GOVERNMENT backbench TD Noel Grealish has told Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan he will not accept an increment payment of €3,000 due to TDs with more than seven years’ service.
The Progressive Democrats deputy said he urged other TDs to follow suit. “I’ve written to the Minister and I have requested that the Minister inform the appropriate authorities that I not be paid the increase,” he said.
Mr Grealish said accepting the increment would send out the wrong message at a time when everyone was being asked to work together to overcome the current economic crisis. “I’m hoping all other TDs will not accept this either and the Minister will not award it,” he said.
The Galway West TD said he had written to the Minister early yesterday. After Mr Grealish appeared on his local radio station, he said many people contacted the station to say he had done the right thing.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday morning, Mr Lenihan said payments for TDs were “linked to an equivalent grade in the public service”. He said: “TDs are put in the same position as principal officers in the Civil Service, that’s the position. They’re paid exactly the same as an equivalent grade in the Civil Service.” The arrangement has been in place since 2001.
“That arrangement was put in place many years ago and that’s the arrangement that applies to TDs and principal officers in the Civil Service. In fact before that, there was a situation where TDs’ salaries were changed and decided on a unique, individual basis but for a number of years now the salary of the TD is linked to the salary of a civil servant at the principal officer grade,” he said.
A Fine Gael spokesman said party policy since before Christmas had been that all public sector pay awards, increments and bonuses should be frozen. “This increment clearly comes within that category. The payment shouldn’t be made.”
The party recommended a measure relating to this in the emergency budget on April 7th, the spokesman said.
A Labour Party spokesman said: “In the current economic climate, the Government has to look at whether increments should be paid to higher-paid public servants, and that would obviously include TDs.”
Labour TD for Dublin Mid West Joanna Tuffy said she would be writing to the Department of Finance, saying she wanted to forfeit the increment this year, and would review that on an annual basis.
