domestic economy and keeping hundreds of thousands of people on the dole.

Mr Quinn said “no family, no small business and no country can run a permanent budget deficit”. The Government would try to move towards a budget deficit of 3 per cent, creating a platform for a budget surplus.

He said the last surplus was in 1997, when a Fine Gael-Labour administration was in office.

However, Ms McDonald said the Government was out of touch in “singing your own praises because the ESRI said Budget 2012 involved greater proportionate losses for those on low incomes than any of the previous austerity budget”.

Mr Quinn retorted: “I will take no lecture from a party whose military wing visited two and a half decades of austerity on this island.”

Earlier he told Fianna Fáil spokesman on jobs Willie O’Dea he was not satisfied with progress on dealing with the unemployment crisis.

“As long as people are without a job I am not satisfied with the progress we have made,” said Mr Quinn.