Medical consultants are the principal recipients of high level State pensions, Tánaiste Joan Burton has said, during a rowdy session of Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil.
She was responding to a call from from Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice, during his first first Leaders’ Questions, that the Tánaiste to “show leadership” as deputy leader of the country and introduce legislation to cut the pensions now being restored to former taoisigh, ministers and senior civil servants in receipt of pensions of more than €100,000.
Ms Burton told the House “the principal people in receipt of this are medical consultants who are very highly paid, a move that was initiated by the previous government”.
And she caused uproar on the Opposition benches when she said: “I didn’t see the Independents offering the €41,000 allowance that each of you get on a tax-free basis”.
Independents receive what is called a “leader’s allowance”. Political parties receive a similar amount for each of their TDs.
Emergency legislation introduced following the economic collapse cut pensions by 20 per cent, but with economic recovery Ms Burton said the legal advice had been that the emergency legislation should be unwound.
Former taoisigh can expect a restoration of some €2,000 to their pensions.
Revelations that former senior politicians would recover their pension reductions was greeted with public outrage. Former taoisigh Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern indicated they would forfeit the increase and former tanaiste Mary Harney said she would give hers to charity.
Ms Burton said “I believe they should refrain from accepting it” and it would be an “honourable action” for politicians and medical consultants to forego the increases.
She said: “I don’t see why anyone in this country who is paid for out of public funds should earn a pension in excess of €100,000.”
But an outraged Mr Fitzmaurice said: “If you listen to the waffle that’s after coming out you would lose the will to be in here because the same ding dong goes on around here and no one answers a question straight.”
“These people who have absconded they are gone. Ex- taoisigh and ex-minister, some of them living out of the State, they don’t give a damn,” Mr Fitzmaurice said.
He said legislation should be put in place and everyone in the House would support it. The Roscommon-South Leitrim TD said many families were struggling to put their children through college on incomes of under €30,000, €40,000 or €50,000 and the increases in politicians’ pensions would pay for extra home help hours for people who had just 30 minutes of assistance in the morning.
But when Ms Burton, who said the Government had cut salaries and pensions when it came into office, suggested the Independents should not take their allowances, she sparked a wave of heckling and Leas Cheann Comhairle Micheal Kitt had to threaten to suspend proceedings before some level of order was restored.
Ms Burton said “I will certainly take it up again with the Attorney General but the legal advice is that a pension right” was a constitutional right whether former ministers “are are in American sunning themselves or not”.
