Ministers' wages are indefensible

It is ludicrous for Government ministers, with supposed responsibility for departments of State, to be paid €200,000 on the basis that chief executives of comparable institutions are paid similarly. There is no comparability.

First, while Government ministers carry political responsibility for what is done in their name, they do not have executive responsibility for the running of their departments. Ministers themselves repeatedly proclaim they are not to be held accountable for the administration of their departments. This was especially evident in the handling of the residential charges issue, where it was accepted a minister could not be held accountable for that debacle, unless it was shown he/she had direct knowledge of what was going on.

Second, there is no way anybody currently holding a ministerial portfolio would be given executive responsibility for the running of their departments, were their abilities and experience to be the deciding factors. Micheál Martin and Noel Dempsey for instance, two former school teachers, are supposedly running the department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources respectively. There is no evidence that either of them had any experience or knowledge of any of the matters for which they now, supposedly, have responsibility. This is not a criticism of them, rather it is a reflection on the nature of ministerial office.

Likewise Mary Harney, who never ran anything before becoming a minister; Bertie Ahern ditto. Ditto also Mary Coughlan, Michael McDowell, Dick Roche and several others. Dermot Ahern and Brian Cowen have had experience of running a solicitor's office, but how does that equip them for the positions of Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Finance respectively? A few ministers, including Martin Cullen and Seamus Brennan, could be said to have had executive responsibility before entering elective politics, but what does that say about standards of executive competence?

We do not expect them to have the capacity to run a department of State: they object if they are fixed with that responsibility, so why should they be paid as though they do have that responsibility?

There is another reason to object to the enormous salaries they are being paid and the even more enormous salaries they have decided they will soon be paid.

If politicians are paid at a rate more than six times the average wage in society, they are unlikely to be responsive to the average needs, demands and anxieties of the average person. The position is worsened of course by the perks ministers enjoy, including ministerial cars; retinues of servants (civil servants) at their beck and call, who bow and scrape and call them "minister"; executive air travel and the rest.

Were ministers paid the average wage – around €25,000 – required to travel by public transport and commercial aircraft (economy class) and deprived of titles and of flunkies, it is likely public services would be far better resourced. But, more than that, it is likely the needs of the average person generally would be addressed. Without knowing where the shoe pinches, ministers are unlikely to know where and how to fix the shoe.

In defence of a seven per cent wage increase for himself and his Government colleagues, Bertie Ahern said public servants got more than that under benchmarking awards. Aside from the issue of the unjustifiably high level at which ministerial salaries are currently pitched, there is the point that benchmarking was supposedly in return for productivity improvements. What productivity is there linked to this new ministerial wages hike?

This is wrong.

Vincent Browne