A proposal that the chairman of RTÉ and a number of other State bodies be given significant pay increases has been rejected by the Department of Finance.
The pay rises were requested last year by the secretary general of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Brendan Tuohy.
He warned a senior finance official it would "become impossible" to recruit suitably qualified chairpersons of commercial State bodies unless they were adequately paid.
The Department of Finance granted Mr Tuohy's request for a special increase for the chairwoman of An Post, Margaret McGinley. Her pay for the part-time post was increased from €19,000 to €50,000 per annum, backdated to when she began her five-year term in February 2003.
But the department refused Mr Tuohy's request that similar increases be granted to the chairpersons of four other State bodies, Bord Gáis, RTÉ, Bord na Móna and EirGrid. It said there had been special circumstances attaching to Ms McGinley's case.
The exchange between Mr Tuohy and the Department of Finance is revealed in documents released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
The chairpersons of State bodies operating under the aegis of the Department of Communications are paid standard fees ranging from €7,618 to €19,046 per annum.
Ms McGinley was the second chairperson to receive a special increase, after ESB chairman Tadhg O'Donoghue's fee was increased to €31,743. He also received a per diem allowance of €635 for attendances in excess of one day a month, taking his salary to a maximum of €63,487.
In a letter to the Department of Finance on July 20th last, Mr Tuohy said the chairpersons of Bord Gáis, RTÉ, Bord na Móna, An Post and EirGrid each found it "absolutely necessary" to devote more than the standard time commitment to the role.
He stressed that this was not because the chairpersons were taking on more than their fair share of duties. "It is simply that in the modern environment ... and the higher corporate governance expectations, the traditional model of attendance (one or two days per month) which functioned in the past is no longer adequate.
"They are all now operating in more competitive markets and our expectations of the chairpersons are much higher," he said.
Attracting suitably talented individuals with wide experience in the private sector "will become almost impossible if we do not adequately such people", Mr Tuohy added.
He asked that the standard per diem allowance of €635 apply to the chairpersons of all five bodies - Bord Gáis, RTÉ, Bord na Móna, An Post and EirGrid - up to a limit of €50,000 per annum.
In a reply six days later, however, Department of Finance assistant secretary Ciarán Connolly said that, with the exception of An Post, it was not clear what specific circumstances would justify an increase in the existing remuneration levels.
Ms McGinley's pay rise was confirmed by the Department of Finance in August. The increase angered trade unions given that the company's staff and pensioners have not received a pay rise since 2003.
Independent assessors have recommended they receive a five per cent pay increase backdated to January.
