Paul Murphy calls for public sector pay cap at €100,000

The independent review panel into the senior public service recruitment and pay process has recently delivered its final report to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, and that fundamentally puts the ball in the court of the government in terms of deciding whether top civil servants, people who are already on, some of them, Mr Watt, close to 300,000 euros, others on 200,000 euros and some in between are going to get big pay increases, 10 to 15 percent. Has the government discussed the outcome of that, has the government discussed the idea of these very significant pay increases which are being spoken about, and would you not agree that at a time of the cost of living crisis that actually we should be imposing pay caps across the public sector, there's no need for anyone to be paid more than 100,000 euros. One particular issue I wanted to raise is there has been an ongoing dispute as I understand in the department in relation to the pay of the Secretary General of the Department of Housing, whereby he claims that upon moving from Secretary General of the Department of Transport to Housing, he was promised that he would be bumped up a grade from Secretary General Grade 2 to Secretary General Grade 1, which comes with a substantial pay increase from around 235,000 a year to 250,000 euros a year. That being disputed by others as to whether such an agreement was in place. My reading of the press statement from the department and the minister put out, Pascal Dunno, who was quoted as saying, I have requested the independent review panel to remain in place for the coming weeks to undertake a review of the grading of the Secretary General posts in the departments of children, equality, disability, integration and youth, and housing, local government and heritage within the existing structure. My reading on that is that is paving the way to precisely agree to an increase in pay, increasing the grading. Is that the case? And again, how can that be justified if that is? I think if you look at pay for public servants, whether it is in the civil service or the wider public service in Ireland, it does compare favourably with other European countries. Yes, of course, of course, you have to adjust it for tax and you have to adjust it for the cost of living. But even so, public servants in Ireland are relatively well paid when compared with Northern Ireland or Britain or France or Denmark originally. And I think that's important that we recognise that. And it's only possible because of the economic policies that have been pursued in the past decades. We wouldn't be able to pay our public servants the way we do now if we'd pursued different policies in the past 10 or 20 years. They'd be paid much less, probably paid what they're paid now in Britain or Italy or other European countries. In relation to the RT, quote unquote, talent or stars, they're not public servants by and large, they're self-employed and they charge fees. So they don't have the benefit of the protections of public service employees. They don't receive pensions from the state, but they do have a very tax efficient way of being remunerated, to put it that way. On electricity prices, we do expect them to come down. And we're seeing business rates come down already. And we expect to see residential rates come down in the next few months. I'm familiar with what they've done in Spain and Portugal, but I'm not sure that's the right way to go down. They've seen a huge increase in the use of gas in Spain and Portugal. And that's actually come at a cost to the government and a cost to the taxpayers. So while the bills, the one bill you get, the electricity bill is lower, the fact that the government has had to pay for so much gas has put the bill on the taxpayer in a different way. I don't know if that's going to happen at all, Deputy. I'd have to go back to you on that. But there are a few different reforms being proposed. Just on the issue of Secretary-General's pay, they're paid at three levels, something I didn't know about until recent months. I'm glad to say that even though I've served in government for quite some time, I've managed to not take an interest or get too involved in how much individuals are paid in government departments. I don't think that's a role for politicians, but they're graded at three different levels and that is now being reviewed. Particularly given that the spec of the job and the size of certain government departments has changed pretty fundamentally. So everyone will know that the Department of Children and Youth Affairs was a relatively small department. Under Foreign Minister's opponent, Foreign Minister Slanagan and Fitzgerald before that, it's now a huge department. Responsible for disability, responsible for international protection, responsible for our response to the crisis in refugees coming from Ukraine. So it's a different department. And similarly in housing, a department that has a budget that has ballooned in recent years. It's nearly €5 billion budget now, whereas it used to be a relatively small department in the past. But it is going to be an independent assessment as to whether those positions should be regraded or not. And I'm sure the government will accept the outcome of that process. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you. It's going to be Horizon Minister. I'm going to show up with Jaguar, by Raspberry Pi, I'm leaving LORD loose that Millionen should be a little bit different. 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