Minister for Education Richard Bruton has confirmed that Cabinet members will not be availing of the proposed pay rise due as part of the restoration of public service pay cuts.
However, there was no clarity about whether TDs or Senators would also forgo the payments.
Politicians’ salaries were cut along with those of all public sector workers in the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Fempi) legislation introduced following the economic crash. But those with salaries above €65,000 are due a rise in the pay restoration.
Mr Bruton said in the Dáil that he agreed with Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald that “politicians need to take the lead in being more economical”.
Ministers are due to receive €3,900 on April 1st next year and the same amount on each of the following two years, bringing their salaries back from €157,540 to €169,275.
TDs will receive €2,700 on April 1st and the same again in 2018, increasing salaries from €87,258 to €92,658.
Ms McDonald also highlighted the rise due to the Taoiseach of almost €5,000 for each of the next three years from April 2017, “bringing his salary to an even €200,000”.
The Sinn Féin TD said “politicians will not be fobbed off with an increase of a fiver per week”. She said “there will be no waiting, uncertainty or measly €5” for TDs and Cabinet members.
Ms McDonald referred to the €5 a week for pensioners and other social welfare recipients, while unemployed people between 18 and 24 would only receive €2.70 a week.
They would have to wait until March to get their €5 increase and there was still uncertainty about what date the increases would start, she said.
When Ms McDonald called for a stop to be put to all the politicians’ increases, Mr Bruton said the Government would lead on this. “We did not accept any of the increases during the term of office of the last government. In the past few years the pay of ministers was cut by 35 per cent as was right,” he said.
‘Definitive stop’
However, the Sinn Féin deputy leader said the Minister was saying that “Ministers are voluntarily forgoing the rise”, but she said “the Government has to put a definitive stop to all of the proposed pay increases”. She said that included the Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Ministers, every TD and every Senator.
“I again ask the Minister to tell us if the Government will put a definitive stop to the increase, not provide for a voluntary pause,” she said.
She warned that if the Government did not do so, her party “will act to ensure the increases are stopped by way of an amendment, whether it be to the Finance Bill or enabling legislation”.
The Minister said the Sinn Féin TD “was the very one who opposed the Fempi legislation which applied progressive cuts and under which the cut in the Taoiseach’s pay was 41 per cent, while those on the very lowest rates of pay were not subject to any cut”.
Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy also said the Government would have "no credibility" in calling for wage restraint if it accepted the pay restoration.
