Presidential candidates Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin have confirmed they will waive pension entitlements should they win next month’s election.
Catherine Connolly has not yet confirmed her intentions on whether she would waive her Oireachtas pension if she is elected.
Ms Humphreys of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil’s Mr Gavin and left-wing Independent Ms Connolly on Monday night faced off in the first televised debate of the presidential election on Virgin Media.
President Michael D Higgins, who was elected during the economic crisis in 2011, voluntarily waived his Oireachtas and ministerial pensions from the start of his first term in office and continues to do so.
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He also waived a portion of his salary for most of his years in office. His salary returned to its full level in late 2022.
A spokesman for Ms Humphreys said: “In line with the precedent set by Michael D Higgins, who is also a former minister, Heather would voluntarily waive her ministerial and Oireachtas pensions if she is elected.”
At 54, Mr Gavin, a former Defence Forces officer, is younger than the other two candidates who are both in their 60s.
The Gavin campaign said he will not take his Defence Forces pension if he is elected. “Like all Defence Forces personnel who served at his time and served for over 20 years, he received his [Defence Forces] pension immediately upon retirement,” it said.
The campaign said he is not yet eligible to receive pension payments related to his role as chief operations officer at the Irish Aviation Authority.
Ms Connolly’s team did not respond to the query on whether she would waive her Oireachtas pension entitlements should she be elected.
Asked about the presidential salary in July, Ms Connolly said she would “look at the salary” and is “open to ideas on that”.
“I’m certainly going to use it for the common good,” she said at the time.
She said she would discuss it with her team and set out how she would use the salary “in due course”.
A statement from Áras an Uachtaráin said: “The combined value of the gifts voluntarily made to the State by the President [Michael D Higgins] over his two terms in office from November 2011 to date is €2 million.”
The statement also set out the basis on which Mr Higgins gifted portions of his salary and how it returned to its full level.
Legislation from 1973 sets the President’s remuneration at 10 per cent higher than that of the Chief Justice.
Following a 2011 referendum on judges’ pay the then government reduced the remuneration of the Chief Justice.
Áras an Uachtaráin said that under the Constitution the President’s salary could not be reduced at the same time but Mr Higgins “made a decision, in keeping with the spirit of the 1973 Act, to voluntarily gift to the State any difference between his allocated salary and the actual remuneration of the Chief Justice increased by 10 per cent”.
It added that as a result of this decision “the President’s actual salary was for many years at the level of €249,014″.
As austerity-era public sector pay cut legislation was unwound, and the remuneration of the Chief Justice rose, there have been “corresponding changes to the size of the president’s gift to the State on this basis”.
The remuneration of the Chief Justice returned to €295,916 on October 1st, 2022.
[ Catherine Connolly and Michael D Higgins’s fraught historyOpens in new window ]
At this point the salary for the Chief Justice, plus 10 per cent, matched the president’s then-allocated figure of €325,508 and Mr Higgins began receiving the full salary.
Áras an Uachtaráin said this approach “meant that a situation did not arise whereby the Chief Justice was paid more than the President, which would be against the intention of the 1973 Act”.
Subsequent public sector pay increases mean the salary for the President stands at about €350,000.
